Environmental Exam as a non-environmental major

[FusionWhite]

In my annual review my boss laid out one of my goals over the next few years is to get my PE license. We discussed what field I should take the test in: chemical or environmental. My boss was very clear that taking the chemical PE would be worthless for our company and would limit my ability to move up in the company since it isnt applicable to the work we do. The state of Kentucky does allow me to take the environmental PE and he suggested I start studying for it.

Is the environmental PE exam passable by non-environmental/non-civil majors? Ive had several classes which cover the material (solid waste management, some waste water stuff etc) but I feel drastically under prepared. My boss who doesnt even have an engineering degree (he has degrees in chemistry, math and management) was allowed by Ohio to sit for the exam and passed it. Of course he has 20 years of experience in refinery's and in consulting.

Advice, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Of course all of this is pointless if I get out of engineering like Im considering.

 

[Guest]

Many of the P.E.s in my Department are chemical engineers by education. For each of them, they took the Environmental P.E. licensing exam and managed to pass without too many difficulties.

If you really stop to think about it, Env Engineering and Chemical are very much related - they both focus on PROCESS design. Many of the problems are geared towards mass balances or unit conversion analysis :true: The subtle difference lies in the codes and emperical relationships that have been catalogued into tables, charts, nomographs, etc.

IMHO, you should not be intimidated by the Env Engineering exam if you have a ChemE education. If anything, it will help you if you can efficiently direct your study to the exam topics.

:2cents:

JR

 

[VA_Env_Engr]

I don't know enough about the Chem PE exam, but the Environmental exam certainly puts quite a bit of emphasis on regs, or at least they did this past April. Most such questions are qualitative in nature and almost all are about Air or Haz waste. This is something a lot of prep courses are not covering to the extent that they need to. Even the ENVRM does not cover them in much details. Having said that, I had realized early on that its almost impossible to cover all such regs, so instead, I just focussed on the areas I felt confident I could answer (water, wastewater etc.). I guess my strategy worked since I passed on my first try. I agree with JR that your chem background is a good starting point for the ENV exam.

If you have any further questions, post them here and I'll try to answer them the best I can.

Just my :2cents:

 

[Dleg]

I don't think you would have any problem passing the Environmental Exam, as long as you study... My degree was in ME, so there was a lot of material that I had to learn from scratch, even though I have been working with it for some time.

Much of the ENVRM is taken right out of the CheRM anyway - I bought both, so I know (aren't you glad you didn't buy it from me now?). You'll just have to learn up on air pollution, water and wastewater, solid waste, and regulations. The ENVRM is good enough to teach you all you need to know about air to pass that part of the test. You might need to go after another reference or two for water & wastewater. You'll also need to find some outside references to get a good handle on hazardous waste, since it's mostly about regulations. But, chemical engineering principles apply in ALL of these subjects, so you will have an excellent background for it.

I'd go for the Env. exam - and go ahead and do it, who cares about your long term plans. A PE license is very nice to have, and something you can always fall back on.

 

[FusionWhite]

I don't think you would have any problem passing the Environmental Exam, as long as you study... My degree was in ME, so there was a lot of material that I had to learn from scratch, even though I have been working with it for some time.
Much of the ENVRM is taken right out of the CheRM anyway - I bought both, so I know (aren't you glad you didn't buy it from me now?). You'll just have to learn up on air pollution, water and wastewater, solid waste, and regulations. The ENVRM is good enough to teach you all you need to know about air to pass that part of the test. You might need to go after another reference or two for water & wastewater. You'll also need to find some outside references to get a good handle on hazardous waste, since it's mostly about regulations. But, chemical engineering principles apply in ALL of these subjects, so you will have an excellent background for it.

I'd go for the Env. exam - and go ahead and do it, who cares about your long term plans. A PE license is very nice to have, and something you can always fall back on.

Well the good thing is my first job out of school was at the Kentucky Division of Air Quality so hopefully I can hit the air stuff pretty easily. Plus right now Im doing a bunch of water and solid waste/landfill work. Thanks for the advice guys.

 

[snickerd3]

During college, i took an environmental engineering course as a tech elective for my chemE degree...like jregieng said they both focus on process design...the thinking process is basically the same, just different black boxes.

 

[FusionWhite]

FW, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought you had a PE. Is that not the case?

Nope, no PE yet. I passed the EIT last fall. Im still a n00b by most standards.

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

rlyflag: I didn't know that. I thought you were a PE as well. I knew you were a younger member, about my age, but thought you had done it already.

