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Requirements to Be Eligible for the CPEA

Academic Requirements

You must have a bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited college or university or from another college that is acceptable to the Board.

EHS Auditor Training

Relevant training and experience must include identifying EHS Auditing aspects and impacts, assessing compliance with EHS Auditing-related laws and regulations, or applying professional EHS audit practices. It may include any combination of:

  • Management of change, process hazard analysis, mechanical integrity, EHS Auditing management, and technical aspects of business activities including facility operations.
  • Requirements of EPA and OSHA laws, regulations, and related documents at the national and local jurisdictional levels.
  • Evaluation, implementation, and management of EHS Auditing compliance.
  • EHS Auditing standards against which management systems and compliance audits may be conducted.
  • EHS Auditing management systems and compliance audit procedures, processes, and techniques.
  • Principles of EHS Auditing compliance and compliance implementation.

You must submit a Statement of Formal Training Form providing evidence of at least 40 hours of training in your specialty area within three years of certification. CPEA Specialty Areas: Formal Training and Experience Requirements at the beginning of this document list specific requirements.

CPEA Specialty Exams  Formal Training Requirement with Three Years of Certification
Environmental Compliance Forty (40) hours in relevant elements of Environmental Compliance.
Health & Safety Forty (40) hours in relevant elements of Health & Safety.
Management Systems Forty (40) hours in relevant elements of Management Systems.

 

Experience Requirements

You must document meeting work experience requirements using the Statement of Work Experience Form. To be eligible for the examination, you must have verifiable professional practice experience for a minimum of four years in one or more of the four specialty areas: 1) Environmental Compliance, 2) Health and Safety, and 3) Management Systems.

You must also be engaged in active practice at the time of application. If your EHS auditing career has been interrupted for one year or less (because of unemployment, medical leave, or so on), we will consider you to be “in practice” for up to one year following your last position for the purpose of determining examination eligibility. Any time outside of employment, however, cannot be counted toward experience credit.

Professional-Level Experience

To be recognized as “professional-level” work acceptable to the Board, your experience must meet the following four criteria:

  • Independence of actions. This relates to the amount of planning, self-direction, decision-making, and autonomy involved in your work experience.
  • Depth of work. This relates to the extent to which your work experience requires data-gathering, analysis, and interpretation.
  • Level of interaction. This relates to the degree to which you interact with a broad spectrum of contacts, including decision-makers.
  • Responsibility for work outcome. This relates to accuracy and the extent to which you are held accountable for your work and decisions.
  Avoid Investigations about the Validity of Your References and Documents: When references from different people have identical wording, they will be investigated to determine who actually prepared the reference. This can cause delays that may cause you to be prevented from taking the exam or being blocked permanently if you are found to have prepared the content of the reference. Sometimes, your supervisors and colleagues who are providing your references may need a memory jog about the work that you have done for them. Provide it verbally, not in writing or from a written job description, so that they are not tempted to cut and paste. Make sure that what you tell them is unique to the job that you did to avoid giving exactly the same information to other references and employers.  

Ineligible Professional Experiences:  The following do not count toward the work experience requirement:

  • Pre-professional level experience
  • Courses or research done for academic credit
  • Teaching course content that is pre-professional level

Professional References

Individuals wishing to apply for an EPI designation must provide three references from environmental professional.  Applicants for the EPI must minimally have references submitted from three environmental professionals who are familiar with your academic abilities and achievements such as professors from your degree program. Applicants for the EPI who also have actual environmental work experience are encouraged to obtain references from supervisors or others who are familiar with your environmental work.

Each reference must be provided on the Board’s QEP Professional Reference Questionnaire Form (PRQ), have a hand-written signature (not a typed or script font) or a digital signature, and be prepared only by the person giving the reference. This form can be found on the BGC website in the QEP Documents & Forms section.

Avoid Investigations about the Validity of Your References and Documents: When references from different people have identical wording, they will be investigated to determine who actually prepared the reference. This may cause you to be prevented from taking the exam or being blocked permanently if you are found to have prepared the content of the reference. Sometimes, your supervisors and colleagues who are providing your references may need a memory jog about the work that you have done for them. Provide it verbally, not in writing or from a written job description, so that they are not tempted to cut and paste. Make sure that what you tell them what was unique to the acheivements that  you areasking them to base their reference on  and avoid giving exactly the same information to others that you are requesting references from.

CPEA Candidate Handbook