Technical exam day online: eProctor, AssessBank, and the 30 minutes that decide whether your paper gets marked
Your P.Eng technical exam is written by hand, then scanned and uploaded to AssessBank as one PDF within 30 minutes. This is a step-by-step timeline of the online exam process, with the failure mode named at each stage — every one of them fixable weeks in advance, none of them fixable on the day.
Start here: the exam is not over when you stop writing
When writing time ends, you have 30 minutes to scan your handwritten solutions and upload them to AssessBank as one single PDF of 80 MB or less. Uploads are timestamped. After that you cannot replace or modify what you uploaded, and you cannot submit new documents. Emailing them afterwards only helps if you reported a technical issue, with evidence, inside that same window.
That is the part almost nobody rehearses, and the part that quietly decides whether a paper you already wrote gets marked.
Below is a timeline, with the failure mode named at each step, from the shared online session documented by Engineers and Geoscientists BC. Formats, dates and aids are session-specific: treat every detail here as an illustration and open your session's current PDF.
The upload specification at a glance
Weeks before: the account and the email that must match
AssessBank is the exam platform and eProctor Canada the live proctor; EGBC states both services and their servers are hosted in Canada. The sitting is shared — the current Candidate Guide for Online Examinations lists eleven participating regulators.
Failure mode: no eProctor account by the deadline. Create or confirm an eProctor Canada account by the date your session states. For Fall 2026 that was 12 August 2026, and the schedule was blunt: no account by then, and you will not be able to write.
Failure mode: the email does not match. The email on your eProctor account must exactly match the one you registered with your regulator — periods, dashes and underscores included — or your booking cannot be confirmed. Check which address your regulator holds by logging into your regulator account. If you wrote an online technical exam after 2020 you do not need a new account, but you must still confirm the match, and set your time zone while you are there.
You do not book your own proctoring slot: registered candidates are automatically assigned a date, and eProctor emails a confirmation. Older regulator documents describe a two-week self-booking window; that has been superseded, so follow your session's current instructions.
Which exams you write is a separate question, and a place regulators genuinely differ. PEO's FAQ says its candidates choose their exams, across disciplines, and decide which sittings to attend, with unlimited attempts. EGBC's Academic Exam Regulations instead describe topics assigned after an academic assessment, and cap attempts. Do not carry another province's rule across the border.
Scheduling: which date to actually trust
Failure mode: trusting the wrong date. Three traps.
The first is your regulator's payment portal. PEO's FAQ addresses candidates who notice that every exam they purchase shows the same date, and answers plainly that the date displayed in the portal "is for internal use only". It is not your exam date.
The second is assuming a single exam day. Exams in one session span many dates, and a high-volume paper may run over several days.
The third is trusting a schedule you downloaded weeks ago. "Final" is not final: EGBC said the Fall 2026 schedule would be posted by 7 August 2026, but the live PDF was still being revised on 14 September — a week before the session opened. Re-download it close to your date and read the "Updated:" line at the top. If it disagrees with your eProctor confirmation, the Candidate Guide says follow eProctor's time and raise it with eProctor support.
Your AssessBank access is activated roughly a month before the session. Log in once beforehand to confirm your password works; a locked account on exam morning is a self-inflicted wound. Not on the day, though — the Candidate Guide asks candidates not to log into AssessBank within an hour of their start time, because a recently opened session can cause a fault.
On the day, re-download the eProctor application and connect about 30 minutes before your start. Do not begin until your proctor checks you in, then open AssessBank through the link they send inside eProctor's in-app browser: the guide says failing to do so terminates the attempt. There is a 15-minute grace period, after which you keep only the time remaining from your scheduled start.
Desk rules: what may sit in front of you
Failure mode: assuming open book, or assuming a digital copy counts.
If your exam is open book, you may use physical or printed textbooks and notes only; anything needing a digital device is strictly prohibited, so a PDF of a textbook you own in paper is not permitted. Open book is also not blanket permission — individual papers narrow it, commonly to one textbook with notations in the margins but no loose notes and no worked solutions of previous exams.
