References

practice management
1

Which references are available during the PcM exam?

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I would love to know this too.

3

I took the PcM exam about a week ago and my best recommendation is don’t rely on ANY references being available to you on the exam. There won’t be any financial formulas given to you. Depending on your case study, you might get an AIA contract or Code of Ethics or something, but that’s a roll of the dice.

I’m replying to this thread because there was a Virtual Workshop in the past where the presenter mentioned that any of the AIA contracts listed in the NCARB reference matrix for PcM will show up as a reference on the exam. This is just completely NOT TRUE. (sorry, I can’t remember which presenter it was…). If you get lucky, you might get an AIA contract in your case study but as a rule of thumb, DO NOT rely on NCARB to supply that. I got plenty of questions about the B101 and C401 and there was no reference material for it.

The best advice I have: when you open the first question of your exam, open the whiteboard and just write down ALL the financial formulas. I found this really helped me so that when I get a math question I don’t have to pull those formulas from my brain, but they’re somewhere on the whiteboard to reference. Totally up to you all how you want to do it, but I think helped me pass the exam, in the end.

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Hi @kelly.simic !

Thanks for your question! I would much like to echo what @l.wellman mentioned. You will always have the standard list of references such as acoustics, electrical, HVAC, plumbing, and structural however none of these really apply to PcM. They’re more just a general list of references that NCARB provides on all of their exams.

As @l.wellman mentioned, depending on the question or case study you may be given a small excerpt of a contract but that’s the only sort of reference I’ve seen on an exam. It’s imperative to know the financial formulas and when to use them and have a thorough understanding of the contracts prior to going into the exam. I hope this helps, feel free to follow up if you have any other questions pertaining to this!

Thanks,
Rebecca