11-CS-1 Engineering Economics: syllabus, open-book rules, and the interest tables the schedule asks you to bring
In the Fall 2026 session, 11-CS-1 / 98-CS-1 Engineering Economics was an open-book, Format 2 exam whose schedule told candidates to bring compound interest factors tables. Open book means paper only, and not every open-book paper allows the same things — here is what your own schedule row, the published syllabus and the code confusion mean for your sitting.
The logistics, first
If you are sitting this exam shortly, start here. This is how Engineering Economics appeared in the Fall 2026 exam schedule:
That is the Fall 2026 Exam Schedule PDF, stamped Updated: September 14, 2026, hosted by Engineers and Geoscientists BC for the ten regulators sharing the online exam session. On EGBC's status page, "Exam Schedule and Dates" and "Exam Formats and List of Aids" link to the same PDF — the aids list is the schedule. Three cautions before you rely on it.
It is replaced every session. Formats and aids are set per exam, per session, and published only when that schedule goes up. Open the current PDF from EGBC's Status of Online Academic Exams page and read your own row. Fall 2026's answer is not automatically next session's.
"Final" is loose. EGBC said the Fall 2026 final schedule would be posted by 7 August 2026 — yet the copy above was still being revised on 14 September, a week before the session opened. Re-download close to your date and check the "Updated:" line.
It prints no duration. There is no time column. EGBC's Academic Exam Regulations (revision 21 October 2024) say most of its examinations are three hours per session, but that is a general statement, not a figure published for this exam — confirm your sitting's length with your own regulator and your eProctor booking confirmation.
One more piece of the format: EGBC says most of these exams require written solutions — you write by hand, then scan and upload to AssessBank as one PDF of 80 MB or less, within 30 minutes of finishing (Written Solutions Guide). EGBC tells candidates to log in to eProctor 30 minutes early, clear the desk for the proctor's desk scan, and practise with their scanner beforehand.
"Open book" does not mean your laptop
EGBC states that if your exam is open book, you may use only "physical or printed copies of textbooks or notes," and that digital study resources and tools requiring a digital device are strictly prohibited. So the PDF of your textbook on a second screen is out, and so is a spreadsheet of factors. Everything you consult has to be on paper, in the room, before the exam starts.
Open book is not blanket permission, either. EGBC's Academic Exam Regulations allow "any notes, texts or aids desired unless specifically disallowed by the examiner" — and examiners do. Fall 2026 open-book lines narrow it sharply: 07-Bld-A5 Building Science reads "One textbook permitted, no notes, no solutions of pervious exams are allowed." The 11CS1/98CS1 line carried no such restriction that session, asking only for the interest tables — but the restriction, if there is one, lives in your row.
If your exam is closed book, EGBC's status page says you may not use any materials unless they are specifically allowed in the Exam Formats and List of Aids. The regulations add a fallback — "If no advice is received that an examination is 'open book', candidates are to assume that it is 'closed book'" — though the question rarely arises, because the schedule marks every exam Open or Closed.
The room counts too. Those regulations require a private room, a stable high-speed connection, a desktop or laptop with webcam and microphone, and one physical monitor — no projector, and no mobile device or tablet to access the exam. An inadequate environment "may result in cancellation of exam session."
The compound interest factors tables
The instruction assumes you know what these are: tabulated discrete compound interest factors (single payment, uniform series, gradient) indexed by interest rate i and number of periods N, usually printed as appendices in an engineering economics text. The trap is not conceptual. It is logistical.
Nobody hands them to you. EGBC posts a "Reference Materials for Specific Technical Examinations" document to print in advance — but for Fall 2026 it covered 04-BS-07, 16-MEC-B2 and 16-MEC-B3 only, and the Engineering Economics line points to no reference PDF. EGBC never says outright that it will supply nothing; it says candidates should bring them, which makes sourcing and printing your job.
Print the full range of rates and periods your text covers — you cannot interpolate from a file you are not allowed to open. And print before exam day.
11-CS-1, 98-CS-1, 23-CS-1 — and the pattern you must not assume
The same exam carries different codes depending on where you are registered:
The prefix is not difficulty and not the year you write. PEO's pages are headed "PEO Syllabus of Examinations, 2016 Edition" while still listing 11-CS and 04-BS codes, and Engineers Canada renumbers the subject 23-CS-1. An Ontario candidate searching "11-CS-1" and an Alberta one searching "98-CS-1" are looking at the same schedule line.
That pairing is specific to CS-1. The Fall 2026 schedule puts 11CS1/98CS1 on one combined row, but lists 11CS2 and 98CS2 as two separate rows with different titles and different formats — 11CS2 Format 1 and closed, "No calculators nor aids of any kind are allowed"; 98CS2 Format 2 and closed. EGBC says the same in its past-exam archive, about the 98-xxx-xx and 04-xxx-xx pairings listed there: where two codes sit on separate lines they are different examinations that may test different content, and you should "select the exact examination that applies to you, as stated in your official academic examination letter." APEGA calls that document your assessment letter.
