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CBO 3 part exam

Archer, did you take your MM exam yet? I passed mine and can offer some study suggestions. I'm scheduled to take the Legal exam next month.
 
No, Not yet. I'm studying for it now. I can do the same with the legal exam for you.

Here are some of the main areas that were covered. Most of the questions actually referenced the book that the question was for.
Budgeting: Go through the budget types and budget cycles. Get to know all the fund types and what they are used for as well. Know the equity types, finance dept duties and financial reports.
HR: Go through hiring process, performance evaluations and HR software systems and their uses.
Management: Go through supervisor/building officials roles, supervisor expectations from employees and evaluating employees
Inspector skills: Inspectors main role as an educator, customer service regarding listening and complaints, communication.
Only a few questions on IBC and IFC regarding who gets notice for violations and posting notices.
If anything else pops in my mind, ill add to it but this covers a majority of the topics. I hope this helps!
 
Uhg. I just signed up with Pronto to do athe FB module. Trying to take all three of these within the next 30 days or so. Anybody do the PRonto online test?
 
I'm just starting this myself, and wanted to know what books I need for each exam and any recommendations.
 
Greetings gentlemen. I am new here and just passed my legal module for the CBO. I am starting to study for the management test. I'm looking for practice tests, study guides or anything else that would aid in passing. For anyone that has not passed the Legal module. Let me know and I can pass on what I have that would help.

Thanks
 
Greetings gentlemen. I am new here and just passed my legal module for the CBO. I am starting to study for the management test. I'm looking for practice tests, study guides or anything else that would aid in passing. For anyone that has not passed the Legal module. Let me know and I can pass on what I have that would help.

Thanks
I'm studying for legal right now,can you please pass me on what you have to help me with legal. My email address is, myboyhaven@hotmail.com. l would appreciate all the help. Thank you.
Greetings gentlemen. I am new here and just passed my legal module for the CBO. I am starting to study for the management test. I'm looking for practice tests, study guides or anything else that would aid in passing. For anyone that has not passed the Legal module. Let me know and I can pass on what I have that would help.

Thanks
Greetings gentlemen. I am new here and just passed my legal module for the CBO. I am starting to study for the management test. I'm looking for practice tests, study guides or anything else that would aid in passing. For anyone that has not passed the Legal module. Let me know and I can pass on what I have that would help.

Thanks
 
I'm studying for legal right now,can you please pass me on what you have to help me with legal. My email address is, myboyhaven@hotmail.com. l would appreciate all the help. Thank you.

Here are some of the main areas that were covered. Most of the questions actually referenced the book that the question was for.
Budgeting: Go through the budget types and budget cycles. Get to know all the fund types and what they are used for as well. Know the equity types, finance dept duties and financial reports.
HR: Go through hiring process, performance evaluations and HR software systems and their uses.
Management: Go through supervisor/building officials roles, supervisor expectations from employees and evaluating employees
Inspector skills: Inspectors main role as an educator, customer service regarding listening and complaints, communication.
Only a few questions on IBC and IFC regarding who gets notice for violations and posting notices.
If anything else pops in my mind, ill add to it but this covers a majority of the topics. I hope this helps!
I'm studying for legal right now,do you have any thing I can use to help me with my legal. Thanks Rob.
 
Hi Everyone, I see there are many posts on this but only a few with info. I, along with many others recently it seems, am just about to start trying to take all 3 exams required in order to get my CBO Certification. I was planning on starting with the Management Module, then the Legal Module and finishing with the Building Codes and Standards Module. I have purchased all of the books stated in the exam info on the ICC website for all 3 exams but like many others have said both the Human Resources and the Budgeting Books are tough reads. I was hoping someone who has recently taken the exams could point me to the sections of the books I should be focusing on because committing those entire books to memory is not an easy task and I cant find any decent study guides for each module that would give me an idea of what types of questions will be asked and what sections to pay more attention to trying to remember. If anyone has any tips/info they could give me I would really appreciate it!
 
I couldn’t get ahold of a study guide. But what I did was read all the non code books cover to cover minus the budgeting book, because ya know... it was written by accountant nerds. That one I only got familiar with the TOC like any code book. If you can, take the Legal and Management same day since you have almost all the same books. I did this and passed them same day so no need to go another and drag 90% of them again. The BC&S exam took me three attempts.

Email me and I can explain better.
 
