ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area How to become a journeyman electrician?

The real question is, how well do they verify those hours?

This is the government

If you show up with a stack of pay stubs (or W2s) from XYZ electric I bet that works, in real life I doubt they even look at the pay stubs.

I know when I got my Florida inspector's license they never did anything to verify my experience. My wife is sitting for the GC license this fall, lets see what they do then.
(but then we all know GCs are liars, I read it here, must be true)

I'm sorry, I was operating under the assumption that we were not discussing how to bypass (BS) the intent of the licensing procedure,

I do not know how well they verify the hours, nor do I have any need to know since all of my hours are spent doing legitimate electrical installation work in the company of other qualified mechanics. Not to go off on a rant - but the trades are plagued with this kind of attitude toward licensing thing and it gives us all bad name.

Many of us have explained the right way (union or non-union) to go about putting your time in, gaining both the practical and technical knowledge and experience, documenting your hours and taking your exam.

Renosteinke put it well a few posts ago - there is big difference between being a licensed contractor and a journeyman electrician. If you want to find out how to weasel your way into sitting for a licensing exam - I suggest you start a new thread.

I'm not trying to weasel into the exam. By state law, with a 4-year degree, I'm required to have 1 year of experience to sit for the exam. My question was simple: what constitutes experience?

The simple answer everyone seems to assume- 40hr/week of "hands on"- is not quantified in state law, and doesn't even really automatically give the expertise a journeyman is expected to know. After all, five years of an apprentice pulling romex in new tract homes doesn't teach the wide range of skills that common sense says a journeyman electrician requires. But it's clearly 5 years of relavant experience. As such, I have probably about 3 months worth of hands-on residential experience like this, and 9 years of design and inspection in commercial buildings. (I'm an AHJ for a number of government facilities and know the codes and techniques very well, even though I'm not the one physically lubing up the cables.) I really didn't mean to start a huge debate- the licensing board in my state clearly feels that with a degree, 1 year of experience is required vice 5. I was querying whether my experience is enough to meet the vague "1 year experience" requirement to let me sit for the journeyman exam. And it seems the only way to find out for real is to contact the licensing board and ask them.

You said it yourself in the post above - you have 3-months hands-on experience.

It does not take an engineer to determine that the term practical, as it relates to being a tradesman or journeyman electrician , means hands-on.

I am looking at a copy of the Virginia "Tradesman Experience Form" right now. It reads and I quote, "All practical experience in the trade should be verified by building officials,building inspectors, employers, contractors, engineers, architects or clients attesting to the applicants work in the trade."

You must then fill in the form showing, start and end date of employment, Name and title of person documenting experience, and detailed position description.

Your practical experience, wiring your addition was not performed in conjunction with your employment. Therefore the two are unrelated and mutually exclusive.


Look up practical in the dictionary and there is your answer, It does not take a degree to figure this out.

Although I do have one if that influences your opinion of my responses. Ironically it is in Political Science, so I know my way around state bureaucracy rather well. Specifically Virginia and West Virginia.

The building inspector that inspected my work can attest.

Nowhere is it stated that "practical experience" means "hands-on, and hands-on only", though. If they intended only "hands on", why didn't they come out and say specifically that? The way it's worded, it makes sense that other types of practical experience are acceptable. Building inspections, for example.

You were not employed by the building inspector, nor can he document that you even did the work.

He cannot attest to your work in the trade. Even if that were the case - you yourself stated it was three months.

I say again - look up the definition of practical. Then look up the term electrician or journeyman or both.

Anyways, I am curious to see what the board says. Personally I am amazed that VA even has that stipulation (1 year exp only after a 4 year bachelor in engineering)

I don't find myself agreeing with NJ government often - but in this case I do.

Too bad for you Virginia does not have prevailing wage laws - you'll be giving your work away from what I know of govt pay scales.

Steve Fehr, I know you are probably getting frustrated.

In alot of states you don't even need a license to be a full-blown electrician, just do the home study courses as seen on TV. Those kind of electricians are actually the same guys that build the entire house, from clean&grub site work all the way through to hanging the towel bars.

I say, if having your degree and one year of experience will allow you to sit for the exam, then go out and work for a year, then take the test. Most other states won't allow you that course of action, and most will not reciprocate your license I'm sure, except the right-to-work states.

If you want to get your license to use it to become a contractor, thats kind of a wasted step and time. Here in Oregon contractors are required to have a 'Signing Supervisor' which is an 8-year card, and the test is near impossible to pass due to market saturation. Alot of contractors simply put a signing supervisor on their payroll and pay him $xx to sign the permits, its very commonplace. A few of the guys I work with have their own Supervisor's card and do nothing with it except renew it and in reality they are just glorified journeymen. I'm not in business, I just work in the field, but there is a big division between the office and the field if the company has more than a few employees. My old boss used to come out and wire like greased lightning, then after lunch he headed back to doing paperwork and bids... I guess he was working 80 hours a week and then some, the company only had 8 guys.

Wherever your path leads, just work hard and doors will open. If you go out and work for a contractor for the required time, you will learn alot AND there will be no splitting hairs with the licensing board over your experience.

Are you absolutely positive you need a license to replace a device (broken recpt.) in Virginia, I thought simple maintenance guys could do that...

Well, this is on federal property, so it gets a little fuzzy between federal, state and local laws sometimes, especially with multiple levels of safety requirements thrown in. Then, we get into semantics on what exactly "qualified" means, as the instructions are invariably vague! Conventional Wisdom: license in the state (any state) conveys qualifications. But I've never seen that in writing.

What would the requirement be for maintenance men/handyman type? I was under the impression they still had to be a licensed electrician/plumber/etc to so much as touch it.

the 4yr degree is ONLY in electrical engineering. no other engineering degree will substitute. I called VA and was told this, although it sounded like i was talking to the secretary instead of the person incharge of the dept. (she was shaky in answering a couple of other simple questions relating to the exam.)