CCO’s Drill Rig Operator program certifies anchor and micropile rig operators under the designation AMP: a Drill Rig Operator Core written examination of 90 questions in 90 minutes and an AMP Specialty written examination of 45 questions in 45 minutes, with a corresponding practical examination, five-year certification, and all examinations completed inside a 12-month window. CCO publishes no Auger Boring Machine designation, and AMP in CCO’s system does not stand for one. PassProfessor’s program for this slot is in the works for the written examinations CCO actually publishes.
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This guide covers the Anchor/Micropile Drill Rig Operator (AMP) credential end to end: what the credential authorises, the written examination that gates it, the components around that examination — including, where this credential has one, the practical component PassProfessor does not cover — and a preparation plan organised on the published outline. It follows the issuing body’s own publications throughout, and where those publications are silent on a figure candidates commonly ask for, the guide reports the silence rather than filling it.
The companion program is in the works, built on the same primary documents this guide follows. Join the notify list and you will be emailed when enrollment opens. Until then, this guide gives preparation a structure worth starting now, because a written examination is never only an examination: it sits inside a route — eligibility, companion requirements, windows, and validity — and candidates who understand the whole route prepare for the sitting itself with better judgment about what matters.
The credential at a glance
| Fact of record | Detail |
|---|---|
| Designation | Anchor/Micropile Drill Rig Operator — designation code AMP in CCO’s Drill Rig Operator program, developed with ADSC, the International Association of Foundation Drilling |
| Name correction — read this first | CCO publishes no Auger Boring Machine Operator designation. In CCO’s Drill Rig Operator Candidate Handbook (DRO CH REV 01/25), AMP is the Anchor/Micropile Drill Rig specialty. This package is built to that published designation; the scoped working title is recorded in the package metadata and flagged for the coordinator |
| Certifying body | CCO — the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators (NCCCO) |
| Written examinations | Two sittings: the Drill Rig Operator Core Examination (90 questions, 90 minutes) and the Anchor/Micropile Specialty Examination (45 questions, 45 minutes); calculator permitted, per the handbook’s written examination outline |
| Practical examination | Required for certification — the AMP practical examination (pre-operational inspection, site safety protocols, controls identification, tool positioning, pipe pickup and placement, pipe laydown, drilling, safe shutdown). This program prepares candidates for the written examinations only; the practical examination is not covered |
| Examination fees | Third-party fees paid to CCO under its published fee schedule: Core written $140; AMP Specialty written $80; practical $70 |
| Validity and window | Certification is valid for five years; candidates have 12 months after passing their first examination to pass the corresponding examinations for the designation |
| Eligibility | At least 18 years of age; pass the written and practical examinations; comply with CCO’s Substance Abuse Policy and Code of Ethics (handbook, Certification Policies) |
Reading the verified facts
A fact table compresses; this section decompresses the lines a candidate is most likely to misread, skip, or confuse with a neighbouring credential’s facts. Each entry below restates one row of the table and adds what the row means in practice.
Designation. Anchor/Micropile Drill Rig Operator — designation code AMP in CCO’s Drill Rig Operator program, developed with ADSC, the International Association of Foundation Drilling
Name correction — read this first. CCO publishes no Auger Boring Machine Operator designation. In CCO’s Drill Rig Operator Candidate Handbook (DRO CH REV 01/25), AMP is the Anchor/Micropile Drill Rig specialty. This package is built to that published designation; the scoped working title is recorded in the package metadata and flagged for the coordinator
Certifying body. CCO — the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators (NCCCO)
Written examinations. Two sittings: the Drill Rig Operator Core Examination (90 questions, 90 minutes) and the Anchor/Micropile Specialty Examination (45 questions, 45 minutes); calculator permitted, per the handbook’s written examination outline
Practical examination. Required for certification — the AMP practical examination (pre-operational inspection, site safety protocols, controls identification, tool positioning, pipe pickup and placement, pipe laydown, drilling, safe shutdown). This program prepares candidates for the written examinations only; the practical examination is not covered
Examination fees. Third-party fees paid to CCO under its published fee schedule: Core written $140; AMP Specialty written $80; practical $70
Validity and window. Certification is valid for five years; candidates have 12 months after passing their first examination to pass the corresponding examinations for the designation
Eligibility. At least 18 years of age; pass the written and practical examinations; comply with CCO’s Substance Abuse Policy and Code of Ethics (handbook, Certification Policies)
The route, step by step
Step 1 — Establish the credential first
CCO’s route runs: meet the eligibility terms (18 or older, substance abuse policy, code of ethics), pass the Core written examination and the AMP Specialty written examination, and pass the AMP practical examination — all inside the 12-month window that starts when the first examination is passed. Certification then runs five years. This program prepares candidates for the two written sittings only.
