Experience Record for 20 years with Fed Gov

[BamaBino]

Hi,

I graduated with BS degree in Electrical Engineering in 1988. I worked for a DOD contractor for 2 years then another contractor for 6 months, both as a junior engineer. Then I went to work for the Federal Government (NASA) for the last 20 years. At NASA, I worked in 6 different areas and haven’t been promoted to management.

I have 3 P.E.s (all at NASA and 2 retied 10 years ago) who have said that I can use them as references for applying to take the P.E. exam; none of them were my supervisor. My current supervisor is not a P.E. but he is willing to fill-out the paperwork to be an Endorser. I’m in Alabama.

I am asking your advise on how I should write my Experience Record for 20 years with Fed Gov.

The Alabama form for listing entering my experience is only a little over one-page (of course they say that additional sheets may be attached). The following is the instructions on the form: “For each engagement, list experience in the following format: (1) Title of Position (2) Name of Firm and City and State where employed (3) Description of experience (one line is not sufficient) detailing, in first person, the work you personally performed in design, study, review, testing or other tasks which required your engineering skills. This work should be progressive. Do not list projects.”

Should I list my 20 years with the government as one engagement from 1990 thru 2010 or break it down in 5 or 6 engagements with specific year periods?

Thanks,

Greg

 

[NCcarguy]

I think you would probably be better off to show more detail. I'm guessing that since your experience isn't straight forward, the more you can be specific, and give detail as to what your duties are, the better off you'll be.

 

[MA_PE]

You want to use the expereince section to demonstrate professional devleopment with time. Ideally, you want to show that changed jobs and/or titles over the time with NASA and show that you assumed more professional responsibility with time. Projects wityh larger budgets, overseeing braoder tasks, etc. You really don't have to elaborate too much but include enough detail to convey your accomplshments and the expereince gained from each period.

Hope this helps.

 

[dastuff]

I'd go with the 5 or 6 engagements over time. You will want to go into detail on your experience to make sure it counts. The nice thing about splitting it up is they can void out one or two of your experiences and you'll still have more than enough time to qualify to take the exam.

If you group all of it under one you probably won't have sufficient detail to satisfy their questions.

Are you going to take the EIT or trying to pass out of it through your experience?

 

[BamaBino]

Are you going to take the EIT or trying to pass out of it through your experience?

Thanks for replies.

I passed the EIT 10 years (wanted to a review of college courses 10 years afterward).

And now want to take PE exam as a refresher (and pass it as a goal).

 

[dastuff]

With an EIT with 6 experiences over 20 years time, I don't see an issue with qualifying.

The last thing i'd say is to try and focus on the engineering of the job and not the management. It will be much more important for the board to hear that you designed a rocket engine for the tensile stress which occurs during liftoff vs. you managed a team that...

Also if you don't have enough PE's for experience some state boards setup advisors that will 'review' your previous work and signoff. Obviously this is probably a long and drawn out process and should probably only be used as a last resort.