Civil Engineering PE Exam Overview

The Civil Engineering Principles and Practises of Engineering Exam is an eight-hour exam with a four-hour breadth section and a four-hour depth section.

The breadth exam is the four-hour morning section that includes questions from Construction, Geotechnical, Structural, Transportation, and Water Resources & Environmental. These questions are generally easier than the afternoon depth portion questions and more broad in nature. You may do a simple beam analysis question but then have to do a groundwater flow question. You main concern here will be units. You will be covering such a braod spectrum it is easy to get ahead of yourself...or behind.

The depth section of the exam is four hours in the afternoon. Here you must choose from one of the five breadth sections from the morning section. The sections are Construction, Geotechnical, Structural, Transportation, and Water Resources & Environmental . All questions will be based on your choice of depth and are tougher and more indepth.