The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) is a nonprofit organization made up of engineering and surveying licensing boards. Founded in 1920, NCEES develops, scores, and administers the exams used for engineering and surveying licensure throughout the country, working to safeguard the health, safety, and welfare of the public.
Download PDFRequest a Demo
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, NCEES noticed a troubling trend: more than 6,000 Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam registrants were failing to schedule appointments to actually sit for the exam. Surveying this group revealed the root cause: registrants were experiencing a lack of confidence and preparedness, compounded by the isolating effects of the pandemic.
Additionally, they were faced with:
Outdated Formats
Static, print-based exams no longer matched the modern, computer-based FE and FS testing experience.
No CE of Its Own
Continuing education was required to maintain a license, but NCEES had never authored any CE content of its own.
NCEES needed a single platform that could solve both problems at once: an online, interactive practice exam experience that mirrored real test-day conditions, and a way to deliver its own trusted, consistent continuing education content directly to licensees, with completions tracked automatically rather than documented by hand.
NCEES's Chief Officer of Examinations investigated an online interactive practice exam model already in use by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). After assembling a procurement team to interview potential vendors, NCEES signed a contract with BenchPrep to bring interactive FE and FS practice exams to life.
The new practice exams, built on BenchPrep's platform, feature:
• Online, timed testing: a shift from static print and e-book formats to a realistic, computer-based experience.
• Real exam content: 350 FE exam items fully representative of actual exam content and difficulty, pulled from the live question bank and repurposed into practice questions.
• Multiple item types: traditional multiple-choice questions alongside alternative formats including fill-in-the-blank, enhanced matching, and point-and-click, mirroring the real exam.
• Performance feedback: diagnostics showing correct and incorrect answers by content area, so examinees know exactly where to focus their remaining study time.
NCEES launched FE Vol. 1 interactive practice exams — seven discipline-specific, 50-question exams — followed by FE Vol. 2 and a corresponding FS interactive practice exam, each available for purchase.
Building on that foundation, NCEES also turned to BenchPrep to launch its first-ever continuing education (CE) offering: Ethics 101. The self-paced online course covers professional ethics fundamentals, the NCEES Model Law and Model Rules, codes of ethics from professional societies, standard of care, and common ethical violations and disciplinary procedures.
Delivered through five segments of video instruction, case studies, and interactive activities, the course awards one hour of CE credit to successful participants, with completion certificates automatically loaded into NCEES's continuing professional competency (CPC) tracking service.
Since the platform went live in 2024, tens of thousands of learners have registered on the NCEES BenchPrep platform, with the large majority actively using it.
Learners are also putting in real study time, averaging more than five hours per course, and that effort is showing up in performance: average scores climbed from the low-50s on Vol. 1 exams to the upper-50s on Vol. 2. More than two years after launch, learners are actively engaging with the platform on a daily basis.
NCEES has tracked pass rates for examinees who purchased the FE interactive practice exams and compared them to those who did not. We find that those who purchase an interactive practice exam have measurably higher exam pass rates. The difference is even higher for repeat examinees, improving some FE exam pass rates by more than 10 percent.
Lehmon Dekle, P.E.
NCEES, Chief Officer of Examinations
That same platform investment is now paying off beyond the exam. The FS practice exam, launched in 2025, drew strong adoption in its first year, with the large majority of enrollees completing it.
And Ethics 101, NCEES's first-ever continuing education course, enrolled hundreds of licensed professionals in its first year, with a strong completion rate, validating that NCEES-authored CE content resonates with the professionals it's designed for.
Building on strong early results in both exam prep and continuing education, NCEES is already following their Ethics 101 with a second course, Moral Literacy for Professional Engineers and Surveyors, launching in 2026, signaling a fast-growing commitment to NCEES-authored continuing education for licensed professionals.Together, these initiatives mark a shift in NCEES's relationship with BenchPrep: from a single exam-prep tool into a broader learning platform that supports engineers and surveyors at every stage of their careers, from first licensure exam through ongoing continuing education.
See how BenchPrep can help you deliver impactful learning at scale.
Request a demo