If your exam is closed book, nothing is permitted except writing instruments and blank paper, unless the item appears on your exam's line in the Exam Formats and List of Aids. The default is the rule to internalise: if you have not been told an exam is open book, assume it is closed book.
You do not have to guess which you are sitting. That aids list, and the CLOSED/OPEN BOOK and AIDS columns of the published schedule, answer it for every exam — find your exam code on that line rather than trusting a prep provider, a forum post, or an earlier version of this page. For Fall 2026 both links on EGBC's status page point at the same PDF. It varies by line:
Calculator rules come as a format number: Format 1 means no calculators permitted; Format 2 means any non-communicating, non-programmable calculator is permitted. A programmable one will not be allowed, and you carry the consequences of writing without a calculator. Some papers narrow this to specific brands, and if yours is not pre-approved you must give its make and model to your regulator and proctor.
Your room and your machine
Failure mode: an environment that cancels your session. The exam is taken on a desktop or laptop with a webcam and microphone; a mobile device or tablet cannot be used to access it. You need one physical monitor, alone in a private room — eProctor's stated minimum is 2.5 Mbps up and down, and a projector or second screen is not permitted. For a larger display the guide says the setting must be "Duplicate", not "Extended". An inadequate environment may result in cancellation.
Two more that catch people: photo ID must be government-issued, valid and physical, because digital IDs are not accepted; and headphones come off before the exam starts. You are recorded throughout, including while you scan and upload.
The end of the exam: scan, combine, upload
Your solutions should carry your full name and regulator system ID, pages numbered in order. Use ink or a dark pencil for sketches and graphical work: the guide warns that regular pencil does not show up well on some scanners, and a marker who cannot read a line cannot award it.
Scan, combine into one PDF, name it "Your Name - Exam Topic", and upload it; if it exceeds 80 MB, compress it first. Use AssessBank's preview to confirm the pages are all there, right way up, legible and in order, then submit. You will get a confirmation email from AssessBank's no-reply address, and your dashboard will show one file uploaded. Check your junk folder. If you scan with your phone, you may not use it to communicate during that window.
The guide recommends practising this on a normal day. Take a stack of rough work — ten pages or so — and run the workflow end to end. OneDrive (iOS and Android) and Notes (iOS only) both combine images into a PDF. Test before the day, not with a proctor watching.
If something genuinely breaks, report it inside the 30 minutes, following your session's Written Solutions Guide: attach the solutions as one PDF (an attachment, not a shared link), explain the problem, and include evidence such as a screenshot. Reports are verified against the video recording.
The limits, stated plainly
Uploaded files cannot be replaced or modified after the exam ends, and emailed solutions are reviewed only where a technical issue was reported with evidence. They will not be accepted because:
you missed scanning or uploading a page; you left off page numbers, your name or your regulator information; you uploaded the wrong document; your file was over the size limit; you would like to send a tidier version; you would like someone to confirm your upload arrived.
Read that as things to get right before you submit.
Afterwards: integrity and results
Exam rules, the Statement of Understanding and misconduct policies apply in full online. Sharing confidential exam content is prohibited, including your own solutions and rough work, and may affect your application for registration.
Results come back as a grade: uploads and copies of questions are not returned and solutions are not provided, so there is no marked script to review — another reason legibility matters here. The shared Candidate Guide says marks are released on a rolling basis, approximately eight weeks after the exam date. How you are told differs: EGBC notifies through your EGBC account and never by telephone, while PEO emails results as they become available. A re-read can be requested within 30 days of notification, through your regulator and for a fee.
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Checked against the live documents on 22 September 2026. Deadlines, formats, aids and fees are session-specific; the Fall 2026 schedule alone was re-stamped "Updated: September 14, 2026" after its "final" posting date. The details above come from the shared session hosted by Engineers and Geoscientists BC, which PEO directs its candidates to. Before your sitting, open your own regulator's current Candidate Guide, aids list and Written Solutions Guide. Where this page and your regulator disagree, your regulator is right.
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 its content or the preparedness it provides. That includes this site.