New Member Doing Fiber OSP Design

[MasonFiber]

Good morning all,

I joined this forum to learn from the community and share my experience with PE licensure. Not licensed yet, but waiting for approval from Tennessee.

I studied mechanical engineering in college and wound up doing fiber outside plant design for my job. There isn't a PE exam covering fiber outside plant design, so I decided to take the electrical power exam because at my job we use the utility clearances in the NESC and all our clients are power companies, even though I didn't study electrical engineering in college and haven't worked in power distribution. I failed the exam twice, and to prepare for the third attempt I took the online course at electricalpereview.com. I passed on the third attempt.

 

[MasonFiber]

Wanted to update since I mentioned it. I found out yesterday I got my Tennessee license.

 

[TXEngineering]

Congrats! Found this through a google search. Looks like I'm going to stick around.

I'm in a very similar situation as you. ME grad, but have been working in Telecom for a Utility straight out of school (roughly 6 years now). During my undergrad, I did a CO-OP for 4 years in electrical distribution engineering. Now I do a mix of OSP Fiber design, some MW design, DWDM networking, IP/MPLS, TDM, etc. I don't use much of anything from my degree, except basic power/circuit stuff, some controls concepts, and maybe some knowledge of loads/stresses and what not on a tower or structure. I've been going back and forth on what license to pursue. I'm heavily leaning towards the Power side, but most everyone I work with went with ECC naturally. I'm the only ME in the group. Did you do the Mechanical FE or Electrical FE?

 

[MasonFiber]

I took the Mechanical FE. I'd been out of school ten years when I took the FE, but I still had all my textbooks, so I figured that was my best bet.