Thanks, That is a good tip about taking both the same day...I am planning on taking the tests through pronto (I used it when I took the B1 residential inspector exam and it was pretty nice to be able to do it all from my house) but if you think the legal and management were similar and they do use some of the same books maybe taking them both the same day will keep some of the questions from one in my mind while taking the other
 
Thanks all. Did anyone find the answer to the question posted about an emergency inspection after a deck collapse?
1 misfeasance
2 nonfeasance
3 malfeasance
4 liability

Lol if you read the post everyone has a different answer or view.
I think it’s b. Because the question states “ had not conducted a proper connection inspection “ and nonfeasance = nonperformance of some act that a person is obligated or has the responsibility to perform.
Thanks all I’ll keep you posted
I know Rob has posted that he passed the test but for future reference for anyone who takes the legal exam I just read this chapter of the legal aspects of code administration and it clearly explains the difference between misfeasance and nonfeasance is the difference between action and inaction nonfeasance as defined above by Rob is "the non performance of some act that a person is obligated or has the responsibility to perform" which would be if the inspector did not perform the inspection at all so that would be inaction and couldnt be the answer because according to the question they did perform an inspection they just did not do it properly...Misfeasance has the word "proper" in the definition and that was also in the question ( one thing I have realized from taking the ICC exams is they will usually either tell you the book it's out of in the actual question or they will word the question so when you look it up in the book you will find it word for word usually) and misfeasance is "the improper performance of some act that a person may lawfully do" question actually says the inspector did not properly perform the inspection which makes you think that they still did the inspection and that would be that act that they're lawfully doing but did not do it properly. So the answer would be A. Misfeasance
 
The question concerning misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance was worded in a way as to under what would the contractor sue the official who stopped a job based on construction causing damage to a neighboring property (I think in a different jurisdiction) and then the contractor wins the case and under what can he sue the official. I found this to be a confusing question.
 
I know it's been awhile but I just wanted to give everyone a heads up. I took the management module first (I was told by somebody else I knew who recently took all three exams that he had the most trouble with that one) back in the last week of January this year and passed on my 1st try! I then took the legal module the first week of February and past that one on my first try also. Since then it has been a mixture of slacking on studying for the building code and standards module and being incredibly swamped at work with the amount of construction going on everywhere so I have not yet taken the last exam but I'm going to start cracking down on studying for it now.

I just wanted to let anyone else who plans on taking them know that I actually found the legal module a little more difficult than the management module. I read the entire legal aspects book front to back including adding my own tabs to it and highlighting the sections I thought were important and I would say maybe 5-10 questions total were out of that book on the entire legal exam. Most of the questions believe it or not were out of the building department administration book and the human resources book (at least on the version of the exam that I got).
I can definitely say anybody that is about to take the management module, a previous post on this thread by Dutyman hit the nail on the head.
Here are some of the main areas that were covered. Most of the questions actually referenced the book that the question was for.
Budgeting: Go through the budget types and budget cycles. Get to know all the fund types and what they are used for as well. Know the equity types, finance dept duties and financial reports.
HR: Go through hiring process, performance evaluations and HR software systems and their uses.
Management: Go through supervisor/building officials roles, supervisor expectations from employees and evaluating employees
Inspector skills: Inspectors main role as an educator, customer service regarding listening and complaints, communication.
Only a few questions on IBC and IFC regarding who gets notice for violations and posting notices.
I used the advice given by him in the above mentioned post including tabbing each of those sections (such as highlighting each budget type and putting a separate tab on each page that listed a different budget type with that budget types name written on the tab) so that way I could flip right to that page quickly and look for the highlighted section to re-read what that budget type was if I needed to verify it was in fact the correct answer. In addition to what he said I can also say there were a couple other questions that were mostly fluff questions like he mentioned from the IBC and IFC which were on things like how long a fire marshal is required to retain plans for and things like that which can all be found in chapter one of each of those books. I can definitely say going over what Dutyman recommended to study covered about 95% of the answers on the version of the management module that I had.

Also anyone that has recently taken the 2018 building code and standards module if you feel like you have any tips I would definitely appreciate them!
 
I know it's been awhile but I just wanted to give everyone a heads up. I took the management module first (I was told by somebody else I knew who recently took all three exams that he had the most trouble with that one) back in the last week of January this year and passed on my 1st try! I then took the legal module the first week of February and past that one on my first try also. Since then it has been a mixture of slacking on studying for the building code and standards module and being incredibly swamped at work with the amount of construction going on everywhere so I have not yet taken the last exam but I'm going to start cracking down on studying for it now.

I just wanted to let anyone else who plans on taking them know that I actually found the legal module a little more difficult than the management module. I read the entire legal aspects book front to back including adding my own tabs to it and highlighting the sections I thought were important and I would say maybe 5-10 questions total were out of that book on the entire legal exam. Most of the questions believe it or not were out of the building department administration book and the human resources book (at least on the version of the exam that I got).
I can definitely say anybody that is about to take the management module, a previous post on this thread by Dutyman hit the nail on the head.

I used the advice given by him in the above mentioned post including tabbing each of those sections (such as highlighting each budget type and putting a separate tab on each page that listed a different budget type with that budget types name written on the tab) so that way I could flip right to that page quickly and look for the highlighted section to re-read what that budget type was if I needed to verify it was in fact the correct answer. In addition to what he said I can also say there were a couple other questions that were mostly fluff questions like he mentioned from the IBC and IFC which were on things like how long a fire marshal is required to retain plans for and things like that which can all be found in chapter one of each of those books. I can definitely say going over what Dutyman recommended to study covered about 95% of the answers on the version of the management module that I had.

