The exam format and the references allowed

Two days after her approval letter arrived, Renee drove to the electrical supply house on Main Street in Norman and came back with a box: a new softcover copy of the 2023 NEC, a set of permanent index tabs, a current edition of Ugly's Electrical References and a NASCLA contractors' guide. Hector, who had taken the Business and Law exam years earlier for a different trade, looked at the stack and laughed. "The test is open book," he said, "and that's the trap. You won't have time to read anything in there. You need to know where everything is before you sit down."

This lesson covers the two exams an unlimited electrical contractor candidate takes in Oklahoma: the Electrical Business and Law exam and the Unlimited Electrical Contractor exam. It describes the question counts, time limits and passing score published in the PSI bulletin, the references allowed for each exam, the rules for tabbing and marking references, what to expect at the test center and how the content areas are weighted. It also explains why the edition of each reference matters.

Two exams, one license

An unlimited electrical contractor candidate must pass two exams. The Electrical Business and Law exam covers running a contracting business in Oklahoma: the Electrical License Act and the Board's rules, the fine schedule, the lien law, workers' compensation, contracts, estimating, bidding, project management, safety, taxes, payroll and record keeping. The Unlimited Electrical Contractor exam covers the trade: the NEC, calculations, theory, safety standards and the practical knowledge a contractor needs to plan and supervise installations.

The bulletin lists both exams with the same passing standard: 70 out of 100, reported as a scaled score by PSI. In practice that means a candidate needs to answer roughly seven questions in ten correctly. The bulletin also lists the number of scored questions and the time allowed for each exam. PSI may include a small number of unscored pretest questions that do not count toward the score, and the candidate cannot tell which ones they are, so every question deserves a real answer.

References for the Unlimited Contractor exam

The bulletin lists three references for the Unlimited Electrical Contractor exam. The first is NFPA 70, the National Electrical Code, in the 2023 edition as adopted in Oklahoma. The second is OSHA's construction standards, 29 CFR Part 1926, with the latest amendments. The third is Ugly's Electrical References. For the Ugly's book the bulletin accepts any edition for this exam, which is unusual; most references must be a specific edition. The bulletin also says NEC handbooks are not allowed, and it excludes spiral-bound copies of the NEC.

The NEC is the core of the trade exam. Questions ask the candidate to find a rule, apply it to a stated situation or carry out a calculation the Code requires: a feeder or service load, conductor ampacity after adjustment and correction, box fill, conduit fill, motor branch-circuit protection, grounding electrode conductor sizing, overcurrent protection for transformers and the special rules for hazardous locations, health care facilities and other special occupancies. The OSHA Part 1926 questions focus on the electrical subpart, fall protection, ladders, scaffolds, trenching and excavation and other construction safety topics. Ugly's is a quick source for formulas, conversions and tables of common values.

References for the Business and Law exam

The Business and Law exam has a longer reference list. As listed in late 2026, it includes the Oklahoma electrical industry regulations in Title 158, Chapter 40 of the Administrative Code, the Board's fine schedule in Title 158, Chapter 10, the Electrical License Act in Title 59, the Oklahoma lien law in Title 42, Chapter 3, the NASCLA Contractors Guide to Business, Law and Project Management in a listed basic edition, and the Oklahoma workers' compensation act in Title 85A or the statutory excerpts the bulletin names. The bulletin also lists the CIB's own study aid book of unofficial rules and courtesy exam study aids, which the CIB office provides free.

That list tells you what the exam is about. The NASCLA guide covers general business topics such as business organization, accounting, payroll, tax, insurance, contracts, bidding and estimating, project scheduling and risk management. The Oklahoma documents cover the state-specific questions: who must be licensed, what the bond and insurance amounts are, what the fines are, how long a license lasts, what the pre-lien notice requires and when workers' compensation is required. Lessons 7 through 11 of this course map onto those state topics.