OK, here's my take. Environmental and chemical curriculums in college have a lot of the same pre-reqs and seem to focus heavily at the upper levels on process and reactor design, kinetics, and conservation of mass. I think in real world practice however, they are quite different.

The thing with the Envl exam is that a whole lot of it is qualitative. You either know it quick or you don't, hence the 100 questions as opposed to 80.

You need to know the important federal regs - clean water, clean air, superfund, OSHA, etc. There is also a lot of factual information about air, water/ww, solids, etc.

You might see a questions like: What health conditions are a result of occupation exposure to X? According to XYZ CFR 1234, hazardous sludge is defined as...? Benefits of using X for water treatment including all of the following EXCEPT?

If you can take the time to memorize the important stuff, it goes a long way. Also, I found many of the quantitative problems were either plug and chug or just multiply and cancel the units.

Some of the hardcore wastewater treatment and air treatment and solid waste questions will be very tough if you don't have the background. If you can get through the quantitative and less intense quantitative stuff, and muddle through the rest, it's doable.

 

[Guest]

You need to know the important federal regs - clean water, clean air, superfund, OSHA, etc. There is also a lot of factual information about air, water/ww, solids, etc.
You might see a questions like: What health conditions are a result of occupation exposure to X? According to XYZ CFR 1234, hazardous sludge is defined as...? Benefits of using X for water treatment including all of the following EXCEPT?

I have heard the same thing - many people lament about qualitative, know-the-rules/regs sorta thing. For me that's actually the easy part

Some of the hardcore wastewater treatment and air treatment and solid waste questions will be very tough if you don't have the background.

I think the real trick here is having good reference material and cranking out a good number of problems. Even though I have a pretty solid background in environmental and even wastewater treatment - I had a very hard time working problems in six minutes or less on the Civil/Environmental Depth Exam. I would add that I didn't spend 'a lot' of time studying those areas. With some focused effort to really nail down the basics and typical computational items it probably would have been doable.

:2cents:

JR

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

^ Well the thing with the qualitative stuff regarding federal regs was that you can download pertinent sections of whatever Act you needed for free. It's all public info.

I think the worst definitions to learn were how various acts define harzardous stuff. A hazardous substance is different than a hazardous waste which is different than a hazardous material. :brickwall:

As for the references for the real rigorous quantitative problems, I had a good book for almost all of those in college and just revisited them as needed. I had two solid books for water/wastewater - one for process work, the other for the bio/chem reactions and kinetics of it.

I had a somewhat lightly technical book for qualitative air quality that answered almost everything I ran into - NAAQS, automotive emmissions, indoor air quality, asbestos/radon/smoke, etc. Then another real technical book on treatment processes - scrubbers, incincerators, baghouses, etc.

I was basically able to take the exam without investing in any other books, which was nice.

 

[FusionWhite]

For some reason Im pretty damn good at memorizing/interpreting regulations and I have extensive background in air quality regs and some exposure to clean water regs.

Thanks for the advice guys I appreciate it. By my calculations Ill be eligible to take the PE in 2009!!!!

Yeah VT I graduated from college really late. I only went part time for several years so I didnt graduate until I was almost 26. I got a late jump on taking the FE also.

 

[tucents]

Hey Fusion,

You're biting your nails biding your time like I am. I have a ppi2pass catalog hanging in my cubicle with the pages opened to these expensive study supplements for the ENVRM exam. Where did ya get your books from? I'm not getting much of a discount wherever I look (amazon, half, e.t.c)

 

[Guest]

^^^ IMHO, you really don't need expensive supplements for your EnvERM, especially if you have more time to start searching the web and other resources to put together your own reference material.

What do you have aside from EnvERM so far?

JR

 

[Dleg]

There really isn't all that much available for the enviro exam anyway. IMagine your dilemma if you were studying for the Civil exam - there's dozens of potential references and study books. The ENVRM, practice problems, 101 solved problems, and practice exams are the only books from "the other board" that are dedicated to this exam, and provide plenty of practice. The NCEES practice exam is also necessary, in my opinion. You can live without the six-minute solutions book, which is for the civil exam anyway, and is not comprehensive enough for the enviro exam (no air problems, health and safety, radiation, etc.)

I used all of those references, and I don't know which one(s) I would cut if I needed to save costs. All of them helped, to some extent. Some more than others. I would say that the PE license is worth far more than the cost of those references, or the cost of the other references you will want to have, such as textbooks, if you dont have them left over from college.

I guess the only way I would recommend saving costs is to try to find these books used. The problem with used problem books though, is that they're usually written in and beat up. That's the main reason I haven't sold mine - they're throughly trashed.