Alaska Mechanical Continuing Education

If you work as an HVAC professional in the state of Alaska, you’re already familiar with the Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development’s Division of Corporations, Business, and Professional Licensing. That was the state agency that issued your mechanical administrator license, the proper licensure to do HVAC work throughout the state. 

Just getting that mechanical license isn’t enough, though. You also need to maintain it, and that means doing certain things, like taking a specific number of continuing education (CE) hours and submitting your renewal application every other year.

If you want to see a rundown of everything you need to do to meet your Alaska HVAC CE requirement and renew your mechanical administrators license, you’ve come to the right place.  

Continuing education for AK mechanical administrators

The state requires continuing education in order to make sure that you’re continually competent. It’s their way of ensuring optimal quality and safety for the consumer. 

To that end, they require that all mechanical administrators take eight hours of CE in order to renew their licenses. Your CE, along with your renewal application, is due before December 31 of every odd-numbered year. This is true for the following license designations:

• Heating, Cooling, and Process Piping (HCPP)

• Mechanical Systems Temperature Control (CNTL)

• Residential HVAC (RHVC)

• Residential Plumbing and Hydronic Heating (RPHH)

• Unlimited Commercial and Industrial Plumbing (UCIP)

• Unlimited HVAC/Sheet Metal (UHVCS)

• Unlimited Refrigeration (UR)

The easiest way to make sure that your hours count is to take them from an education provider that has been approved by the Division. As an example, you can scroll to the bottom of this page to see our approval letter from the state. You can also get an individual study program approved by the Division, but it’s extra work. 

Whichever path you choose, make sure you’re taking course hours that focus on the most currently adopted version of the International Mechanical Code (IMC). 

If you’re also a licensed plumber, you need eight additional hours (for 16 total), with eight IMC hours and eight hours on the latest state-adopted version of the Uniform Plumbing Code (UPC). 

Fortunately, either way, you can take your Alaska mechanical administrator CE online, making things a little easier for yourself. 

Once you finish your CE, you can either submit your renewal application in the mail online (the Division publishes the link to the printable PDF under the “It’s Time to Renew Your License!” section of this page) or online. This guide walks you through getting started on the online MY LICENSE portal. 

Proving your CE hours

Right now, you’ll need to list out the course information for any courses you completed to get your CE hours. 

But the state recently proposed making some changes to the mechanical licensing regulations. One of those changes would remove the requirement to list each individual CE course you completed on your renewal application. 

If that change goes through, don’t assume you can skip the CE and just tell the state you’ve completed it. Currently and moving forward, the Division randomly audits 10% of all licensees. If you get chosen for the random audit, you’ll get a letter in the mail. At that point, you’ll be required to submit copies of your course completion certificates. 

Also, just because you get audited one renewal cycle, don’t assume you’re off the hook the next one. The audited licensees get randomly chosen by a computer, meaning you could theoretically get named for an audit in back-to-back renewal cycles. 

To ensure an audit never poses a problem for you, the state advises all licensees to hang onto their CE certificates of completion for at least four years.