Certified Passive House Designer / Consultant online exam

Anybody can register for the exam. While it is not mandatory to have attended the Certified Passive House Designer / Consultant course, it is strongly recommended to increase your chance of success. Furthermore, everyone who completes the CPHD/C course will be eligible for the certification guarantee.

Keep in mind, that in order to take part in the exam, you should have a personal PHPP, as required by the PHI.

Even after completing the whole Certified Passive House Designer / Consultant online course, you still don’t pass the exam, the exam guarantee will cover the exam costs for your second exam attempt, i.e. we will cover the costs for the exam ticket for your second attempt.

To qualify for the certification guarantee, you have to complete the whole course and finish all exercises:

• Before the exam, you have to have watched and/or participated in all lectures. If you couldn’t take part in any of the live sessions, you can still qualify for the certification guarantee if you rewatch the recordings of the live session.
• You have to complete all exercises – this means you have to send all exercises to us to check them. Sometimes it happens that some of the exercises are incorrect or incomplete. In this case, we will ask you to remake these exercises and send them to us again. After submitting the revised exercises, you will be eligible for the certification guarantee. 

DISCLAIMER: Any additional costs, apart from the costs for the exam ticket and the accreditation fees, will have to be covered by you.

Both titles are equal in terms of qualification with ref­er­en­ce to the Passive House relevant knowledge. The requirements for attaining this certificate and for renewal are also the same. The only difference between Certified Passive House Designers and Consultants depends on your background, as far as Designers come from highly relevant fields. Consultants, on the other hand, can come from any background. Normally, Passive House Designers work in plan­ning of­fices on the con­crete im­ple­ment­a­tion of the Pass­ive House Stand­ard, while Pass­ive House Con­sult­ants usu­ally con­trib­ute to its dis­sem­in­a­tion through their work as re­search­ers or speak­ers, or as de­cision makers in gov­ern­ment au­thor­it­ies.

A clear classification is not always easy due to the diverse educational qualifications, professions and the legal provisions relating to buildings worldwide. For this reason, the Passive House Institute has specified two possibilities for classification as a “Certified Passive House Designer”:

• Providing proof of an educational qualification which enables you to plan buildings or technical building systems independently. This educational qualification should have reached a certain level (e.g. diploma or bachelor’s degree) and have been attained in a specialized subject that primarily involves the planning of buildings or building services systems.
• Providing proof of membership in an institution, whose members are entitled to provide planning services that are subject to approval by a building authority (e.g. Chamber of Architects).

You qualify for the Designer title if you have the following educational qualification:

• Architect or interior designer
• Civil or timber construction engineer
• Building physicist
• Building and energy technology engineer
• Building contractor
• Master carpenter
• Certified technician for structural engineering, building construction, heating plumbing and ventilation technology or supply technology

If you have the following educational qualification, you qualify for the Consultant title:

• Degree in (analytical) chemistry, electrical engineering, or manufacturing engineering
• Engineering degree in environmental technology and resource management
• Construction industry environmental safety technician
• Environmental engineer
• Gas, plumbing, and ventilation systems technician
• Woodwork technician
• Certified technician for electronics
• Energy consultant
• Architectural draftsman
• Geometrician
• Woodwork technician for window installation
• Managing director
• Property sales manager/estate agent
• Economist

Note: You just have to provide a copy of the proof to your course/ex­am­in­a­tion host or as­sess­ing body. The at­tained Con­sult­ant title can be changed into the De­sign­er title if such proof is only ob­tained and sub­mit­ted later on (e.g. tak­ing an ex­am­in­a­tion dur­ing train­ing). If no proof is sub­mit­ted, the Con­sult­ant title will be gran­ted upon suc­cess­ful qual­i­fic­a­tion.

The Certified Passive House Designer / Consultant certificate is valid for 5 years. After that the certificate can be renewed in two ways:

• By submitting project documentation, it is possible to renew a certificate at any time, even if your certificate has already expired some time ago.
• You can also renew your certificate through credit points for continuing education by attending events, conferences, and additional courses. Here you can check out our courses for which you can get additional credit points to renew your certificate. 

No, these are done on paper. Before the exam we will send you special exam papers which are provided by the PHI, on which you can do all the intermittent calculations and the design exercise. Only the final answers of the calculations are entered online in the platform.

After the regular exam time finishes (after 3,5 hours), you will have to scan all the papers and send them to us. When you register for the exam, you will get access to videos in which we explain the whole exam procedure in detail, including the scanning part.

Note: You don’t need to have a scanner. You can also use your smartphone.

You can bring any printed course material and notes to the exam. Digital materials are not allowed. 

At the Certified Passive House Designer / Consultant online course, we will give you additional resources, such as summaries of all formulas that are covered in the course and summaries of the Passive House requirements which you can also use at the exam.

We also advise you to bring markers or colored pencils for the design exercise, as well as a (scientific) calculator with spare batteries. If you don’t have one, we would recommend you get the Casio fx-991 ES PLUS C.

You can earn the international designation of “Certified Passive House Designer / Consultant” in one of two ways: by taking the Certified Passive House Designer Exam or by submitting project documentation.

If you want to submit project documentation, you have to doc­u­ment a cer­ti­fied Pass­ive House, En­erPHit ret­ro­fit or PHI Low En­ergy Build­ing where you ex­er­cised full re­spons­ib­il­ity for the build­ing design and the pro­ject plan­ning with the PHPP. Sub­mis­sion of a pro­ject doc­u­ment­a­tion can be used to earn or re­new the cer­ti­fic­ate for one per­son per build­ing.

After successfully passing the exam, you will get the Certified Passive House Designer / Consultant certificate issued by the Passive House Institute (PHI) in Germany.

Yes, the exam is officially accredited by the Passive House Institute (PHI).

Also, the Certified Passive House Designer / Consultant title that you will acquire after passing the exam, is accredited and valid worldwide.

Students and iPHA members get a 10% discount.

If you are an iPHA Member, please send an email to team@passivehouseschool.com with a link to your iPHA membership to provide you with a discount code.

If you are a student, please send your proof of enrollment to team@passivehouseschool.com from your student email address.

At the Passive House School we schedule 3-4 exams per year. If for any reason you can’t take part in the exam you registered for, you will be able to take part in a later exam without any additional costs.

You will receive a receipt for your purchase which is tax compliant and can be used for claiming business expenses. For this, you have to enter your business details and VAT number (if applicable) on the checkout and you will receive your receipt via email after enrolling in the exam.

If you live in a country where an invoice is required by law, the platform we use for our checkout process (Teachable) will issue an invoice in PDF format for your purchase. If an invoice is not required by law, you will receive a receipt for your purchase.

The Certified Passive House Designer online course will fully prepare you to successfully pass the exam.

If you already have a lot of knowledge about the Passive House Standard and/or have worked on a Passive House project, we recommend you at least take part in the Passive House Online Exam Preparation module (Module 2). This module will help you prepare to successfully pass the exam.