What Is A CO-ME?

What Is a CO-ME, Exactly?

CO-ME stands for the Colorado Master Electrician License Exam - the computer-based test that licensed journeyman electricians in Colorado must pass before they can apply for a master electrician license through the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA). It is not a certificate program, a voluntary credential, or a national designation. It is a state licensing exam tied directly to Colorado's electrical statutes and administrative rules, and passing it is one required step among several on the path to becoming a licensed master electrician in the state.

If you've searched other pages on this topic, you may have seen slightly different framings. This page and the rest of our CO-ME Certification overview stick strictly to the Colorado electrical licensing context - the only meaning that matters if you're trying to work as a master electrician in Colorado.

Who Oversees the CO-ME and Who Administers It

The Colorado State Electrical Board, operating under DORA, sets the licensing rules and eligibility requirements for master electricians in Colorado. The actual exam - scheduling, delivery, scoring, and the published candidate bulletin - is handled by PSI Services LLC, a third-party testing vendor used by many state licensing boards.

This division of labor matters practically:

• DORA determines who is eligible to sit for the exam (experience hours, education pathway, application paperwork) and issues the license once all requirements are met.
• PSI runs the test centers, publishes the code references in effect, and reports your pass/fail result.

The current PSI candidate bulletin was updated June 18, 2026, and it specifies that NEC 2026 becomes the code edition referenced on the exam effective August 1, 2026. If you're studying close to that transition date, confirm which code edition your test date falls under - studying the wrong NEC year is one of the most avoidable mistakes a candidate can make.

Exam Format: Questions, Time, and Scoring

The CO-ME is a computer-based, multiple-choice exam. Here's the structure exactly as PSI administers it:

• 90 scored questions in 240 minutes (this is the exam line - the portion that counts toward your result).
• Up to 10 additional unscored questions, with 30 extra minutes allotted for them. These are typically pretest items PSI is evaluating for future exams, and they're mixed in without being labeled.
• Passing requires 70% correct, or 63 of the 90 scored questions - calculated across the entire exam, not as separate cutoffs per domain.

That last point is worth sitting with. Because there's no per-domain passing threshold, you could theoretically miss more questions in a smaller domain and still pass, as long as your overall score clears 63 correct. For the exact mechanics and why this matters for how you allocate study time, see CO-ME Passing Score 2026: Exactly What You Need to Pass.

Reference Materials and Testing Conditions

The test center supplies your copy of the NEC and a formula reference page - you cannot bring your own book, tabs, or notes. The supplied NEC cannot be written in, highlighted, underlined, or indexed, which means your ability to navigate the code by memory and by table of contents is a real, tested skill, not just background knowledge. An onscreen calculator is provided for the calculation-heavy questions.

This "clean book" condition is a major reason candidates underestimate the exam. Knowing an NEC article exists is different from finding it in an unmarked book under time pressure. How Hard Is the CO-ME Exam? Complete Difficulty Guide 2026 goes deeper into how this affects perceived difficulty.

Fees

The initial examination fee is $78. If you don't pass and need to retest, the fee is $73. These are the PSI examination fees only - they're separate from any DORA application or licensing fees you'll pay when you submit your master license application. A full breakdown of every cost in the process is covered in CO-ME Certification Cost 2026: Complete Pricing Breakdown.

The 13 Domains a CO-ME Candidate Must Master

The CO-ME exam blueprint is organized into 13 content domains, each with its own share of the 90 scored questions. Here's the official scored-item allocation, in domain order:

Two domains dominate the exam. Grounding and Bonding is the single largest domain at 14 questions, followed closely by Services, Feeders, and Branch Circuits at 11. Together, these two domains alone account for roughly 28% of your scored questions - more than any other pairing on the exam.

The remaining domains - including Special Occupancies, Special Equipment, and Electrical Calculations, each carrying 9 questions - round out a substantial chunk of the exam and shouldn't be treated as afterthoughts just because no single one matches Grounding and Bonding's weight. A full breakdown of what each of the 13 domains actually tests, with subtopics and NEC article cross-references, is available in CO-ME Exam Domains 2026: Complete Guide to All 13 Content Areas.

Getting to the Exam: Experience and Education Routes

You don't just register and sit for the CO-ME whenever you like - Colorado requires you to meet eligibility criteria first, and DORA verifies this before you're approved to schedule your exam date through PSI.

Experience-Based Pathway

The traditional route requires 10,000 hours of experience over at least five years, working beyond standard journeyman-level tasks. Specifically, this experience must include planning, layout, and supervision work - not just installation and maintenance. This is the distinction DORA uses to separate journeyman-level experience from master-level readiness.

Education-Based Pathways

Colorado also recognizes alternative pathways for candidates with qualifying academic backgrounds:

• Graduates of an accredited electrical engineering program
• Graduates of approved trade schools or community college electrical programs

Whichever pathway applies to you, you'll need to submit employer or master-level experience verification, along with any required education transcripts, as part of your application. A full checklist of documentation and qualifying criteria is laid out in CO-ME Requirements 2026: Eligibility, Prerequisites & How to Qualify.

After You Pass: License, Renewal, and Contractor Registration

Passing the CO-ME is a milestone, not the finish line. Once you pass, you still submit your DORA application with your experience verification and/or education transcripts to actually receive your master electrician license.

Once licensed, active master electrician licenses in Colorado renew every three years. Renewal requires 24 continuing-education hours, with a few specific rules:

• At least 4 hours must cover NEC code changes
• No more than 4 hours may count toward safety topics
• The first renewal after a license is issued by examination is exempt from the CE requirement

You're also expected to retain your continuing-education records for seven years, in case of an audit.

One more distinction worth knowing early: an individual master electrician license is separate from electrical contractor registration. Holding your master license qualifies you to do the work and supervise others, but registering a contracting business is a distinct administrative step with its own requirements.

Who Actually Needs a CO-ME

The CO-ME matters to a fairly specific group of people:

• Licensed journeyman electricians in Colorado who want to advance to master status, take on supervisory roles, or eventually run their own electrical contracting business.
• Electrical engineering or approved trade-program graduates pursuing an education-based pathway toward master licensure.
• Employers and contracting companies that require a master-licensed electrician on staff to pull permits, supervise journeymen, and sign off on installations under Colorado law.

If you're weighing whether pursuing this license is worth the time and cost relative to staying at journeyman level, Is the CO-ME Certification Worth It? Complete ROI Analysis 2026 walks through the tradeoffs. For a sense of the kinds of roles that typically require or prefer a master license, see CO-ME Jobs.

Preparing for the CO-ME on a Domain-Weighted Schedule

Because the CO-ME's 90 scored questions are distributed unevenly across 13 domains, an efficient study plan mirrors that weighting rather than spending equal time on every domain. Spaced repetition and timed practice sets are useful techniques here, but they only pay off when applied to the right material at the right time.

Since there's no per-domain passing minimum, this weighting strategy isn't about ignoring smaller domains - it's about making sure your strongest scores land in the domains with the most questions. For a structured week-by-week plan built specifically around this scoring model, see the CO-ME Study Guide 2026: How to Pass on Your First Attempt. You can also build test-day comfort with an unmarked code book by practicing with realistic, domain-weighted questions on our CO-ME practice test platform.

Frequently Asked Questions