Step 2 — Clear the gates that precede the sitting
Candidates are foundation-drilling crew members stepping up from tender and laborer roles, operators cross-training from foundation rigs onto anchor work, and specialty contractors’ rig hands whose firms need certified operators for anchored excavation and micropile scopes. Many arrive with strong hands and thin paperwork habits; the written examinations are where the job’s invisible half — hazard analyses, utility verification, chart reading — is tested. The practical consequence for planning is sequencing: any experience documentation, approval, companion certification, or course currency this credential requires should be started before — not after — written preparation peaks, because those steps run on the issuing body’s calendar, not the candidate’s.
Step 3 — Sit the written examination
The written sitting is the step this guide and its companion program exist for. Its published domains are: Pre-Operations and Site Conditions, Operations, Technical Knowledge, Tooling, Communications. The sitting is multiple-choice and timed as the facts table states; candidates should treat the outline’s proportions as a study budget, spending preparation time where the examination spends its questions. Score reporting follows the issuing body’s published practice, and domain-level performance information — where the body provides it — is the correct basis for any retake plan.
Step 4 — Complete what the written pass does not complete
A written pass is a component, not the credential. This credential also has a practical, hands-on component, and this program does not cover it. Required for certification — the AMP practical examination (pre-operational inspection, site safety protocols, controls identification, tool positioning, pipe pickup and placement, pipe laydown, drilling, safe shutdown). This program prepares candidates for the written examinations only; the practical examination is not covered Written preparation and practical readiness are different preparations: this program builds the first, thoroughly, and candidates must arrange the second — training, supervised practice, and the practical sitting itself — through the channels the issuing body publishes. No page in this program should be read as suggesting otherwise. Candidates who plan this step before the sitting — booking, training, and documentation arranged — convert a pass into a credential without a dead season between them.
The examination outline in full
Pre-Operations and Site Conditions
Anchor and micropile work begins in ground the crew cannot see. Items test jobsite assessment: locating utilities above and below ground and reading their markings, verifying depths of existing foundations, judging ground bearing and platform stability, completing the job hazard analysis, and setting the rig’s controlled access zone before the mast goes up.
Operations
The largest Core block follows the rig through a working day: tramming to the drilling location, assembly and disassembly sequence, setting outriggers and stabilizing the base, centering over the shaft, drilling, and adjusting the procedure as soil, rock, groundwater, weather, or obstructions change the plan mid-hole.
Technical Knowledge
Candidates read capacity and stability charts, verify equipment specifications against the operator’s manual, explain rigging principles and working load limits for the auxiliary winch, inspect wire rope against removal criteria, and read gauges, levels, and hydraulic indications as diagnostic information rather than decoration.
Tooling
A short block with outsized field consequences: kelly bars and stubs, swivels, crowd systems, augers and drill tools for anchor and micropile work — what each tool does, how it is inspected, and how the wrong tool for the ground in front of the rig announces itself.
Communications
Drilling is crew work conducted over engine noise. Items cover coordinating with supervisors and project representatives, hand and voice communication during pipe handling, and the operator’s authority — and duty — to stop operations when the hole, the rig, or the site says stop.
Field notes: the credential at work
On an anchor job, the AMP operator’s day is measured in installed elements: a tieback drilled, grouted, and stressed on schedule is a wall that can be excavated further tomorrow. The rig works at inclinations foundation crews find exotic, in headings where the drill steel, the grout lines, and the crew share a few square metres. What the written examinations protect is the invisible structure of that day — the utility clearances verified before the mast rose, the JHA the crew actually discussed, the stability judgment made when the platform was soft at one corner. Candidates who prepare by connecting each Core domain to a specific morning on a specific job retain the material the way the examination presents it: as decisions, not definitions.
Common preparation errors
- Preparing for the AMP specialty as if it were the FDR specialty with smaller tooling — the anchor/micropile sitting assumes inclination, grout, and tieback reasoning the foundation sitting does not.
- Neglecting the Core examination because the specialty feels like ‘the real test’ — the Core carries the majority of the written weight and all of its site-conditions material.
- Treating the 12-month window as administrative trivia; it starts at the first pass and governs the practical scheduling the written pass must fit inside.