Rules for the books

Open book does not mean anything goes. The bulletin says candidates bring their own references and that PSI does not supply them. References may be highlighted, underlined and indexed before the exam, but candidates may not write notes in them, before or during the exam. Permanent tabs are allowed. Temporary tabs, such as sticky notes or removable flags, must be taken out before the exam begins. No loose papers may be kept in the books. Statutes and rules printed from a website must be bound, either spiral-bound, hole-punched in a binder or stapled at the top left, so they stay together as one reference.

Proctors check references at the door, and a book that breaks the rules can be refused, which leaves the candidate without it for the whole exam. Renee practiced with exactly the copies she planned to bring, tabbed with permanent tabs, and she had Patty, who had never seen an exam reference, look through them for any handwriting or loose pages. She printed the Act, the rules, the fine schedule, the lien law and the workers' compensation excerpts from the official sites and put them in a single binder with dividers.

Calculators must be silent, non-printing and non-programmable. A basic scientific calculator that does square roots and powers is enough for every calculation on the exam. Phones, smart watches and other electronic devices stay in a locker.

Pacing

Both exams allow the same average time per question. The Business and Law exam gives 120 minutes for 50 questions, and the Unlimited Contractor exam gives 240 minutes for 100 questions. Both work out to 2.4 minutes a question. That is enough time to look up most answers if you already know where to look, and not enough to read your way through a chapter. Lesson 12 builds a pacing plan around this figure.

exams = {"Business and Law": (50, 120), "Unlimited Contractor": (100, 240)}
PASS = 0.70

for name, (questions, minutes) in exams.items():
    per_q = minutes / questions
    need = round(questions * PASS)
    print(f"{name}: {questions} questions in {minutes} minutes")
    print(f"  average time per question: {per_q:.1f} minutes")
    print(f"  about {need} correct to reach 70 out of 100 (scaled scores can differ slightly)")

Business and Law: 50 questions in 120 minutes
  average time per question: 2.4 minutes
  about 35 correct to reach 70 out of 100 (scaled scores can differ slightly)
Unlimited Contractor: 100 questions in 240 minutes
  average time per question: 2.4 minutes
  about 70 correct to reach 70 out of 100 (scaled scores can differ slightly)

The approximate counts are useful for planning, but remember that PSI reports a scaled score. The scale adjusts for small differences in difficulty between versions of the exam, so the exact number of correct answers needed can vary a little. Aim well above the line in practice.

At the test center

The bulletin explains what identification to bring, how early to arrive and what happens if you are late. Most candidates are asked to arrive at least half an hour early. Proctors check identification, inspect references and assign a seat at a computer. The exam is delivered on screen, with a short tutorial before the clock starts. Candidates can mark questions for review and move back and forth within the exam. When time runs out or the candidate submits, the computer scores the exam and the candidate receives a score report before leaving.

A failing score report shows performance by content area. That breakdown is valuable, because it tells you whether a miss came from a weak area, such as motors or business finance, or from poor pacing that left questions unanswered. Lesson 12 covers how to use it.

What the content areas tell you

The bulletin lists the content areas for each exam and the approximate number of questions in each. Those numbers are a study budget. If a content area carries ten questions out of a hundred, it is worth about a tenth of your study time, adjusted for how strong you already are in it. For the trade exam, the largest areas usually cover general wiring, services and feeders, branch circuits, grounding and bonding, wiring methods, equipment, motors and controls, special occupancies and calculations. For the Business and Law exam, the largest areas usually cover licensing law, contracts and liens, financial management, payroll and taxes, safety, insurance and bonding and project management.

Renee copied the content outline from the bulletin onto a single page and wrote, next to each area, the tab or section where its answers live. That page became her study checklist. When she finished an area, she did twenty timed lookups from it before moving on. By the end, she could find most rules in under a minute, which left time for the calculation questions that take longer.

Edition traps

Edition rules can trip up experienced electricians. A journeyman who studied for an older exam may have a favorite tabbed copy of an earlier NEC, and an older code book is no help on an exam that lists the 2023 edition. Article numbers and section numbers move between editions, and new requirements appear. The NASCLA guide also has editions, and the bulletin names the one it accepts. Before you buy or tab anything, compare the edition printed on the cover with the edition in the current bulletin.