The FE Reference Handbook, and how to search it

Where to get it

Create a MyNCEES account (you need one to register anyway) and download the Handbook from your dashboard. The download is free, and it is the same document the exam shows.

Use that copy and no other. A PDF from elsewhere may be an older version, and NCEES revises the Handbook between printings: its errata notices list corrections to equations and tables, and the exam switches to the updated version. For the same reason this site prints no version number; the one in your account is the one on screen.

On exam day

How the search works

The Handbook opens beside the question. You search it with the box on the left; the browser shortcut does nothing. That changes how you should look things up:

• Search words, not symbols. Equation and method names (“Bernoulli”, “capital recovery”, “Laplace”) find the page; a Greek letter or a subscript rarely does.
• Know the chapters. A common word returns hits in several chapters. If you know which chapter holds your topic, you skip straight to the right hit.
• Read the variable list. Most equations come with definitions of their terms and units; a unit constant inside an equation is a common reason a correct method gives a wrong number.
• Zoom is allowed. The PDF is laid out for 100%, but you can enlarge a table to read it.

Chapters by discipline

NCEES publishes no table of contents on its website. The chapter names below are the ones its own errata notices use (June 2023, May 2024); for any other topic, search the term itself.

Civil

The Civil Engineering chapter holds geotechnical, transportation and water resources material, including the surface-water hydrologic budget and the Greenshields traffic model; Mechanics of Materials has fixed-end moment diagrams and superposition for beams. Section by section: the Handbook for FE Civil.

Mechanical

Most of the exam sits in general chapters: Dynamics, Mechanics of Materials, Materials Science/Structure of Matter, Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer, plus the Mechanical Engineering chapter for machine design (threaded fasteners, for example). Statics and fluid mechanics: search the term. More on FE Mechanical exam facts.

Electrical and Computer

The Electrical and Computer Engineering chapter holds the discipline material, AC machines among it, and the Mathematics chapter even has finite state machines, a digital-systems topic. Section by section: the Handbook for FE Electrical and Computer.

Environmental

The Environmental Engineering chapter has fate and transport and the greenhouse-gas potential table; the hydrologic budget is in Civil Engineering; hazard ratings are in Safety. More on FE Environmental exam facts.

Chemical

Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer and Safety are general chapters you will use; for process topics, search by method name. Section by section: the Handbook for FE Chemical.

How to drill with it

1. Download it in week 1 and keep it open beside every problem you work, on a screen if you can.
2. Find each formula by search, even when you remember it. The goal is the path to the page, not the formula.
3. Keep a short list of search terms that worked, by section, and rehearse them before the exam.
4. In timed sets, note any lookup that took over a minute and drill that topic again.

The shared sections have their own chapters, Mathematics and Engineering Probability and Statistics: practice them on the FE practice test.