Welcome friends to Kestävä, I create weekly videos on:
- Civil PE Exam review example problems and best practices to pass the PE exam - Insights and real world design examples in professional engineering - Design of wood | steel | concrete | and masonry structures - Helping young engineers advance their engineering careers
My name is Rich, and I'm a licensed civil engineer with a B.S and M.S. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I've designed structures for coastal floods, hurricane force winds, active seismic zones, and some of the country’s highest snowfall. I've designed a wide range of building structures using conventional wood, mass timber, steel, concrete, and masonry.
Disclaimer: Richard Racz, P.E. does not hold the title "structural engineer". Any claim of it in the videos or descriptions is unintentional and is superseded by the title "civil engineer" in the states of MA and OR
Really nice, i finished all the 3 parts. This is the code walkthrough I was looking for. Thank you. I'm thinking if there's code walkthrough for wind too.
Thank you for your thoughts and commentary. I'll be going for my first exam this October and what you are saying matches what I've seen on reddit and the Discord channel. I think NCEES has some explaining to do with pass rates that low (the bar exam hovers around 50%!) but I'll demur as I am at the start, not the end, of this journey. Keeping in mind the "one-screen" thing, I have decided to do all my studying on one monitor. I've also ordered the Practice Exam Booklet and non-erasable marker from online, and am using it to work example problems. Do you have any other tips or tricks that you think would help make the exam-day experience less awful?
This is a very well-explained instructional video. I do not deal with wind loads on a regular basis, but on occasion I have to review plans for shade structures or such things. My area experiences a very CONSTANT wind (very strong at times), so I have noticed over the years that structures typically fail here over time from FATIGUE rather than the strength of the wind or gusts. Does ASCE-7 or UBC 97 take that "fatigue loading" of winds into consideration? I am looking through ASCE-7 now, and do not see anything to specifically address it. Thanks.
Graduated with plans to get my SE now after working a few years I’m wondering what’s the point? I don’t want all that liability, for what like $100k/yr?
Congrats on passing! I passed Lateral Oct ‘23 and failed Vertical this past April. I have the same thoughts as you… I’ll be skipping the offering this October in hopes that things improve for April ‘25.
Congratulations! I had the same experience with my PE. Would you recommend any text books or other study material to help get a deeper understanding of lateral systems and designs ? Will you continue posting videos on RU-vid now that you're done studying ?
Congratulations! I was lucky enough to get through both vertical exams this last spring testing session and have the lateral exams coming up this fall! You have been a great inspiration and continue to provide useful studying videos and explanations for things
Congrats on earning your SE!! I'll be going into my sophomore year of civil engineering undergrad, but I've watched some of your videos here and there. I'm looking forward to the journey of becoming a Civil/Structural Engineer.
Well deserved Congrats! I'm also a PE who has experience with both the NCEES old school and new CTB tests, and I appreciate you taking us on your journey! I used your youtube practice problems to help me study and found them very informative and helpful.
Congratulations Rich! Thank for sharing your journey with all of us. Time to update that disclaimer in the description to state that Richard Racz DOES in fact hold the title "structural engineer".
Congrats! I don't think I will be taking the SE but will be submitting my experience soon for PE (civil Structural) I took the pe structural cbt august 2023 and passed the first time with AEI. I felt like it was clumsy too but the problems weren't very hard to the point I needed more screenspace or better interface to pass, I had lots of time. This was before changed the exam to 1 discipline.
Congrats on passing SE! I just started studying for SE and the CBT thing is a big unknown. So are the depth questions multiple choice as well? There used to be essay questions but now we can’t write down the answer. If depth questions are multiple choice then what is the point of having breadth and depth?!
I was waiting this video 😂... Congrats on that achievement. I passed vertical on P&P like you did. Just passed the CBT Lateral Depth. Yes, fortunately I was within 14% who passed. Sitting for the lateral breath in a few weeks!!! I agree with you on everything you said in this video. Any advice specifically for the lateral breath? Thank you
@@lunalugo1 lateral breadth questions “worked” better for computer format since everything is multiple choice. You don’t feel like total garbage moving on cause you at least have a 25% chance lol
Thank you for such an informative video and congratulations on passing your SE! I'm getting as prepared as possible as I'll be taking my vertical breadth/depth SE this October. This CBT format, expanded into a 22 hr SE exam, closed book/notes sounds like beast.
@@hebrews11vs5 If you were to sign up, they give you a one year window to book your tests. Depth is offered 2 times a year and breadth is offered year round.
@@hebrews11vs5 Once you sign up, you are given a one year time window to book for the exams. Breadth is offered year around and depth is only offered April and October .
Amazing timing on this video. I just decided yesterday I will go for the SE exam. I wasn't going to do it, but I just decided I would challenge myself and go for it.
The experience you've described here was the same on the PE exam I took in July of 2023. The system they use to administer the test is so clunky! You can only draw 5 shapes or lines on the scree before it deletes your oldest line. So for the problems where you needed to triangulate something on a soil chart it was exactly possible, but if you draw one of the lines wrong you can't interact with that line, you have to redraw it. Since the questions are randomized, you might get two questions in the same category but several questions apart. Here's hoping you remembered what page you were on after you dug through the index, because (as you said) when you close that code it resets to the table of contents. Completely agree with everything you said at the end: they make it so difficult to prove your ability that I think it's not a good "test" of your abilities. Who actually engineers like this? Same criticism I have of schooling in general, they make you do it alone without input from your peers, but almost all of my project work engineering is done collaboratively with coworker input.
Took the PE Civil Structural when it first switched to computer. Felt the same way. Hopefully they remove the kinks from the SE. plan to take it in the coming years. Thanks as always for all you do.
I'm halfway through this video and I want to say two things: 1) Congrats! You've definitely earned the achievement, and I hope to join you in the SE club one day soon. 2) Something must be up with the camera stabilization, because every time you bump/touch your desk, the camera wobbles all over the place.
The second it says it lost connection- just save as to your desktop, then copy and paste the markups back onto the session. Or you can upload the redlined file directly once the server reconnects- you just won’t be able to edit those redlines once the file has been uploaded to the session.
Is it possible to have a 4 story building with rho = 1.0 for upper 3 floors, and rho = 1.3 for the ground floor, must we use 1.3 for all floors when any individual floor does not meet the requirements? Thanks
