Guidance on Dealing with Codes for Civil-Structural Depth

[itinerant]

Hello,

I had opted for the Civil - Structural depth discipline in the April-14 PE exam and I didn't make it. As it happens I was a massive flop in the depth portion of the test. And in retrospect when I look at the attempt, one of my main weakness was the questions that dealt with the codes. Now the structural discipline comes with its unfairly large share of codes, and I was wondering how did the guys who passed the test with the same depth deal with those questions.

I would appreciate the feedback about these codes, since I know for sure that not everybody who passed read all the codes cover to cover with notes made out. I had read those codes, but I guess it wasn't enough. So I would really welcome suggestions and approaches to anyone who can let me know how they had studied with the various questions related to the codes ACI, ASCE, IBC, AASHTO, PCI and god knows there are some more.

 

[Porter_]

Interested in this as well.

 

[phecke]

I took the SE for the first time this past April, and despite still not knowing if I've passed and not knowing until at least next week, I'll tell you what I think you should do for your exam.

I've worked in solely structural my entire career of approximately six years, and in that time, I have become very familiar with the codes of all types due to dealing with them on a regular basis. I literally have designed wood, steel, concrete, masonry, precast, post-tensioned, foundations, and I've dealt with the IBC, IRC, and and the ASCE7 of all years. I'm not saying that you need to do this, but you do need to be familiar with the codes and how they are layed out.

Going into my exams, I had all of my codes tabbed, but I didn't really need to. I knew that Chapter 11 of the ACI deals with shear design, and that Chapter E of the AISC deals with compression. Did I know where every little bit of info in those chapters was? Definitely not, but I could navigate through the codes and find my answers quickly. I would say that you should be able to do the same.

 

[Andy Lin]

...one of my main weakness was the questions that dealt with the codes. Now the structural discipline comes with its unfairly large share of codes, and I was wondering how did the guys who passed the test with the same depth deal with those questions.

OP, what's your background (in terms of what you studied in school and your current job)? Just so that we can kind of estimate what your "weakest weakness" is and maybe start tackling those.

Is it possible to be a little more specific on which part of the exam spec that you find challenging? (i.e. design criteria based on the IBC...etc.)

I pass the PE about 4 years ago and here are my suggestions for studying for the structural portion (based on how I studied):

• Know and understand at least 80% of the structural stuff in Lindburg's Civil Engineering Reference Manual.
  
• On a side note, tab the Reference Manual's index with alphabets so that you can find stuff a little faster during the exam (saving a few minutes here and there will add up).
  
• Do the problems in Six-Minute Solutions for Civil PE Exam Structural at least twice or more until you are pretty confident that you know how to solve 80% of them fairly quickly.
  
• Periodically, go through the exam specs (link here) and see what you still don't know and try to find the answers. If applicable, write down the corresponding references or page for each topic so you know how to come back to it fast.
  

Is this helpful...?

 

[itinerant]

Thank You SEHQ,

I have a structural background and I work in designing Transmission Line Steel Monopoles, H-Frames and other T-line structures and all of them are steel. The codes we use on a daily basis are ASCE 48-11 and ASCE-113 and a couple of other codes but nothing which would be used for PE exam except the AISC 13 or 14 th edition.

And I really appreciate your input in this matter. I will try to adapt your approach based on how it all works out. But yeah based on my result the Afternoon structural session definitely needs a lot of improvement.

 

[Lomarandil]

I also came into the test with a large chunk of my experience being in T-lines and Substations. While I liked ASCE 48 and the NESC, not having the familiarity with more "typical" design codes will be a handicap, honestly.

I imagine most of your calcs are run through PLS-CADD (or something similar), not by hand, correct?

Personally, I now use AISC, NDS and to a lesser degree ACI pretty regularly. So I either had a good idea of the answer or where to find it for those codes. If you don't have that luxury, SEHQ's last tip is the best substitute.

Also, some codes (PCI/AASHTO/IBC in my opinion) have either few enough questions or general enough questions that you don't need to be an expert in those. Even if you don't know the PCI provisions, you can probably get pretty close running through the calcs using ACI, then adjusting here or there to extrapolate. AASHTO only had a handful of questions in my exam (also, it's huge), so I left those codes at home, took a sketch of an HS-20 truck load in to the test, made some reasonable assumptions, and felt pretty good in the end.

 

[itinerant]

Yes, the work I do is mostly on PLS-Pole and not even PLS-CADD so the possibility of having a hand calculation arises once in a blue moon. I am not so sure given this background should I go with Structures at all in the first place. Since I have screwed it up once.

 

[Lomarandil]

Hmm... depending on how much you get into project management (or studied it in school), the construction depth may also be a good option to consider. One of my colleagues who had a similar background to yours took that in lieu of the structural depth. He passed.

 

[ptatohed]

Hello,

I had opted for the Civil - Structural depth discipline in the April-14 PE exam and I didn't make it. As it happens I was a massive flop in the depth portion of the test. And in retrospect when I look at the attempt, one of my main weakness was the questions that dealt with the codes. Now the structural discipline comes with its unfairly large share of codes, and I was wondering how did the guys who passed the test with the same depth deal with those questions.

