Approximately 10% to 15% of applications are randomly selected for audit by the PMI. Once your application has been approved, PMI will send an authorization letter, allowing you to schedule your exam. Once the authorization letter is received, you have one year to take the exam.

One of the main elements of the application is the Work Experience. To expedite the calculation of the detailed breakout of your work experience hours by category, use an Excel spreadsheet. If you do not have a current and complete list of the projects you have worked on over the prior five years or so, start with your resume and list all the projects you have worked on along with their date ranges. Once you have filled in all the gaps of time, estimate the number of hours per week you spent on each project, and then extend that to the number of hours per month. Multiply the monthly hours by the number of months to get your total hours worked on a project. If during a certain period you worked on several projects at the same time, estimate the percent of time spent on each project. Let Excel then calculate the number of hours per project and per phase (process group). Tweak the percentages and let Excel provide you with the individual numbers that you will input into the online PMI application. The PMI online system will add up the total hours on each project and will give you a summary.

All this might become time-consuming and not add any value to your PMP Exam preparation, and this is where our PMP Work Experience Calculator Excel spreadsheet will come in handy:

You will receive this Excel sheet for free in our Members Area if you purchase any of our products priced above $50.00.

You can also purchase it for only $10, saving yourself a lot of time on your PMI application:

(Please allow up to 6h before receiving the spreadsheet by email)

Before you enter your numbers to your online PMI application, make sure your estimate of hours truly indicate the hours spent on the project, not just at work. For example, if you are lucky enough to only work 40 hours per week, it is not realistic to assume all 40 hours were spent on one  project, as some time will be spent on administrative tasks, other meetings, personal issues, etc.

Finally, if you have a university degree, PMI states that experience should be gained over a minimum of three years and a maximum of six years. In other words, you cannot state that you have 5,000 hours of experience gathered in two years. Make sure your earliest start date is at least 3 years old !

Your status at the time you begin the online application process determines the fee that will be charged to take the exam. The fees are as follows:

• $555 Initial Certification Fee (non-member of PMI)

• $405 Initial Certification Fee (member of PMI)  → $150 less !

PMI Membership Fee

• Annual PMI Membership Fee → $119.00

Conclusion: When paying for the PMP exam, PMI members save $150.00. Joining PMI costs $119.00 plus a $10.00 application fee, so if you join, it costs $129.00, but later saves $150.00. Not only is that a good investment, but you also get the benefits that PMI membership provides for one year.
 

The PMI defines a Contact Hour as follows: "One contact hour is equal to one hour of participation in an educational activity". This means that if you sit in a classroom for 60 minutes or you spend 60 minutes online on a project management training you have just earned 1 Contact Hour. To register for the PMP Exam you need to demonstrate that you have earned 35 Contact Hours in Project Management.
 

Not necessarily. Many universities are not Registered Education Provider (R.E.P) but offer excellent Project Management courses. Also many web sites (including ours) offer online project management training without being registered as an R.E.P. You can get your 35 contact hours from various trainings and institutions.
 

Any type of project management training can be counted towards your contact hours for the PMP certification. The training must be related to project management and can include content on project quality, scope, time, cost, human resources, communications, risk, procurement, or integration management. Courses and training sessions offered by one or more of the following education providers apply:

A. PMI Registered Education Providers (R.E.P.s)
B. Courses or programs offered by PMI Component organizations
C. Employer/company-sponsored programs
D. Training companies or consultants
E. Distance-learning companies, including an end of course assessment (exam)
F. University/college academic and continuing education programs

In our case, many of our products (such as PMP Platinum Package or PMP Gold Package) fall under Category E. In other words, the 35 hours of education that you will receive are acceptable by the PMI as 35 Contact Hours, and you will get a Certificate to prove it.
 

It doesn't matter how long ago you received a training. You can claim contact hours for it as long as it was on a project management topic. Here is what the PMI says: "Document all education hours regardless of when they were accrued." This means that if you took an "Introduction to Project Management" course 20 years ago, then you can still claim it. However, it is always best to have some form of documentation or proof of your participation in this course. And most of us don't keep training certificates for this long...  
 

Please note that any form of documentation is helpful. This is because the PMI performs random audits on all PMP applications. We therefore recommend that you use the following rule: If you cannot prove that you have participated in a training it is best that you do NOT claim contact hours for it.

If the course you took was an online course, then the PMI requires "an end of course assessment". This usually means, that the online training company will ask you to take an online test and then you will receive or can download a certificate. That's what happens with most of our courses.

If the course was a classroom course, then we recommend that you have some form of proof that you did indeed participate in the course like: invoice, course curriculum, certificate of attendance or any other document that will satisfactorily show that you were there.

 

Note: PDU stands for Professional Development Unit.

Technically they are not the same, but if you are preparing for the PMP Exam you can "think" of them as being the same. Here is the difference:

• You need "Contact Hours" before you apply for the PMP Exam.

• You will need "PDU"s after you have passed the PMP Exam in order to keep your PMP certification going.

After passing the PMP Exam, certified Project Managers must demonstrate commitment to the profession by accumulating 60 Professional Development Units (PDUs) over a 3-year period beginning with the first full calendar year after passing the exam.

Note: We offer hundreds of online courses which can account for your PDUs. Click below to see a list of our PMI approved courses for earning PDUs: