Do you host webinars or lunch & learns for engineers? Are you in danger of your PDH certificates being rejected by state licensing boards?

• Forty-two states mandate PDH for engineers.
• Each state has its own unique requirements.
• Some states require PDH providers to be board approved.

Many engineers (including some of your event attendees) are licensed in multiple states. So, you need to know all the boards’ requirements to be certain that your certificates will be accepted.

Keep reading to learn more about how to award PDH credits to engineers…

What is a PDH?

PDH is an acronym for “professional development hour.” It is the term that most state engineering licensing boards use for continuing education, although a few states use CPD (Continuing Professional Development) credits or CPC (Continuing Professional Competency).

One PDH is nominally equivalent to one hour of continuing education. Most states require 50 minutes of contact time to earn 1 PDH, although a few states require 60 minutes.Note that a PDH is not the same as a CEU (continuing education unit), which is the term used by many universities and colleges. One CEU is equal to 10 contact hours.

1 PDH = 0.1 CEU

License Renewal Cycles

Earning PDH for license renewal is a mandatory requirement for professional engineers in 42 states, as well as the District of Columbia.

Most states have either a one-year or two-year renewal cycle with a requirement of 15 PDH (annually) or 30 PDH (biennially), with a few exceptions:

• New York engineers renew every 3 years and must earn 36 PDH.
• Engineers in Florida, New Jersey, Minnesota, Tennessee, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware renew biennially and have PDH requirements ranging from 16 PDH to 24 PDH.
• The states with no PDH requirements for engineers are Washington, California, Colorado, Arizona, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Acceptable Methods for Earning PDH

The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) publishes model rules for engineering continuing education. Although these model rules form the basis for the state engineering boards’ requirements, there is quite a bit of variation between the states. In general, engineers can earn PDH credits using one of the following methods:

• Completion of classroom training, webinars, presentations, and seminars
• Completion of online courses (with a test at the end of the course)
• The teaching of courses, seminars, and webinars
• Publishing papers, books, and technical articles
• Receiving a patent
• Active participation in a technical society or association

Board Approval

Most states don’t have a formal approval process for PDH providers. Instead, they leave it up to the engineer to decide whether an activity meets the Board’s requirements. For states that do have a formal approval process, you need to apply and get approved as a continuing education provider by the state’s engineering licensing board.

A lot of professional engineers are licensed in multiple states. Thus, if you want to issue PDH credit to engineers, you need to understand the rules in every state.

Let’s say you hold a lunch & learn at an engineering firm in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. You can expect that most of the engineers in attendance will be licensed in the state of Pennsylvania, which does not formally approve PDH providers. However, there’s a good chance that some of those engineers will also hold a license in New York, which does require engineers to earn PDH credit from an approved provider. Additionally, both New York and Pennsylvania restrict various topics and those restrictions are different for each state.

Approved Topics

All the state boards place restrictions on the topics that are acceptable for PDH credit. In general, engineering topics and professional ethics topics are accepted by all state boards. In fact, some states require engineers to earn at least 1 PDH of professional ethics credit in each renewal cycle.

The rules vary widely between states when you get outside of engineering topics. Some states restrict business skills, personal development, and office management topics.

A webinar titled “How to Improve Your Negotiating Skills” may be acceptable in one state, but not acceptable in an adjacent state. Some topic areas are accepted, but with nuances. For example, New York accepts project management courses and webinars, but not if the focus is related to improving or maximizing profitability.

Approved Formats

Live in-person presentations are accepted for PDH credit by all state engineering licensing boards, provided that the presentation covers an approved topic.

Live webinars are also accepted for PDH credit in all states. However, there are caveats in some states, such as the requirement for a quiz or survey at the end, or the ability for immediate interaction between attendees and the instructor.

Online courses are approved for PDH credit in most states provided there is an acceptable method to assess whether the course learning objectives were met, such as a quiz at the end of the course.

But some of the states that accept online courses put limitations on the number of hours that can be earned using this format. Wisconsin, for example, requires that a minimum of 13 PDH be earned in activities that permit live interaction between the engineer and instructor—thus limiting self-study online courses to 17 PDH of the 30 PDH required biennially. One state, Ohio, requires online courses to be delivered on a platform that has “timed and monitored” functionality, which prevents the engineer from completing the course in a shorter amount of time than the PDH credits that are awarded.

It should be noted that determining acceptable topics and formats is not as straight-forward as simply reading the boards’ laws and rules. The requirements are not always clearly spelled out. Sometimes, a phone call to the board is needed for clarification.

Marketing and Sales Presentations

PDH activities must be educational. Sales pitches, equipment demonstrations, and trade show displays are not acceptable for PDH credit. If your company manufactures pumps, it would be appropriate to give a presentation, for example, that educates engineers on how to size a pump. It’s not appropriate to present the features and benefits of the various pumps in your product line. Nor is it acceptable to do a feature-by-feature comparison of your pumps vs the competition.

Any references to your company or specific model numbers in your course or presentation should be avoided. That doesn’t mean that you are prohibited from mentioning your company’s name at all. When giving a presentation, it is customary for the speaker to begin with a short introduction about himself, which will invariably make references to his current employer.

If you wish to tell the audience about your company and its capabilities, that’s OK. But make it short. And do it at the end of the presentation after you have met the minimum time requirements for the PDH credit that will be awarded.

Don’t mix sales with educational content.

Certificates

To award PDH credit to an engineer, you need to issue a certificate of completion. The minimum information you should include on a certificate of completion is:

• The name of the organization issuing the certificate
• The topic and format of the PDH activity (online course, webinar, etc.)
• The name of the attendee and the instructor
• The number of PDH credits awarded
• The date and time of the event

Additionally, some states that have an approval process for providers require the state-assigned provider number to be listed on the certificate.

Recordkeeping

The boards conduct random audits of licensees for verification purposes. The requirement to maintain adequate records of PDH completion falls on the engineer. However, some state boards also require continuing education providers to maintain records of certificates. The required amount of time varies by state, but it can be as long as 6 years.

The Bottom Line

It’s ultimately the engineer’s responsibility to select educational activities that are acceptable for PDH credit in the state(s) where he is licensed. Nonetheless, it will reflect poorly on your company if the PDH credit that you award to an engineer gets rejected by his state licensing board. Thus, it is in your best interest to educate yourself on the requirements for awarding PDH credits to engineers.

If you want to chat with an expert to learn more about the states’ rules for awarding PDH credits to engineers, feel free to book a free consultation.

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