# Reference Requirements



## lshayya (Nov 18, 2012)

Hello,

I live in California, have a B.S. in E.E from an ABET school and I have been working as an Electrical Construction Project Manager for 6 years. The issue is that my company does not have a PE working for them. The only experience with a PE has been with those of the design team of other companies that I coordinate with. My job involves going through the plans and specs and finding mistakes that the design team has made and correcting them through the RFI process. My job requires that I verify that the PE from the design team has no mistakes in his design. How can I take the exam if I have not had a PE as a supervisor for 2 years? Please help me.


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## lshayya (Nov 18, 2012)

Just to clarify, I have many PE's that are willing to act as references for me. However, none of them have been my direct supervisor.


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## da_souljah (Nov 19, 2012)

Hey Ishayya,

technically you don't have to be under the supervision of a PE. Generally you just need a few PEs to review your work, and verify that you are performing real engineering tasks when you undertake a project. That's it!  . Good luck!


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## elminses (Dec 3, 2012)

Ishayya,

Contact your state board. Each one is different for requirements! some will require you to have 4 years supervision, others will accept what Da_souljah said above. But read the sentence to the T, state boards are like lawyers, each item needs to be carried out exactly or they may not approve the application the first time through. This happened to me since I sent my letters in and they weren't sealed. I opened each one, which was still signed and stamped by each PE. But they disqualified them as not being sign and sealed "from my view" was what I was told but it didn't say on the application. Had to resubmit and almost missed the deadline.


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## DBL (Dec 18, 2012)

I see the original post is a month old now, but in case Ishayya or someone in a similar situation returns to this thread, I was in a very similar situation when applying for the PE exam 6 months ago, in terms of not working under a PE, and I can confirm that my state board (VA) had no issues with approving my application. In fact, they required that my 3 PE references be from individuals _other_ than my supervisor, so I went outside my company for those. My supervisor for each position that I submitted as qualifying experience also had to complete forms confirming that my description of duties performed, dates of service, etc. were accurate, but they did not have to be PEs. In fact, one was not an engineer at all and the other only had his P. Eng license from Canada, which as far as I know is not viewed as equivalent to the PE by any US boards.

So as elminses said, read your state's requirements very closely as they do vary from state to state, call the board for clarification if necessary and follow their instructions exactly. Also, just to reiterate elminses story about the sealed references, VA specifically requires that each reference is sealed in its own envelope, signed across the flap by the PE who completed that reference.


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