Certified Plant Engineer FAQs

If you’re serious about not just your job, but your career, one of the best ways to distinguish yourself is by earning the well-known professional designation offered by the Association for Facilities Engineering. Our program for becoming a Certified Plant Engineer (CPE) is highly respected because it is very thorough and demanding. Once you’ve earned your CPE designation you have joined an elite corps of personnel; you are part of a group of facilities professionals who have proven their knowledge and competence. Here’s another good reason: Facilities Engineering Journal reported that plant engineers who achieve the CPE designation earn $2,500 to $3,500 more than their non-certified colleagues. Many people are unfamiliar with what the program involves. Please check out  the following facts:

CPE Now Offered in Four Modules

Applicants for AFE’s distinguished, 24-year-old Certified Plant Engineer program now can elect to pursue the CPE credential the traditional way — learning and being graded upon the entire, 10-discipline curriculum at once — or in four stages, with groups of topics at a time. The traditional exam has 100 multiple-choice questions that cover electrical, civil, mechanical, environmental, maintenance, economics, management, HVAC, OSHA, controls and instrumentation and energy topics. Applicants have up to eight hours to complete the exam; a score of 67 is required to pass. A newly credentialed CPE earns a certificate, a special identification card and a lapel pin. The new option presents the CPE program in four, equally weighted modules that can be tackled separately:

1. civil engineering, economics and management
2. environmental engineering, safety and maintenance
3. mechanical engineering and HVAC matters
4. electrical engineering (which includes the topics controls / instrumentation and energy)

Applicants who choose the new method earn the title, CPE-in-Training (CPE-IT) as they successfully complete each step. They have up to five years to complete all of the modules, then they are fully credentialed CPEs, just like their colleagues who studied and were tested on all topics at once, Jennifer Gonzalez said. "The module format was created to make CPE training more accessible to people," Gonzalez said. "Our certification board identified the need for people to concentrate on certain areas of the curriculum more than others. With this innovation, some people can choose to pace themselves more conveniently, and stagger their investment in the program." No content of the curriculum will be compromised; the knowledge required to pass in either the traditional or modules format will be the same, Gonzalez said. The number of questions in each of the modules’ tests may differ from one another, but not from the traditional test, she said. Eligibility requirements to participate in the program are unchanged, too. Anyone can participate in CPE training if they:

• Are a degreed engineer (meaning you have a four-year bachelor degree) with six years of experience in plant/facilities engineering, or four years of management-level experience in plant/facilities engineering; or
• Don’t have a degree but do have eight years of experience in plant/facilities engineering or six years of management-level experience in it. (Note: If you are a licensed Professional Engineer you are exempt from the exam but still must submit documentation to AFE to be awarded the CPE designation.)

As in the past, applicants can attend a CPE review course and be tested under proctored conditions at their workplaces or at one of AFE’s events.

To maintain the credential, a CPE must earn at least eight re-certification credits every five years. Five of those credits come simply from being continuously employed in the facilities engineering field.

Since 1976, AFE has awarded the CPE credential to over 4,500 people. Applications, review materials, and order forms for the popular new handbook, "Facilities Operations & Engineering Reference" can be obtained by calling (513) 489-2473 or contacting Gonzalez at . More information can be obtained from our web page, www.afe.org, also.

"Clearly, our CPE program is the standard-bearer for success in the facilities engineering field," Certification Board Chairman Emeritus Richard M. Sovic, PE, CPE, REM, said. "We hope that in the long run, more and more busy professionals will be able to participate in it now that the four-part modules system has been established." The modules system does not apply to AFE’s newer credential program, Certified Plant Maintenance Manager.

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