PDH Now

PDH Now is an online continuing education catalog for licensed Professional Engineers who need professional development hours (PDH) to renew their licenses. It is a learner product: an engineer buys a course, studies it online, passes an exam and downloads a certificate to keep for the board. The About page puts the focus plainly: "We provide continuing education courses to professional engineers, and that is all we do." The business trades as Engineer Educators and gives its headquarters as Farmington, New Mexico.

Who runs it

The About page says PDH Now was founded by a former chairman and a former executive director of a state board of professional engineers, and its team section names them. Founder Bill Palm is described as a former chair and member of the Florida Board of Professional Engineers and an active participant with the National Council of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors (NCEES); founder Dennis Barton as a former executive director of the same Florida board. Ryan K. Malone, P.E., is listed as president, responsible for daily operations and the expansion of course content, and a technology consultant is responsible for keeping the system efficient and reliable. The home page adds that the staff are licensed Professional Engineers in multiple states and that the courses are written by engineers. The company says its courses follow the NCEES Model Rule, which defines a course as one with a clear purpose and objective that will maintain, improve or expand the skills or knowledge relevant to the licensee's field of practice. The fact sheet lists its approval number with the Florida Board of Professional Engineers, 0006408.

What the catalog covers

The courses page sorts the catalog by subject (civil, construction, controls, electrical, energy, environmental, ethics, floodwater, geotechnical, law, materials, mechanical, project management, renewable energy, structural, surveying, wastewater and welding) and by state renewal, with a filter for every state plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Each course shows its hours and its price.

Most technical courses run four hours. Administering the Construction Project, Construction Project Scheduling, Design-Build Project Delivery, Geotechnical Engineering Overview, Stormwater Management, Pumps and Pumping Systems and Wind Load Design Criteria are each $74.95. A Liquified Natural Gas series (an introduction, LNG safety, and thermodynamics parts 1, 2, 3A and 3B) costs $79.95 a part, the same as Fundamentals of Welding Procedures, which is built around the requirements of ASME Section IX, and NDE Applied to Pressure Vessel Evaluations. Water Pollution and Control and Wastewater Collection Systems are $84.95. The longest options are five-hour courses on wastewater treatment, air pollution and control and solid waste landfills at $94.95, and six-hour courses on rooftop solar and geothermal engineering at $109.95.

The floodwater courses draw on real projects. The Floodwater Lessons Learned series looks at flood control and bank protection work that held up over time and work that ran into trouble, including a project in Creede, Colorado and a diversion channel in Socorro, New Mexico, both carried out by the Army Corps of Engineers. The parts run from one hour at $39.95 to three hours at $59.95, with the Santa Fe Channel Stabilization case at two hours for $47.99.

Ethics, state law and surveyors

Ethics is the deepest shelf. Common Sense Ethics and Engineering Ethics: Kansas City Hyatt Walkway Collapse are one-hour courses at $34.95, as is Ethics I for Professional Engineers, which the page lists as Florida Approved Course 0009949. Ethics and Floodwater Engineering comes as a four-hour text course at $89.95 or as four separate one-hour parts at $39.95 each, every part offered in a text version and a voice version with narrated audio; the voice versions need PowerPoint installed.

The catalog page sets out which boards demand ethics hours: Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi and North Carolina require one ethics PDH per renewal term; Minnesota, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin require two; Delaware requires a minimum of three and a maximum of six. A news item on the home page notes that North Carolina added an ethics requirement from the 2024 renewal, where it previously required 15 hours with no ethics course.

State law courses cover Florida (a Laws and Rules course for the 2027 renewal cycle), Indiana (Law and Rules for the 2026 renewal), Maryland, Georgia and Illinois, along with Illinois Sexual Harassment Prevention, which the page describes as required in Illinois. Florida Building Code courses sit beside them, for example Chapter 16 Structural Design from the 8th edition, four hours at $84.95.

The catalog is not only for engineers. Ethics I for Professional Land Surveyors (two hours, $54.95) is described as satisfying the continuing education requirement for all states, Ethics I for Professional Engineers can also be used by Professional Surveyors, and the Georgia law course ($54.95, three hours) covers 3 of the 30 hours Georgia requires of engineers and 3 of the 15 it requires of land surveyors.

How a course works

The home page sums the process up as "Quick. Easy. Simple." An engineer can preview any course and its exam before buying, signs in or creates a member account, and checks out through a secure shopping cart by credit card; the instructions warn that the billing address must match the card or the purchase will be declined. The material is studied online at the engineer's own pace, and a course can be stopped and resumed. The exam is taken online from a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone.

The FAQ covers the exam in detail. The passing grade is 70%. Exam length scales with the hours: a one-PDH course has 10 questions and a typical four-PDH course has 20, while four-PDH courses on the Florida Building Code have 40 questions to meet the Florida Building Commission's approval requirements. There is no time limit on the exam and no deadline to finish a course; the FAQ says the time limit is set by the engineer's own renewal date. A quiz can be taken up to three times, and failing to reach 70% on the third attempt blocks further attempts and returns the fee.

Once the exam is passed, the certificate is generated immediately as a PDF to print or save. The FAQ says it carries the engineer's name and PE number, the course name and the PDH value, and it stays available, with the course history, whenever the engineer signs back in. PDH Now does not report completions to the boards, and the FAQ explains why none is needed: boards run audit systems and ask for evidence only when a licensee is selected.

Board acceptance

The home page states that "All online PDH courses are guaranteed accepted by all 50 states", and the construction project course is described as accepted by all 50 state engineering boards. The same home page also says the certificate is "Eligible for credit in all jurisdictions except New York", and the FAQ answers the question of whether a board will accept PDH Now credits with "Not in all cases." It names three states that limit online learning. New York requires 36 PDHs per three-year period, at least 18 of them live and interactive, with the balance open to self-study, which the FAQ says PDH Now's New York-approved courses meet. Wisconsin requires 30 PDHs every two years, 13 of them in real-time instructor contact or a classroom. Nebraska also requires 30 every two years and limits web courses to 25%, except those from universities and selected professional societies. For Ohio, the FAQ says engineers are limited to 3 hours of PDH Now coursework a year but 6 per two-year renewal period, and may take all 6 at once. Whether a course can be repeated for credit in a later renewal period depends on the state.

Pricing, refunds and support

Courses are sold one at a time at the price shown beside each title, from $34.95 for a one-hour course to $109.95 for six hours. The site publishes no subscription or group pricing. The home page promises a 100% refund if a buyer is not totally satisfied, and the site keeps a Discount Codes page; many catalog entries were advertising a limited-time 30% discount code at checkout. Staff answer questions about state requirements by phone or email, and the About page pledges to answer or return each call or email personally before the close of the business day. The site has moved to a new platform, so existing members reset their password once at first login.

Who it suits

PDH Now suits a licensed PE who renews alone, wants to buy only the hours a renewal requires, and prefers a text course and an untimed exam to a scheduled webinar. It is strongest for engineers who need ethics or state law hours, and for Florida, Indiana, Georgia, Illinois or Maryland licensees who want a state-specific course from the same shop as their technical hours. Engineers in the fields the catalog covers in depth (construction and project management, water and wastewater, hazardous waste, LNG, floodwater, welding and pressure vessels) will find the most choice, and land surveyors have a few ethics and law courses to pick from.

It suits less well an engineer in New York, Wisconsin or Nebraska who needs live or classroom hours, since every course in the catalog is self-paced online study, so only the self-study share of those hours can come from here. The voice courses also need PowerPoint on the engineer's machine.