Plumber licensing in North Dakota

North Dakota names three reciprocal states — Minnesota, Montana, and South Dakota — with the terms set per partner. A South Dakota journeyman transfers if you are still a South Dakota resident; South Dakota's contractor class maps to the North Dakota master. A Minnesota journeyman needs the license held a year and Minnesota residency; a Minnesota master needs the year but no residency.

Montana is level-capped: journeyman or master, you receive a North Dakota journeyman only. Every route wants a Certificate of Endorsement from your home board — a copy of your license is not accepted. Fees run $150 journeyman, $250 master, all-in. From a fourth state you are not walled out: two discretionary statutes let the board license without examination — one requires your state to reciprocate back, the other (two years' practice) does not — neither is advertised, so ask for them by statute number:

43-18-13.1 and 43-51-06.

North Dakota has more interim machinery than it advertises. The best short-assignment tool anywhere in this packet: on prior written application, an out-of-state plumber may work up to thirty days per year on the home-state license — about $25, and the clock starts when the board approves. A statutory temporary permit (good to December 31) also exists but has no published form; ask for it by number, 43-18-15.

The route that works Monday: start work and register as an apprentice within thirty days — the board may credit your experience into the fourth or fifth year, where apprentices work unsupervised. Military members and spouses do best of all: the board must issue a provisional license, free, and if it sits on a complete application past thirty days the license issues automatically.

The journeyman path is four years and 7,600 apprentice hours under a licensed master, with a 70% pass; the master path is age twenty-one plus two years and 3,400 hours as a licensed journeyman at 80% — and out-of-state journeyman years count, the rule says so in terms. Coming from a place with no license law, the screening-test route takes five years' experience and four affidavits, then an oral-and-written screening plus an inspection report on an installation of your own before you sit the exam.

Exams are $50, and the board administers them itself, at its own times and places — no PSI, no Pearson.

Register with the board within thirty days of starting — hours worked past that date unregistered do not count and put you in violation. The term is four years at 1,900 hours a year, but the board may credit prior experience and trade school (an A average earns double credit per course hour). Years one through three require the immediate presence of a master or journeyman; fourth- and fifth-year apprentices work unsupervised.

The cap is five apprentices per supervisor, and enforcing it is the employer's duty.

The state license is not always the last word — North Dakota expressly lets cities require a municipal license on top. Fargo licenses at the master level only, so a traveling journeyman needs nothing from the city, though his employer does. Grand Forks shows strong signs of a per-worker city journeyman card — check with the city building department before taking work there.

Three regimes, none interchangeable. Your worker license from the Plumbing Board is the personal requirement. The master-in-charge rule is the firm's: a plumbing business in any water-and-sewer locality must keep a licensed master in charge (in towns under a thousand people and in rural areas, a journeyman will do). And jobs over $4,000 require the employer to hold a Secretary of State contractor license, classed by contract value.

An employee on a licensed contractor's payroll needs only the worker credential.