News Detail

CEUs 4 U

1/1/2006

At the ACI Board meeting in Kansas City, MO, we took a great step forward for the ACI members and this will be of special interest to the licensed engineers. The Board passed a proposal to offer Continuing Education Units (CEUs) through the ACI website. If you practice in a jurisdiction that requires continuing education, you know how important this is. If you are licensed in a state that does not presently require it, they probably will very soon.

An increasing number of states are requiring continuing education. A recent article in Structure magazine lists 28 states that have some type of requirement. Typically, this continuing education requirement is accomplished through CEUs that convert to Professional Development Hours (PDHs). Each 0.1 CEU represents 1.0 PDH. Most states require 15 PDHs per year or 30 over 2 years. I am personally licensed in more than 30 jurisdictions and, at this time, 16 of them require continuing education. The good news is that essentially all of the program requirements for the various states are basically the same.

Existing programs have engineers reading hardcopy magazine articles or technical information online followed by a structured exam. Typically, each of these activities earns one or two PDHs. The charges by most for-profit providers are typically $25 to $35 per PDH.

ACI's program will be FREE to ACI members, but will include a charge to nonmembers. For instance, if you obtained the maximum 8 PDHs in a given year through ACI's program, you could save around $200-which is about equal to your annual ACI dues. Now that's a great membership benefit that even I can understand. What a bargain!

The program will give engineers a method of earning CEUs online through the ACI website to help meet the continuing education requirements for renewing their licenses. The types of documents offered for review will consist of selected FREE documents available through the ACI website, and other documents that may need to be purchased by the users of this service. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following types of documents:

• Selected articles from Concrete International magazine;
• Educational documents, such as the Repair Application Procedures (RAP) documents and other E-committee documents;
• Specific chapters from selected construction-oriented technical documents of interest to engineers, such as Chapter 3-Design considerations, from "Guide for Concrete Floor and Slab Construction (ACI 302.1R-04)";
• Specific chapters from selected technical committee documents, such as Chapter 3-Control of cracking due to drying shrinkage, from "Control of Cracking in Concrete Structures (ACI 224R-01)"; and
• Documents available through the Portland Cement Association or elsewhere.

Exam questions covering the content of the documents will be developed by either the committee responsible for an individual document, the ACI engineering/CI editorial staff, or individual CI article authors. The Educational Activities Committee or representatives from E-committees will be responsible for reviewing and approving the question pool for each document selected for this program. Exams will only be available online through the ACI website. Successful completion of the exam will require at least a 70% passing score. Individuals may retake the exam as often as necessary until this minimum passing score is achieved.

The exam service will be available FREE-OF-CHARGE to ACI members. However, to obtain this service for no charge, ACI members will be required to log in to the ACI website.

Participants will be awarded a certificate of completion indicating the topic that was covered, the fact that the exam was passed, and the amount of CEUs earned.

ACI will see to the accreditation of the program in the various states so that the credits will be recognized when engineers submit their continuing education activities for credit. This is not required in all states, but ACI will obtain the accreditation where required as soon as reasonably possible.

ACI intends to roll out this program in early 2006. I am personally looking forward to being able to use this FREE service from my home, my office, or wherever in the world I may be.

By the way, if you missed the convention in Kansas City, you missed a good one. The weather was fantastic and the meeting facilities were great. We are all looking forward to another super convention this spring in Charlotte.

James R. Cagley, President
American Concrete Institute
jim@cagley.com

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