AACE Training and CCE/CCC Exam

I attended the four day training courses and took the Certified Cost Engineer exam in the AACE conference.

The training is for preparing the cost engineer exam, which covers several topics, such as cost estimating, cost control, project scheduling, project management, and engineering economics.

This is the most tough certification exam I have ever attended. It is cross several disciplines and is very very mathematical.

• It tested the probability of the normal distribution. Fortunately I learned that in my undergraduate as a major in statistics.
• It tested "computer operation" terminology. It should be an easy one, but it is actually not. AACE has it own definitions for the terms, such as "byte", "operating system", "mainframe system", etc.
• It ask people to manually do the CPM scheduling using the PDM method. I learned this in the project management course for the PMP certification. The one tested in the CCC exam is more closed to the practical situation. It asked you how much you will lost if the task X is delayed for the N days. You need to do forward pass, backward pass, identify the critical path, etc.
  
• You need to know the different estimation classes. AACE has its own definition while ANSI has another. Each class is for different purposes and is under different range of details. This may be common sense for cost estimators, but definitely not for someone who do not do this everyday. You can use different method for different class. You have to memorize all that if estimation is not your daily job. You also actually need to do a lot of mathematics calculation in the cost estimation exam.
  
• The EVM analysis is the most easy one in the cost exam. All simple number calculation: SV, CV, CPI, SPI, and EAC. The hard one is to do the calculate for the productivity analysis. I almost miss this one. It asked questions about when you should which contract type. It is a very practical situation. I gave up this one since the answers are all very unclear. I selected to work on the mathematics instead.
• Out of the four parts. the engineering economics is the hardest part. I took some financial courses in the past and have been taught the different profitability analysis or the investment evaluation methods several times. The CCC exam has the most difficult question and requires a lot of real world knowledge. You need to know MARCUS as the depreciation method required by US IRS. When you do the cash flow analysis, it asks you to consider that deprecation, which may affect your income tax, and income tax saving should be considered as the cash flow. I have not seen this complicate question in any exam. Meanwhile, the property tax is your out flow. You need to compare buy vs lease situation. Financial calculator is required.
  
• Some of the exam questions are related to manufacturing, but most of them are engineering and construction related. I have never heard "battery limit" area. It mentioned in the exam and I missed that one.
  

Before you are siting on the exam, AACE requires you to send them a technical paper. Getting certified as a cost engineer is really difficult.