Read the code on your own letter, then find that exact code on the current schedule.
What the published syllabus actually covers
PEO publishes the 11-CS-1 description on its discipline exam pages, in blocks:
Foundations — theoretical and conceptual financial project analysis; the types and applications of engineering economic decisions; capital, cash flow and time value of money. Interest mechanics — nominal versus effective interest rates, applied specifically to loans, mortgages and bonds. Comparison methods — present worth analysis, annual equivalent analysis and rate of return analysis, used both to evaluate independent projects and to compare mutually exclusive ones. Decision problems — lease versus buy. After-tax analysis — requiring capital cost allowance (depreciation) and corporate income tax. Financing — methods of financing and capital budgeting. Uncertainty — break-even, sensitivity and risk analyses.
One real difference if you are mapping study time to wording: PEO's 11-CS-1 text explicitly names comparing mutually exclusive projects, while Engineers Canada's 23-CS-1 text goes from independent projects straight to lease-versus-buy. Work from the wording your own regulator publishes.
If you trained outside Canada, budget extra time for the after-tax block. Capital cost allowance is a Canadian tax concept — the mechanism Canadian tax law uses for depreciation, governed by tax rules rather than by whatever depreciation convention your degree taught. The arithmetic will be familiar; the rules generating the cash flows will not.
Study material, honestly
Textbooks. Two official lists exist and they do not match, because one is older. PEO's Complementary Studies suggested text listings, footer dated October 2014, give as primary text Fraser, Jewkes, Bernhardt and Tajima, Global Engineering Economics, fourth edition, 2008. Engineers Canada's current complementary studies syllabus carries the same lineage under later authorship — Fraser, Jewkes, Pirnia and Schmitt, Engineering Economics, Canadian Edition — and recommends the most recent edition. APEGA points engineering candidates to PEO's list, and cautions that exam questions are based on the syllabus description, not on the textbooks.
Past papers. EGBC hosts an archive of past academic exams, with plain limits: the most recent sitting posted is December 2019; exams from 2020 and later are no longer available online; solutions are not available; and past exams should not be your main method of study, because format and content can differ. PEO adds that if no past exam is listed for your code, one does not exist. APEGA provides none and refers candidates to EGBC.
After the result. EGBC does not return exam uploads or copies of exam questions and does not publish solutions; APEGA likewise returns no exams and provides no answers. But do not assume nothing can be done about a mark. EGBC allows a re-read on application within 30 days of results, for a fee, and notes that papers graded 45% to 49% have already been re-read once; APEGA offers a formal re-read for $330. A re-read can move a mark down as well as up.
Before you register
Assigned or chosen depends on your regulator. APEGA's Board of Examiners names the exact exam codes in the assessment letter it mails you. PEO assigns the structure — two Group A exams, one Group B, one Complementary Studies — then states that candidates may select technical exams from any engineering discipline. Either way, know what you owe before you pay. One policy to read before paying. PEO's Good Performance policy lets new exam registrants write two technical exams in their first sitting instead of four — two from Group A, or one from Group A and one from Group B, both from the same discipline. Score at least 65% on both and PEO waives the remaining two, which would include the CS exam. The waiver takes effect only once PEO has your WES course-by-course verification (or transcript, for US institutions), and those who have previously written PEO technical exams do not qualify. PEO also states that exam purchases are final, non-refundable and not transferable between sittings. Pass mark. PEO, APEGA and EGBC each state 50%. Deadlines run months ahead. PEO's Spring/Summer 2027 registration opens 4 January 2027 with a 29 January 2027 deadline; APEGA lists an April–June 2027 sitting with the same deadline. EGBC publishes its own.
Note the combination: PEO's Spring/Summer 2027 document (last updated 10 September 2026) lists 11-CS-1 as an offered exam but carries no format, open-book or aids information, pointing candidates to EGBC's status page instead. The subject list publishes far in advance; the rules do not.
Verified as of 22 September 2026
All of this was checked on 22 September 2026 against the regulator sources linked here. Formats, aids, schedules and deadlines are republished every session and differ between regulators — confirm every detail against your own regulator and the current schedule before you sit. This page is not a substitute for your own examination letter.
Engineers and Geoscientists BC and the partnering regulators state that they do not endorse and are not affiliated with any third-party exam preparatory service, and give no guarantee as to the appropriateness of the content or the preparedness it provides. That applies to us: ExamsSolutions sells a course for 11-CS-1 at CAD $199 with 180 days of access, and no regulator endorses it.