SE Bridge Lateral PM Studying

Hi everyone,

Now that people are getting their scores back/preparing to study for the October test I wanted to discuss with you all what are the best ways to study for the PM Lateral bridge section and what realistically they would ask on the exam. I haven't done a whole lot of seismic design for bridges so I am learning some of the formulas and the concepts for the first time.

So far I've been reading AASHTO Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6, the NCEES practice test, and the Illinois seismic design guide. I am also going to take the EET course for lateral.

I started looking at the CA seismic design guide but it looked a little too complicated for the SE and was very state specific so I put it back down.

What examples or literature did you all use to study for the pm lateral bridge Qs that you found were helpful and not too intense for the SE? 
Thanks.

If you have any questions about the Vertical exam let me know, I took and passed it last year so I can offer you studying advice.

I just got my passing score on the Bridge Lateral portion of the SE exam. I will say that all I used for studying for the depth portion of the exam was the Structural Engineer's Reference Manual (which didn't have much as far as studying material for this portion), the NCEES Practice Exam, and the AASHTO Code itself. I studied the seismic sections of Chapter 3 and 4 extensively, and was thorough in looking for seismic provisions within Chapter 5 and 6. That's it. I didn't use any other study materials. Thankfully the SE hasn't started using the AASHTO Seismic Spec yet otherwise it would have been much more complicated. 

I found the three practice problems within the NCEES practice exam for the depth portion of the lateral bridge exam were generally good representations of what was on the exam, though there were some differences and some curve balls. If you understand how to solve those problems well, and you study the AASHTO, I'd like to say you have a good chance of doing well on the Depth portion of the exam.

As for the AM portion, I studied primarily from the Structural Engineer's Reference Manual and found it to be a good resource. I spent a lot of time reading through the chapters of the ASCE 7-10 as well. I also studied the IBC, but to a much lesser extent. As long as you have your references available and you are able to do all of the problems in the NCEES practice exam (in a test environment, timed) without much delay, you should be good. I will say the first time I took the practice exam I didn't know how to do a lot of the problems. So I went through it question by question made sure I understood the problems. I did that twice. Then I did it in a timed setting and was able to get about 90% correct (including the afternoon portion). 

I felt pretty good after the exam, but as most will attest to, I started questioning myself in the long wait time for the results. But I passed. Good luck to you!

I found EET's review course for Lateral Bridges to be extremely helpful (same goes for Vertical). They had a lot of very comprehensive example problems that cover most all of your potential topics, and they turn into pretty handy examples to have during the test. The exam is always going to throw you some type of curve ball of something that just didn't come up in your studying, but I think that's just the nature of that test. If you're familiar enough with the material and code, it shouldn't be something that ruins your day. I studied the NCEES practice problems as well, but personally I found those to be a lot easier than the exam questions I actually ended up getting. Briefly flipped through the SERM, but didn't really find much of a use for it.

I spent about 3 months studying for each exam, with the last month devoted to the afternoon part of the exam, and I think most of that time was spent going through the EET practice problems and reading/tabbing/highlighting the Spec. I don't think you need to worry much about Chapter 6, but don't forget about Ch. 10 & 11 for foundations and footings!