Massachusetts licenses stationary engineers and firemen through the Department of Fire Services’ Boiler and Pressure Vessel Program, under General Laws chapter 146, section 49. Engineer licences run First Class for any steam plant, Second Class with engines to one hundred fifty horsepower, and Third Class by boiler aggregate and fuel; fireman licences run First and Second Class, and special licences serve a single named plant. Licensing requires written and oral examinations. This program covers the written examination only. Licences run five years with thirty hours of continuing education.
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What these licences authorize
Massachusetts keeps the oldest vocabulary in this family: engineers and firemen, licensed under General Laws chapter 146 by the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Program of the Department of Fire Services. The licence classes are set by section 49. An engineer’s licence of the First Class authorizes its holder to have charge of and operate any steam plant. Second Class authorizes charge of and operation of boilers, and charge of and operation of engines no one of which exceeds one hundred fifty horsepower — or operation of a First Class plant under the engineer in direct charge. Third Class authorizes charge of boilers not exceeding, in the aggregate, one hundred fifty horsepower when solid fuel is burned, or five hundred horsepower when steam is generated by liquid or gaseous fuel, electricity, atomic energy, or any other heat source, with engines not exceeding fifty horsepower each — or operation of a Second Class plant under the engineer in direct charge.
Beside the engineers stand the firemen, the boiler-side licence line: First Class firemen may have charge of and operate any boilers where the safety valves are set to blow at not more than twenty-five pounds to the square inch, or operate high-pressure boilers under the engineer or fireman in direct charge; Second Class firemen operate boilers under the engineer or fireman in direct charge. And beside both stand the special licences, plant-specific and examined for one plant only. One fence governs this whole page and must not be blurred: Massachusetts licensing for firemen and engineers requires passing written and oral examinations, and the special licences are examined orally at the plant. PassProfessor preparation covers the written examination only — it offers no preparation for the oral examination, and candidates should plan for both components from the start.
The examination at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Licences | Engineer — First, Second, and Third Class; Fireman — First and Second Class; Special licences to have charge of, or to operate, a particular steam plant (Massachusetts) |
| Regulator | Boiler and Pressure Vessel (BPV) Program, Massachusetts Department of Fire Services |
| Legal basis | Massachusetts General Laws chapter 146, sections 49 (classes) and 57 (special licences) |
| First Class Engineer | Have charge of and operate any steam plant |
| Second Class Engineer | Charge of and operation of boilers, and engines no one of which exceeds 150 horsepower; or operate a First Class plant under the engineer in direct charge |
| Third Class Engineer | Boilers not exceeding in the aggregate 150 horsepower when solid fuel is burned, or 500 horsepower when steam is generated by liquid or gaseous fuel, electric, atomic, or other heat; engines not exceeding 50 horsepower each; or operate a Second Class plant under the engineer in direct charge |
| First Class Fireman | Charge of and operation of any boilers whose safety valves are set to blow at not more than 25 psi, or operate high-pressure boilers under the engineer or fireman in direct charge |
| Second Class Fireman | Operate any boilers under the engineer or fireman in direct charge |
| Special licences | For one particular steam plant, on the plant owner’s or user’s signed written request; no engine over 50 horsepower and boilers not over 250 horsepower in the aggregate; examined orally at the work site by a district engineering inspector; fee $100 |
| Examinations | Fireman and Engineer licences require passing written AND oral examinations. This PassProfessor program covers the written examination only |
| Basic requirements (Department page) | United States citizenship (except for the Second Class Fireman licence); eighteen years of age or older; pass the written and oral exams |
| Application fee | The Department lists $150 each for First and Second Class Engineer applications; the Special licence application fee is $100 (Department fee tables) |
| Licence term and renewal | Five years; thirty hours of continuing education during the term to renew (six hours for special licence holders); no examination for renewal |
| Examination calendar | The BPV Program publishes a monthly Fireman and Engineer examination schedule with application deadlines, at Stow and Springfield |
| Distinct credential | This licence family is the stationary engineer / boiler operator family. It is not the Massachusetts Hoisting Engineer licence, which is a separate credential for hoisting machinery |
The classes of chapter 146
The classes below follow section 49’s text. Note the pattern the senior classes carry: each also authorizes operating the class above under its engineer in direct charge — the statute’s built-in apprenticeship of classes.
