PE Exam mock tests
Principles and Practice of Engineering
Free practice tests
- PE Civil Transportation practice test 1: 80 original Civil: Transportation questions, one point each, on a single 8-hour clock.
- PE Civil Transportation practice questions 1: Untimed Civil: Transportation questions, three for every topic on the full practice test.
About PE Exam
The Principles and Practice of Engineering exam is a licensing exam for engineers who already have the experience their state board requires, commonly four years after a degree. Each discipline is a separate exam. NCEES gives every exam in English only, at a Pearson test center. The result is pass or fail.
PE Civil has been five separate exams since April 2024, not a morning breadth plus an afternoon depth. The five are Construction, Geotechnical, Structural, Transportation, and Water Resources and Environmental. Each is offered year-round, with 80 questions and a 9-hour appointment: 2 minutes for the nondisclosure agreement, 8 minutes for the tutorial, 8 hours for the exam, and a 50-minute scheduled break. This practice test is Civil: Transportation only.
Other year-round exams with the same 80-question, 9-hour appointment are Chemical; Electrical and Computer: Power; Environmental; and Mechanical in HVAC and Refrigeration, Machine Design and Materials, or Thermal and Fluid Systems. Agricultural and Biological, Architectural, Control Systems, Electrical and Computer: Computer Engineering, Electronics Controls and Communications, Fire Protection, Industrial and Systems, Metallurgical and Materials, Mining and Mineral Processing, Naval Architecture and Marine, Nuclear, and Petroleum are single-day exams of 85 questions with a 9-hour-30-minute appointment (8 hours 30 minutes of exam time). PE Structural is separate from PE Civil: Structural: its vertical and lateral breadths are year-round (55 questions, 5 hours 30 minutes), and each depth is a 60-question, 6-hour exam offered on set dates. Depth examinees choose Buildings or Bridges and must keep that choice for both force directions.
On Civil: Transportation the whole 8 hours is one clock. There are no separately timed knowledge areas. After about half the questions you review and submit that half, and you cannot return to it. The scheduled break is then optional; unused break time does not add to the second half, and a late return shortens the second half. Unscheduled breaks come out of the 8 hours. The exam is closed book. The searchable NCEES PE Civil Reference Handbook and the design standards named in the specification are on screen for the whole exam, one chapter of a standard at a time. A TI-30XS is available on screen, and one approved handheld calculator is allowed.
Most items are single-answer multiple choice. Alternative items (more than one correct option, a numeric entry, a point-and-click on a figure, or a drag-and-drop) are scored right or wrong, with no partial credit. A limited number of pretest items are mixed in and do not count; they are not marked as such. There is no deduction for a wrong answer. Both SI and U.S. customary units appear.
The ten knowledge areas, with the specification's question ranges, are project management (6–9), traffic engineering (10–15), roadside and cross-section design (7–11), horizontal design (8–12), vertical design (8–12), intersection geometry (7–11), traffic signals (5–8), traffic control design (5–8), geotechnical and pavement (6–9), and drainage (8–12). A form uses 80 questions inside those ranges.
PE Exam PE Civil: Transportation exam pattern
9-hour appointment: 8 hours of exam time, plus a 2-minute nondisclosure agreement, an 8-minute tutorial, and a 50-minute scheduled break
- Civil: Transportation: 8 hours, 80 questions