What's on the ICC CN Fire Alarm Plans Examiner Exam? 7 Areas
A fifth of this exam is arithmetic: battery sizing, voltage drop and conduit fill. The full published domain weighting.
Contents
What's on the ICC CN Fire Alarm Plans Examiner Exam? 7 Areas
The format
| Questions | 60 |
| Time | 2 hours |
| Book policy | Open - you bring your own references |
| Delivery | ICC PRONTO remote proctoring, or a Pearson VUE test centre |
The seven domains, by weight
| Domain | Weight | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation / Plan Reading | 34% | NFPA 72 Ch. 7, IBC/IFC |
| Control Panel, Wiring and Equipment | 25% | NFPA 72 Ch. 10 and 12, NEC |
| Calculations | 20% | NFPA 72 10.6, NEC Art. 760 |
| Notification Appliances | 6% | NFPA 72 Ch. 18 |
| Initiating Devices | 5% | NFPA 72 Ch. 17 |
| Functional Control Interfaces | 5% | NFPA 72 Ch. 21 |
| General Administration | 5% | IFC, IBC |
One fifth of the exam is arithmetic
ICC publishes Calculations as its own domain worth 20%. That is twelve questions of secondary-power battery sizing, voltage drop and conduit fill, the work most candidates skim because it feels like design rather than review.
It is not optional and it is not incidental. A plans examiner re-performs the submitted calculation and checks it. If you only prepare to read a battery calc rather than run one, you are leaving twelve points on the table.
Documentation and plan reading is the other third
Thirty-four percent covers shop drawings, the input/output matrix, the record of completion and the owner's manual: what must appear on a submittal for it to be reviewable at all. NFPA 72 Chapter 7 is short, and it is worth reading end to end.
Device knowledge is a small slice
Initiating devices and notification appliances together are 11%. On the CA inspector exam the same two domains are 41%. Same code, very different exam, so do not study CN from CA material.
Where to start
Work the heaviest domain first and check yourself against the weighting, not against how interesting the material is. The published percentages are the closest thing to an answer key you get before exam day.
Our free 10-question practice test draws from the same weighted pool, so the mix you see is the mix the exam uses.
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