First Class Engineer — any steam plant
The unlimited licence of the Massachusetts system: charge of and operation of any steam plant, of any size, fuel, or pressure the plant lawfully runs. The First Class engineer is the engineer in direct charge whom the other classes’ texts keep referencing — the person under whom Second Class engineers operate First Class plants and under whom firemen operate high-pressure boilers. Application for the First and Second Class Engineer licences is listed by the Department at one hundred fifty dollars each, and the licence, once earned through the written and oral examinations, runs five years.
Second Class Engineer — engines to 150 horsepower
Second Class authorizes charge of and operation of a boiler or boilers, and charge of and operation of engines no one of which exceeds one hundred fifty horsepower. Its second limb is the promotional one: the Second Class holder may operate a First Class plant under the engineer in direct charge of it — serving in the unlimited plant, under its chief, without yet holding its licence. The Department lists the Second Class Engineer application at one hundred fifty dollars, on the same single application form used for all fireman and engineer classes.
Third Class Engineer — the fuel-sensitive class
Third Class is the class whose ceiling moves with the fuel: boilers not exceeding, in the aggregate, one hundred fifty horsepower when solid fuel is burned, or five hundred horsepower when steam is generated by liquid or gaseous fuel, electric or atomic energy, or any other source of heat — with engines not exceeding fifty horsepower each. The same holder may operate a Second Class plant under its engineer in direct charge. The fuel distinction is a survival of the hand-fired era written into permanent law: the solid-fuel plant’s ceiling is the lower because its firing demands more of the person in charge, and the modern fuels’ higher ceiling reflects the automatic firing that came with them.
Firemen — First and Second Class
The fireman line licenses the boiler side of the room. First Class: charge of and operation of any boilers where the safety valves are set to blow at a pressure not exceeding twenty-five pounds to the square inch — the low-pressure heating boiler world — or operation of high-pressure boilers under the engineer or fireman in direct charge. Second Class: operation of any boilers under the engineer or fireman in direct charge, the entry operating licence. The Department’s requirements page notes the citizenship condition relaxes for exactly one licence in the family: the Second Class Fireman licence is the exception to the United States citizenship requirement.
Special licences — one plant only
The special licence is the system’s plant-specific instrument: a person who desires to have charge of, or to operate, one particular steam plant may be examined as to competence for that service and no other, on filing a written request signed by the plant’s owner or user. The limits are statutory: no engine over fifty horsepower, and boilers not exceeding two hundred fifty horsepower in the aggregate. The Department’s process is personal — a district engineering inspector contacts the applicant and arranges the oral examination at the work site — and the fee is one hundred dollars. These licences serve the dry-cleaning and small-manufacturing plants the Department names, and they renew on six hours of continuing education rather than thirty.
Who this licence serves
The Massachusetts classes serve the steam-plant workforce of the Commonwealth’s older industrial and institutional building stock: mill and manufacturing plants, hospital and campus boiler rooms, municipal buildings, and the small steam users — laundries, dry cleaners, small manufacturers — whom the special licences exist to serve. The engineer/fireman vocabulary maps onto real boiler-room organization: the engineer in charge, the licensed hands under that charge, and the fireman line running the boilers themselves.
The Department of Fire Services setting matters practically: this is a fire-safety agency’s licensing program, run on a published monthly examination calendar with application deadlines, out of the BPV Program’s Stow office with examinations also at Springfield — a rhythm a candidate plans around the way one plans around any state board’s calendar.
The route, in order
The route begins on a single application form — the Department uses the same form for all classes of fireman and engineer licences — submitted with the fee and attachments to the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Program at the Department of Fire Services in Stow. The basic requirements the Department states are United States citizenship (except for the Second Class Fireman licence), age eighteen or older, and passing the examinations. On a complete application, the Department registers the candidate for the next examination; an application arriving after that examination’s deadline registers for the following one.
Then the examinations — written and oral, both required for the fireman and engineer licences. This program prepares candidates for the written examination only; the oral examination is the Department’s own assessment, and no preparation offered here reaches it. The licence that follows runs five years, renewed on thirty hours of continuing education completed during the term, with no examination for renewal. The special licences follow their separate track: owner-signed request, one hundred dollar fee, the inspector’s oral examination at the plant, five-year validity, six hours of continuing education.
What makes this examination demanding
The first demand is the two-component structure itself. A candidate who prepares only for paper will meet an oral examination unprepared in kind, whatever their knowledge: the Department examines the same competence in two forms, and this program’s half of the preparation — the written — must be scheduled alongside the candidate’s own preparation for speaking the work: procedures narrated, plant decisions defended aloud. This page states the boundary plainly so that nobody mistakes written preparation for the whole licence.
