What to expect on Construction breadth?

[Alpha]

I have been looking at the CERM construction chapters but have no idea what to study for the Construction breadth (morning) section.

Should I study for the Project Management- Critical Path, CPM scheduling examples?

Are there numerical examples or questions on theory? Which chapters exactly should I read?

Any help is greatly appreciated?

 

[pinkpig]

I have been looking at the CERM construction chapters but have no idea what to study for the Construction breadth (morning) section.Should I study for the Project Management- Critical Path, CPM scheduling examples?

Are there numerical examples or questions on theory? Which chapters exactly should I read?

Any help is greatly appreciated?

NCEES has a list about what is covered in each section.

 

[dastuff]

Expect a little of everything. Most likely there will be some numerical questions (but they're more like estimation calculations), a critical path method, and some theory questions.

Honestly aside from the CPM question the CERM didn't help very much with my studying. It was more what i remembered from being in the field and school that helped me. The estimation was pretty straightforward though (e.g. if a truck is able to move x amount of dirt in cubic yards per hour and there are x,xxx,xxx cubic feet of dirt how many hours will it take to move all the dirt using 6 trucks)

This probably wasn't the answer you were looking for but hopefully it helps.

 

[Dexman1349]

Two things helped me with the construction portion of the exam:

1) the CERM index. Trust me, most of the stuff is in there if you know where to look.

2) personal experience.

Unfortunately alot of the stuff for the "construction" section of the 11th edition CERM is still in it's original locations (within the soils, transportation, structural, etc sections). This is because if the construction portion of the subject was moved, it would then lose alot of it's context and would then force you to flip between multiple chapters. I would at least recommend taking the NCEES outline and looking up the discipline each one pertains to. Some of the other items are still in the same places as before just because... well, I don't know. (Survey & earthwork were shown in the Transportation section in the 10th edition just because there wasn't really any other place to put it for example). Based on this, I would highly recommend at least skimming through the CERM and familiarizing yourself with each of the sub-chapters and how they might influence a construction based question.

I personally used the 10th edition to pass the Construction DEPTH exam without much more than what I talked about above. you would be surprised how much construction information is still buried within some of the chapters and sub-chapters and wasn't moved to the "construction" section of the 11th edition.

 

[Alpha]

Two things helped me with the construction portion of the exam:
1) the CERM index. Trust me, most of the stuff is in there if you know where to look.

2) personal experience.

Unfortunately alot of the stuff for the "construction" section of the 11th edition CERM is still in it's original locations (within the soils, transportation, structural, etc sections). This is because if the construction portion of the subject was moved, it would then lose alot of it's context and would then force you to flip between multiple chapters. I would at least recommend taking the NCEES outline and looking up the discipline each one pertains to. Some of the other items are still in the same places as before just because... well, I don't know. (Survey & earthwork were shown in the Transportation section in the 10th edition just because there wasn't really any other place to put it for example). Based on this, I would highly recommend at least skimming through the CERM and familiarizing yourself with each of the sub-chapters and how they might influence a construction based question.

I personally used the 10th edition to pass the Construction DEPTH exam without much more than what I talked about above. you would be surprised how much construction information is still buried within some of the chapters and sub-chapters and wasn't moved to the "construction" section of the 11th edition.

Thats exactly what I am having a hard time with - the fact that everything from cnostruction seems all over the place in CERM11. And here I paid for a brand new copy rejecting the 10th edition because I thought that CERM11 had one whole section dedicated to Construction. But I find that there is hardly much under this section. And the NCEES outline is not much help e.g. "Temporary Structures: construction loads" - what do they exactly mean by that? Its way too generic.

If any of you can add some more pointers, it would help me a lot.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Dexman1349]

Biggest pointer if you are not really familiar with construction items: get used to using the index. In fact, print and bind a seperate CERM index (it was a HUGE help for me). Most of the quesitons you will face contain the key words necessary to just look it up.

Trust me, common sense and the CERM is more than enough to get you through the construction morning portion (assuming you have a good understanding of the CERM too). If you understand the format & layout and can easily extract info from the example problems, you *should* be ok.