Civil PE Professional Engineer Exam Construction Module, Fifth Edition Fifth Edition

I'm currently studying for my PE Exam. I plan to take the construction specific test. The other review books don’t cover the construction test very well, so I tried out this book by Ruwan Rajapakse. It became apparent very quickly that English is not Mr. Rajapakse’s first language. Civil engineers are not known for their command of the English language, but come on! A lot of the book is written with broken English. About 80% of the examples refer to “Contractor” as if it is somebody’s name. Page 167 - “Concrete itself do not have tensile strength. Tensile strength for concrete is provided by reinforcing bars or simply known as rebars. Below table provide rebar sizes and weight per foot.” Did anyone read this before they published it?!?! How could these errors make it to the 4th edition?!?! I would be embarrassed to put my name on something with this many errors. Also, don’t think that this is not isolated to any single part of the book. These types of errors are everywhere and I personally find them extremely distracting.If you can get past the hundreds of typographical errors, the content is fine. The author jumps around somewhat erratically at some points, but overall I find the content average. I have not taken the exam yet, but it seems like a lot of the concepts are not covered in adequate depth. If i had it to do over again, I would look for a different book.

There's no question this book isn't perfect. There's formatting, grammatical, and spelling errors everywhere. That being said, it's a decent book with a lot of information and plenty of examples to accompany it. Compared to other review books, Rajapakse's books are very reasonably priced. If you can look past a few errors here and there, it's a good resource.

There is some decent knowledge of construction practices in this book. If you're deciding between this and the "all module" book, I would go with the all module one. The examples are similar to the exam questions, however; it is difficult to flip to the specific example when taking the exam.

Before I start I should point out that I was skeptical before buying this book because of the reviews, but I thought there were enough 5-star reviews for it to be okay. Now, looking back, it is easy to see that none of the 5-star reviews are verified purchases and most of the other 4+ star ratings came from reviewers that hadn't tested yet. Here goes:I passed the PE on my first try, but I felt like I passed in spite of this book rather than because of it. I put in about 120 hours of study total. After the general session in the morning I felt like I aced that portion of the exam. The afternoon session was a different story...granted there were a lot of tricky problems, but many of the topics covered did not even earn a paragraph in this book. Also, because the organization of this book is relatively poor I ended up barely opening it because my other references were so much more clearly organized. I came out of the afternoon session wondering if I did well enough to pass. On the other hand, my coworkers that used the PPI construction books were very confident in their afternoon performance. Other than the organization and incompleteness of topics the major issues that stood out were spelling/grammer (very poorly checked) and the problems were difficult to follow. If you plan to use the CERM during exam day then I recommend pairing it with a PPI book for the construction module instead of this book because the organization of those books will match. Overall I felt like this book was poor preparation for the construction module of the exam. I do not recommend it.

This book is the single best investment if you are taking the new Construction Section for your Depth. Construction had lowest overall test passing rate for OCT2014 in Civil and you will need all the help you can get. This book, literally saved my bacon on a least 4-5 depth questions. Also, very good overview on some of the 'breadth' of CONSTRUCTION. This is key to understanding the basis of depth questions if you are unfamiliar with anything in particular. I Highly Recommend this book along with the Author's other Construction Module Book. Well worth the $$$. One request for the author... add more information/questions on piles and CPM.

The information in the book was very useful on the test. I made my own separate index while I studied the material. They worked perfectly together.

THIS BOOK IS A GREAT BOOK FOR STUDYING P.E IT WILL TAKE YOU STEP TO STEP AND EXPLAIN VERY CLEARLY THE SUBJECTS.

Somewhat useful reference material for the construction exam. Most of the material and information presented is common knowledge and/or found in the CERM. Used the book for one question on this past PE exam.The formatting within the book needs help. Sections within each chapter are hard to identify and font changes are random.Examples and practice problems do not provide much detail and there are some mathematical errors. Forumlas used are often not explained or are hard to understand as written. Drawings often look to be freehand or made with MS Paint.