Building a study plan

In August, before his application has even gone in, Daniel sits down with Roz to build a study plan. He brings a spreadsheet with every chapter of the TDMM in a column and a start date at the top. Roz looks at it for a minute and then turns the laptop around. 'This is a reading schedule,' she says. 'A study plan has to include the part where you find out what you don't know.' This lesson shows how to build a study plan for the RCDD that fits a working designer's life, uses time efficiently and includes the practice, review and testing that turn reading into knowledge.

How much time to plan for

BICSI's handbook gives a recommended number of study hours with the TDMM, differing by experience: at least 150 hours for a mid-career candidate and at least 125 hours for an advanced one. Those figures are a starting point. Candidates with narrower experience, or whose experience is mostly installation rather than design, often need more. Candidates who have worked across many building types and systems may need less, but should still plan seriously, because the exam covers areas few people meet in daily work.

Turn hours into weeks. A working designer can usually manage six to ten focused hours a week without burning out, for example an hour on four weeknights plus two or three hours at the weekend. At eight hours a week, 150 hours takes about nineteen weeks, or four and a half months. Add time for a preparation course if you take one, for full-length practice exams and for a final review, and a realistic plan for most candidates runs between four and nine months.

Study groups that work

A study group can be the best or the worst part of a plan. The best groups are small, usually three to five people, meet regularly for a fixed time and follow an agenda: each member prepares a topic in advance, explains it to the others in ten or fifteen minutes and brings a few practice questions. Members then work questions together and argue about the answers, always settling disputes by finding the explanation in the TDMM. The worst groups drift into general conversation, rely on one member to do all the preparation or spend their time swapping rumours about the exam.

Daniel's group meets online every second Wednesday for ninety minutes. Each member takes a turn leading, and the leader also writes ten practice questions for the others. Writing questions turns out to be one of the most effective study methods any of them have tried, because a good question requires a clear understanding of exactly what makes the right answer right and the wrong answers wrong.

Expect your plan to change. Some areas will take longer than you estimated, and others will turn out to be easier. A plan that is reviewed and adjusted every two weeks is far more useful than a perfect plan that is followed blindly or abandoned after a month.

Start with a diagnostic

Before deciding how to divide the hours, find out where you stand. Take a diagnostic practice test covering the whole outline, or work through a set of practice questions from each major area of the TDMM, and record your results by area. Do it without studying first. The point is not to score well but to see where your knowledge is strong and where it is thin. Daniel's diagnostic shows strong results in cabling, testing and installation-related topics and weak results in bonding calculations, outside plant, audiovisual systems, healthcare facilities and the bid process.

Weighting the plan

A good plan gives more time to areas that are both heavily weighted on the exam and weak for you, and less to areas you already know well. Because the largest domain, designing ICT solutions, draws on almost every part of the TDMM, the subject areas that feed it deserve the bulk of your time. Smaller domains, such as supporting the bid process, still need dedicated study, especially if, like Daniel, you have never written a specification.

One practical method is to score each area on two scales from one to three, importance and weakness, and multiply them. An area that is very important and very weak scores nine; an area of low importance that you already know scores one. Allocate hours roughly in proportion to the scores, then adjust by judgement. This avoids the common mistake of spending most of your time on subjects you enjoy, which are usually the ones you already know.

Phases of a plan

Most successful plans pass through four phases. The first is foundation: read each subject area of the TDMM actively, as described in lesson 6, and take notes in your own words. The second is application: work practice questions and calculations for each area, confirm answers in the manual, and keep an error log. The third is integration: take mixed practice sets that combine areas, and full-length timed practice exams. The fourth is final review: revisit your notes, error log and weakest areas, and rest before the exam.

The phases overlap. You do not need to finish reading the whole manual before doing practice questions; in fact, doing questions on each area soon after reading it improves retention. But the balance should shift from reading toward practice as the exam approaches.

Techniques that work

Research on learning gives some clear guidance that applies directly to RCDD preparation. Retrieval practice, which means testing yourself rather than rereading, produces stronger and longer-lasting memory. Spacing, which means returning to a topic several times over weeks rather than studying it once intensively, beats cramming. Interleaving, which means mixing different topics in one session once you know the basics, helps you learn to recognize which principle applies to which situation, exactly the skill the exam tests.

In practice, that means flash cards for terms and key limits, reviewed a few minutes a day; practice questions after every reading session; a weekly mixed set covering everything studied so far; and an error log. The error log is a simple list of every practice question you got wrong, the correct answer, the reason you missed it and where in the TDMM the answer is explained. Reviewing it weekly turns mistakes into the most efficient study material you have.

Choosing study resources

The TDMM is essential. Beyond it, candidates choose from BICSI's own courses, including its instructor-led design course and self-study test preparation, independent courses and practice question banks, study groups and mentoring. Each has a place. Instructor-led courses give structure and expert explanation but are costly and short. Practice question banks give volume but vary in quality, and none can reproduce the real exam. Study groups give motivation and the chance to explain topics to others. A mentor who is already an RCDD can answer questions and review your reasoning.

Judge any resource by whether it is based on the current TDMM edition, whether its explanations refer you back to the manual, and whether it helps you practise reasoning rather than memorizing answers. Be wary of anything that promises real exam questions; as lesson 10 explained, such material breaches exam confidentiality and is usually inaccurate. Daniel decides to take BICSI's instructor-led course in February, after his foundation phase, and to use one practice question bank plus a study group of three colleagues from other firms that meets online every second week.

Studying while working

Most candidates study while working full time, and the job can be both a help and a hindrance. It helps when you can connect study to real projects. When Daniel reads about telecommunications room sizing, he checks the Harbourview drawings. When he studies firestopping, he asks Tomasz Wiercinski, the cabling foreman, to show him the systems used on site. When he studies the bid process, he asks to sit in on Lakehead Signal's next bid review. Connecting study to work makes it memorable.

Work hinders when deadlines take over. Protect your study time as you would protect a meeting: put it in your calendar, tell colleagues and family when it is, and keep it short and regular rather than long and occasional. If a week is lost, do not try to double the next one; adjust the plan and use your margin. Burnout is a bigger risk to passing than any single difficult topic.

Tracking progress

Review your plan every two weeks. Compare hours studied with the plan, look at practice results by area and update the error log. If an area remains weak after its scheduled time, add a short block for it later rather than pushing on regardless. About six weeks before the exam, take a full-length timed practice exam under realistic conditions; repeat two or three weeks later. Use the results to plan the final review, not to predict your exact score, since practice exams vary in difficulty.

By March, Daniel's practice results in bonding, healthcare and the bid process have risen from weak to medium, and his pacing on full-length practice exams is comfortable. He still finds outside plant calculations slow. He adds two short sessions a week on them and keeps everything else on review. 'That's a study plan,' Roz says. 'It changed because you learned something.'