Lessons · Electrical · three licences, not one
Three licences, not one, and each is a separate grant
The usual ladder is apprentice, then journeyman, then master. Each step is its own licence with its own requirement: hours of supervised work for the journeyman, further hours working as a journeyman for the master, and an examination at each of the licensed steps.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
In beta. This lesson was written for Hone and has not yet been checked by a licensed electrician. Practice material, not professional advice. What that means.
What it is for
People plan for one event and there are two, years apart, which is why the master step surprises electricians who have been working licensed for a long time and assumed they had finished. The two examinations are also not the same kind of paper: the master one leans towards code interpretation, load calculation, and the business and law of contracting, because a master is the person who pulls permits and carries responsibility for other people's work. Knowing that early changes what a journeyman pays attention to on site.
How to think about it
Find out what each step requires where you are before you begin the first one, so the second is a plan rather than a discovery. Ask what hours the journeyman needs, what further hours the master needs on top, and what each examination is weighted towards. Requirements here are set by whoever licenses you and they change, so any figure you plan around has to come from that authority's own page rather than from here or from somebody who qualified in a different place or a different year.
Worked example
ApprenticeEmployed and supervised, accumulating the hours.
JourneymanA licence in its own right, after the hours and an examination.
MasterA further licence, after further hours as a journeyman and a harder examination.
The master paper is a different animalWeighted towards code interpretation, load calculation, and business and law.
Because a master carries responsibility for othersPulling permits and standing behind work that other people did.
Your turn
Name the step between apprentice and master.
Apprentice, then , then master
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Treating the journeyman licence as the finish line and finding out years later that the step you actually wanted needs hours you were not recording as a journeyman. Requirements here are set by whoever licenses you and they change, so any figure you plan around has to come from that authority's own page rather than from here or from somebody who qualified in a different place or a different year.
Now you try
Next in Electrical
- Who licenses you, and the places where the answer is not the statewho licenses you, and the states where it is not the state
- The code is national in name and local in forcethe code your jurisdiction actually adopted
- The examination, and what it is really testingthe examination, and what it is really testing