The second demand is the statute’s texture. Section 49’s classes turn on exact figures with conditions attached — one hundred fifty horsepower of engine at Second Class; the Third Class aggregate that changes with the fuel burned; the fireman’s twenty-five-pound safety-valve line; the special licence’s fifty-horsepower engine and two-hundred-fifty-horsepower aggregate caps. Candidates who learn the figures without their conditions hold half-answers, and the classes are examined as written.
The credential at work
In Massachusetts, the class is the career: the boiler room’s organization chart is written in the licence classes, from Second Class fireman up through the engineer in direct charge of the unlimited plant. Employers in the Commonwealth’s institutional and industrial plants staff against section 49 because the law staffs against it — the person in charge of a plant must hold the class the plant requires — and the five-year licence with its continuing-education renewal keeps the workforce’s credentials current on a single, legible cycle.
What the PassProfessor program will cover
Practice in the examination’s own shape. Massachusetts fireman and engineer licensing pairs a written examination with an oral examination. The program in the works practises for the written examination only: single-best-answer items and timed sets built on chapter 146’s classes — their horsepower figures, fuel conditions, and pressure lines — and on the boiler and steam-plant knowledge the classes authorize. It offers no preparation for the oral examination, and says so wherever the licence is described.
Written from the primary sources. The program is written from General Laws chapter 146, section 49 and the Department of Fire Services’ BPV licensing pages — the class texts, the Department’s requirements, fees, and examination calendar. Where Massachusetts’s engineer-and-fireman vocabulary differs from other states’ grade systems, the program teaches the Massachusetts classes in their own terms and names the difference.
The whole candidate, not only the test-taker. Around the item practice, the program carries the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Program route as the authority publishes it — the Department’s written examination — one component of a written-and-oral licensing route this program covers only in its written half — because a written examination is a means to a licence, and candidates plan better when the destination is mapped.
Preparation only. This is preparation for the written examination in the Massachusetts fireman and engineer licensing route. It offers no preparation for the oral examination the route also requires. PassProfessor is not affiliated with the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services or its Boiler and Pressure Vessel Program, no completion of this program is reported to the Department, and nothing in the program substitutes for any step in the licensing process.
Tell me when enrollment opens. The Massachusetts Stationary Engineer and Fireman program is in the works and enrollment is not yet open. Leave an email address and PassProfessor will write to you when the program is ready — and only about this program. No date is promised, because the program will open when it meets the standard described above, not before.
Frequently asked questions
Who licenses stationary engineers in Massachusetts?
The Boiler and Pressure Vessel Program of the Department of Fire Services, under Massachusetts General Laws chapter 146. The licence titles are Engineer (First, Second, and Third Class) and Fireman (First and Second Class), plus plant-specific special licences.
Does this program cover the whole licensing examination?
No — and this matters. Massachusetts fireman and engineer licensing requires passing written and oral examinations. This program covers the written examination only and offers no preparation for the oral examination.
What may a First Class Engineer do?
Have charge of and operate any steam plant — the unlimited class of the Massachusetts system.
What is the Third Class ceiling?
Boilers not exceeding, in the aggregate, 150 horsepower when solid fuel is burned, or 500 horsepower when steam is generated by liquid or gaseous fuel, electric, atomic, or other heat — with engines not exceeding 50 horsepower each.
What is a First Class Fireman licensed for?
Charge of and operation of any boilers whose safety valves are set to blow at not more than 25 psi, or operation of high-pressure boilers under the engineer or fireman in direct charge.
What is a special licence?
A licence to have charge of, or to operate, one particular steam plant, granted on the plant owner’s or user’s signed written request after an oral examination at the plant by a district engineering inspector. Limits: no engine over 50 horsepower, boilers not over 250 horsepower in the aggregate. The Department’s fee is $100.
What are the Department’s basic requirements?
United States citizenship — except for the Second Class Fireman licence — age eighteen or older, and passing the written and oral examinations, per the Department’s application page.
How much is the engineer application?
The Department lists $150 each for the First and Second Class Engineer applications. The special licence application fee is $100.
How long does the licence last, and what does renewal take?
Five years. Renewal requires thirty hours of continuing education completed during the licence term — six hours for special licence holders — and no examination.
Is this the Massachusetts Hoisting Engineer licence?
No. Hoisting Engineer is a different Massachusetts credential, for hoisting machinery, with its own licence and examination. This page concerns the stationary engineer and fireman licences for steam plant operation.