Also anyone that has recently taken the 2018 building code and standards module if you feel like you have any tips I would definitely appreciate them!
I just recently passed the legal module and am currently studying for the management module. Thanks for the heads up. The budgeting guide is way more user friendly than the legal aspects of code.
 
I just wanted to come on here to post an update to let everyone know that I finally ended up attempting the last exam I needed which was the building codes and standards module on Sunday and thankfully passed on my first try and have finally received my CBO certification! I wanted to thank everybody on here that posted tips and suggestions, I definitely could not have been as successful as I was without them. The last exam was definitely not easy and I ended up answering the last question with about 2 minutes left on the clock which did not give me a lot of time to go back over some of the questions I had bookmarked but was able to find 95% of the answers in the books during the exam to questions I was unsure about so before it was over I had a feeling that I was going to pass. The best tip I could give is to add additional tabs to the books so you can find sections faster. What I did is I used practice tests people had given me on here and a sort of study guide one of my co-workers had made up when he was taking the exams and based off those I tabbed the sections of the book where the answers to those practice questions were found and read through and highlighted those specific sections so if I needed to reference it during the test I would find my tab flip to that page and then look for the highlighted sections to locate them faster. That seemed to work pretty well. I would also say to anyone watch the clock if you're trying to find an answer to a question and you see that it's taking you longer than about 2 minutes I would pick whichever answer I thought was it bookmark the question and then move on to the next one that way you don't run out of time before all of the questions are answered and you're not leaving the question blank in case you don't have time to go back to it. I wish anybody else going through the process right now luck and if anybody has any questions about any of the exams feel free to ask I'll help the best I can!
 
I just wanted to come on here to post an update to let everyone know that I finally ended up attempting the last exam I needed which was the building codes and standards module on Sunday and thankfully passed on my first try and have finally received my CBO certification! I wanted to thank everybody on here that posted tips and suggestions, I definitely could not have been as successful as I was without them. The last exam was definitely not easy and I ended up answering the last question with about 2 minutes left on the clock which did not give me a lot of time to go back over some of the questions I had bookmarked but was able to find 95% of the answers in the books during the exam to questions I was unsure about so before it was over I had a feeling that I was going to pass. The best tip I could give is to add additional tabs to the books so you can find sections faster. What I did is I used practice tests people had given me on here and a sort of study guide one of my co-workers had made up when he was taking the exams and based off those I tabbed the sections of the book where the answers to those practice questions were found and read through and highlighted those specific sections so if I needed to reference it during the test I would find my tab flip to that page and then look for the highlighted sections to locate them faster. That seemed to work pretty well. I would also say to anyone watch the clock if you're trying to find an answer to a question and you see that it's taking you longer than about 2 minutes I would pick whichever answer I thought was it bookmark the question and then move on to the next one that way you don't run out of time before all of the questions are answered and you're not leaving the question blank in case you don't have time to go back to it. I wish anybody else going through the process right now luck and if anybody has any questions about any of the exams feel free to ask I'll help the best I can!
Congratulations!
 
I just wanted to come on here to post an update to let everyone know that I finally ended up attempting the last exam I needed which was the building codes and standards module on Sunday and thankfully passed on my first try and have finally received my CBO certification! I wanted to thank everybody on here that posted tips and suggestions, I definitely could not have been as successful as I was without them. The last exam was definitely not easy and I ended up answering the last question with about 2 minutes left on the clock which did not give me a lot of time to go back over some of the questions I had bookmarked but was able to find 95% of the answers in the books during the exam to questions I was unsure about so before it was over I had a feeling that I was going to pass. The best tip I could give is to add additional tabs to the books so you can find sections faster. What I did is I used practice tests people had given me on here and a sort of study guide one of my co-workers had made up when he was taking the exams and based off those I tabbed the sections of the book where the answers to those practice questions were found and read through and highlighted those specific sections so if I needed to reference it during the test I would find my tab flip to that page and then look for the highlighted sections to locate them faster. That seemed to work pretty well. I would also say to anyone watch the clock if you're trying to find an answer to a question and you see that it's taking you longer than about 2 minutes I would pick whichever answer I thought was it bookmark the question and then move on to the next one that way you don't run out of time before all of the questions are answered and you're not leaving the question blank in case you don't have time to go back to it. I wish anybody else going through the process right now luck and if anybody has any questions about any of the exams feel free to ask I'll help the best I can!
Congratulations on your accomplishment
 
Out of curiosity does anybody from a state that uses Uniform Plumbing/Mechanical have experience taking the codes module (BC)? I'm in CA and so far I've taken all my inspector certification using the CA codes so I'm not familiar with IPC/IMC and I'm wondering how much I may need to study those before attempting the BC exam.
 
Out of curiosity does anybody from a state that uses Uniform Plumbing/Mechanical have experience taking the codes module (BC)? I'm in CA and so far I've taken all my inspector certification using the CA codes so I'm not familiar with IPC/IMC and I'm wondering how much I may need to study those before attempting the BC exam.
I'll try asking this question differently.

To anybody who has taken the building codes module (BC) could you share roughly how many questions pertained to plumbing and mechanical codes?

Thanks!
 
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