PE Civil Water Resources and Environmental Exam Prep

The PE Civil Water Resources and Environmental exam spans moving water, rainfall and runoff, groundwater, and the treatment of water and wastewater. The topics look different on the surface, but many share the same toolkit: mass balance, energy balance, and careful units. STEM Tutor 360 offers one-on-one prep for this exam. We begin with a timed diagnostic, build a plan backward from your test date, and practice with the electronic reference material open so lookups become quick and routine under time pressure.

Sessions cover closed-conduit hydraulics, open-channel flow, hydrology and stormwater, groundwater, drinking water treatment, wastewater treatment, and water quality. Most people work in only a few of these, so we focus on the gaps. We also drill the mistakes that cost points, such as mixing US and metric units in the same equation, picking the wrong hydraulic radius, or forgetting to check whether a flow is subcritical or supercritical.

How we build your plan

• A timed diagnostic samples hydraulics, hydrology, groundwater, treatment, and water quality.
• The first sessions go to shared tools: continuity, energy and momentum balances, and unit conversion between US and metric.
• Next, each topic is worked from a hand-checked example before timed sets: pipe systems, channels, storm events, wells, and treatment units.
• Treatment and water quality get a separate block, since they depend on reaction rates and mass balances more than on pipe flow.
• The final stage is mixed timed sets and a full practice session in the electronic format, with every miss sorted by cause.

A typical open-channel problem, worked

A concrete rectangular channel is 6 ft wide and carries water at a depth of 2 ft. Manning's $n$ is 0.013 and the bed slope is 0.001. Find the flow rate, the velocity, and whether the flow is subcritical.

• Area: $A = 6 \times 2 = 12\ \text{ft}^{2}$. Wetted perimeter: $P = 6 + 2 \times 2 = 10\ \text{ft}$. Hydraulic radius: $R = 12 / 10 = 1.2\ \text{ft}$.
• Manning's equation in US units: $Q = \tfrac{1.486}{n} \times A \times R^{2/3} \times S^{1/2}$.
• $$Q = \dfrac{1.486}{0.013} \times 12 \times 1.2^{2/3} \times 0.001^{1/2} = 114.3 \times 12 \times 1.129 \times 0.0316 = 49.0\ \text{cfs}$$
• Velocity: $V = Q / A = 49.0 / 12 = 4.08\ \text{ft/s}$.
• Froude number: $\mathrm{Fr} = \tfrac{V}{\sqrt{g \times y}} = \tfrac{4.08}{\sqrt{32.2 \times 2}} = 0.51$. Because $\mathrm{Fr}$ is less than 1, the flow is subcritical.

About the exam

Water Resources and Environmental is one of the five computer-based PE Civil exams NCEES offers, alongside Construction, Geotechnical, Structural, and Transportation. The PE Civil Reference Handbook and the design standards named in the exam specification are supplied electronically on test day.

Because NCEES updates its specifications, confirm the standards list, question count, timing, and topic weights in the current version for this exam. STEM Tutor 360 is not affiliated with NCEES or with any standards publisher.