I would appreciate the feedback about these codes, since I know for sure that not everybody who passed read all the codes cover to cover with notes made out. I had read those codes, but I guess it wasn't enough. So I would really welcome suggestions and approaches to anyone who can let me know how they had studied with the various questions related to the codes ACI, ASCE, IBC, AASHTO, PCI and god knows there are some more.

My guidance to dealing with all the Structural Code stuff.................. was to take Transportation.

 

[Lungshen]

Don't know if this will help you.

But I remember when I took Structural 1 back in 2004, I read all the codes from cover to cover. I am not kidding - there are literally stack of books on my floor.

Civil - Structural doesn't go in-depth like Structural I/II or the new 16 hr SE does. So hit the main important chapter and focus on those will help you use your time wisely.

ACI - only know the equations that are related to your area of study. tension, compression, flexural and shear. stuff like two way slab and moment frames don't. Concrete is a big topic but you don't need to know all.

ASCE - I will say this is the most important book you need to be familiar with. wind, snow, ice, load combination, seismic ( I don't think they test your seismic knowledge on Civil-structural) so you can skip seismic and that was about the half of the book.

IBC - important code to get familiar besides ASCE, hit chapter 16 hard, Other chapters related to concrete, wood etc just skim thorugh.

AASHTO - can't help you. I hate this book and have no clue how to tackle it since I am building structural background. I guess know some basica load combination and stuff.

PCI - never read this book cover to cover but know some of design table how how to size some hollow core slab I guess. You don't need to focus on this book too much.

ACI 530 - the masonry code - not that bad to read - only chapter 1 is important. rest of the chapters are "unlikely" to be on the exam.

NDS - timber code - know the manual and supplement well. Hit the major design such as flexural, compression, tension, bi-flexural etc.

 

[Porter_]

^ that kind of input is extremely helpful Lungshen, thank you. anyone else have comments/suggestions on how to tackle the codes?

 

[itinerant]

Thank You Lungshen. I really appreciate the input. I would really like to keep everybodys views in mind when I get a question from the code.

 

[itinerant]

This is a reply from Jake47 on the other thread in the general civil engineering section.

I passed the Civil-Structural depth exam in April so this information should be relevant.

I am not the type of person who can sit down, read 10,000+ pages of codes, understand every word in them, and remember exactly what was written. So I took the approach of knowing how to locate the information in a timely manner. For instance, with the IBC and AASHTO I moved the indexes of each code to the front of the binder so it took less time to look up the answers. Then I tabbed what I thought were the most important sections and made simple notes/highlights in the indexes to cross reference the particular page within the section. All told, this maybe took 3 hours (while watching a little NCAA tournament action) to make locating the important information much quicker. There was a question from one of these respective codes on the exam in which I looked in the index, saw the highlighted item, jumped to the page, and answered the question in about 45 seconds. Obviously this was a lucky situation, but I felt like I had several similar situations like this.

The other codes, ACI, AISC, NDS, MSJC I use more frequently and just have a good general idea where things are located. If you don't work regularly with these, it may be a little more difficult, but reading through the section headings/table of contents will give you a general idea where to look.

One piece of advice that I can give (and maybe you already know this) is to go through the test once rather quickly. I was able to knock about 22 questions out in the first hour, 9 in the second and that left me with 2 hours to solve 9 problems and check all my work.

If you have any more questions feel free to ask, or PM me and I can help out with anything else!

 

[UncivilWolf]

I haven't used the codes in my job, so I had to relearn them quickly, too. I found doing several Structures-depth tests helped me learn my way around the code. Definitely skim through the codes to familiarize yourself with where things are. I still had to use the index, and in a few cases went on a wild goose chase and wasted time, so tabbing is definitely a good idea. I focused on the ACI, AISC and ASCE codes the most, as they had the most emphasis on the sample tests. One thing for the AISC questions is to know what design tables are in there-- they let you solve a problem very quickly, without going through a rigorous calculation. That definitely saved time!

 

[benjaminb]

I always take the time to review the index or table of contents for each topic to make sure there isn't somewhere else in the code that has applicable information. I think this is important for the exam because they may ask you something that seems like a simple search through IBC, AISC, or ASCE-7 and pulling a number off a table, but there very well may be another little blurb of code in a different section that slightly modifies the answer. I've found that the NCEES questions often have one or two adjectives that seem unnecessary at first, but if read carefully may drive you to use a different factor, or load combination, or importance, or criteria, etc. Basically this tests you're ability to understand what the factors and tables mean, not just your ability to find information quickly.

 

[itinerant]

Thank you everyone here who answered me. Your input went a long way in helping me pass the PE exam.

 

[civilahmad]

Hi all,

is there any update feedback from the recent [SIZE=12pt]examinees on how to deal with these codes and Standards especially AASHTO and PCI and OSHA...[/SIZE]

 

[tj_PE]

I don't think I opened PCI so I wouldn't get too stressed about that. OSHA I think is available for download somewhere? I had only the relevant chapters ready and tabbed. It's also such a small amount of information, it wouldn't hurt to skim through it for a general idea of what it is discussing. AASHTO is likely you will not need past chapter 4. I would get familiar with the load combinations and impact loading, and truck designations. But I had experience in bridge design and access to the code from that. 

 

[civilahmad]

Thank you thejulie for your feedback, it gives me an idea Of these standards.