The PPE exam is now the NPPE

PPE (Professional Practice Exam) is the older name, and several regulators used to run their own. Ontario's PEO, for example, replaced its PPE with the NPPE in 2020. Today candidates outside Quebec write the national NPPE, though many people still search for it as the PPE.

Yes. It is one national exam with the same blueprint, questions and pass standard wherever you write it. What differs by regulator is the fee, the registration deadline, and rules such as how many attempts you get and when you write it in your application.

Every province and territory except Quebec. The NPPE is used by 14 engineering and geoscience regulators, including PEO in Ontario, APEGA in Alberta, EGBC in British Columbia, APEGS in Saskatchewan and Engineers Geoscientists Manitoba. Quebec's Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec sets its own professional exam.

The NPPE has 110 multiple choice questions, each with four options and one correct answer, to be answered in 2.5 hours. 100 questions are scored and 10 are experimental questions that do not count, and there is no penalty for guessing. It is closed book and remotely proctored, and since June 2026 candidates need a phone or tablet as a second camera.

Professional Practice is the largest section of the NPPE blueprint, with 27 to 32 questions. It covers the working duties of a licence holder: sealing documents, supervising other people's work, quality management, managing risk, and the environment and sustainability. Like the rest of the exam, it mixes direct questions on a rule with short workplace situations that ask what a licence holder should do.

The NPPE's suggested reading list pairs one ethics and practice book with one law book: Andrews, Shaw and McPhee's Canadian Professional Engineering and Geoscience: Practice and Ethics, or Samuels and Sanders' A Practical Guide to Ethics and Professional Practice; and Marston's Law for Professional Engineers, or Samuels and Sanders' Practical Law of Architecture, Engineering, and Geoscience.

No. Professional Engineers Ontario replaced its Professional Practice Exam with the NPPE in 2020, after a final special PPE sitting in October 2020. PEO applicants now write the national NPPE, and they write it before they submit a licence application. The exam is the same one candidates write in every other province and territory except Quebec.

Use it with care. Material written for PEO's former PPE was built for a different exam, so its emphasis may not match the NPPE's six blueprint sections. Check each topic against the current blueprint, and pair one law book with one ethics and practice book from the NPPE's suggested reading list rather than relying on old notes.

Not the NPPE. The Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec does not use the national exam and sets its own professional exam instead: about 100 multiple choice questions in 3 hours, written in French, on Quebec's professional system, ethics and laws. Candidates everywhere else in Canada write the NPPE.