The reference shelf
The shelf for this designation is short and authoritative: the CCO Drill Rig Operator Candidate Handbook (current revision) for policies, outlines, and the reference list the examinations draw on; the ADSC foundation drilling guidance the program was developed alongside; the rig manufacturer’s operator manual for the candidate’s own machine; and OSHA’s construction standards for the site duties the Core examination assumes. Manufacturer manuals matter here more than in most designations in this batch — the handbook’s technical domain expressly tests working from the operator’s manual.
What makes this examination demanding?
The demand is geological. A foundation rig operator reads a bore log; an anchor/micropile operator reads ground that changes within a single hole — fill over till over water-bearing sand — while working inches from structures the drilling must not disturb. The Core examination’s weight on site conditions and technical knowledge reflects that: nearly a quarter of the test is decided before drilling starts, and the specialty sitting assumes the candidate can reason about tooling, grout, and inclination, not merely recite rig controls.
Working the domains together
There is a last integration the outline cannot show, because it happens across the candidate’s whole preparation rather than inside any domain: the domains of this syllabus describe one job, performed by one person, under one set of physical and regulatory constraints. The AMP drill rig candidate who can narrate a complete task — from the first assessment the outline names to the last documentation duty it lists — and locate every domain on that narration owns the syllabus in the form the examination samples it. Use the narration as a final audit. Walk a real task from memory, aloud, in order, and mark every point where a domain’s published rule governed a choice. The points that cannot be narrated are the points the sitting will find; there is still time, in this phase, to return to them with the handbook open and convert narrative gaps into study items before they convert into lost questions.
Domain study notes
Study the Core domains as a drilling day in order. Pre-Operations rewards candidates who can reconstruct a complete morning assessment — utilities located and marked, foundation depths checked, platform judged — from a written scenario, so practise narrating scenarios rather than memorising lists. Operations items turn on sequence: assembly order, set-up order, the moment a changing soil condition should change the procedure. Technical Knowledge is the calculation and chart block — stability charts, winch line pull against working load limits, wire rope removal criteria — and should be studied with a pencil, working the relationships rather than reading them. Tooling is short but concrete: know each named tool’s function cold. Communications items are short scenarios about authority — who may stop the work, and how a stop is communicated — and are lost by candidates who treat them as soft questions. For the AMP specialty sitting, add the anchor-specific layer the Core outline frames: inclination work, grout and tieback reasoning, and tooling selection for small-diameter elements in confined headings.
A realistic route timeline
A realistic AMP timeline runs in three bands. First, eligibility and scheduling: confirm the 18-and-over, substance abuse, and ethics terms, and book the Core and specialty written sittings with the practical date in view from the start — the 12-month clock begins at the first pass, not at the candidate’s convenience. Second, the written phase itself: Core first for most candidates, because its site and technical material frames the specialty, with the specialty sitting close behind while the Core learning is warm. Third, the practical band: rig time on an anchor/micropile machine arranged through the candidate’s employer or training channels, and the practical sitting completed well inside the window, leaving margin for a retake of either component if the first attempt at any stage falls short. Certification, once the set is complete, runs five years from the original certification date.
A preparation plan
Phase one — survey the whole outline. Read the candidate handbook or licensing guidance end to end, then work one practice set in every domain, including the domains closest to daily work. The purpose is cartography: most experienced candidates discover their weakest domain is not the one they expected, and the discovery is only useful while the calendar can still respond to it.
Phase two — domain rebuilding. Work the weakest domains from the primary documents outward: handbook chapter, outline subtopics, then practice sets in that domain alone. Keep the strong domains warm with short mixed sets rather than re-studying them; familiarity is not the same as examination readiness, but it decays more slowly than new learning builds.
Phase three — full sittings at examination pace. Sit complete timed practice in the examination’s format, under its time limit, without pausing the clock for review. Pacing is a trainable skill separate from knowledge: candidates lose sittings to unfinished sections more often than to unanswerable questions, and the loss is preventable in this phase and no other.
Phase four — route readiness. In the final stretch, shift weight from content to logistics: confirm identification and scheduling requirements from the issuing body’s current guidance, confirm the status of every companion step the route requires, and arrive at the sitting with the application file — not only the knowledge — in order.
Studying with the handbook open
Preparation for a professional written examination fails in a predictable way: the candidate studies the work, which they know, instead of the examination, which is a representation of the work in a particular published form. The corrective is to keep the primary documents at the centre of the desk. The outline tells the candidate what the sitting contains and in what proportions. The handbook or licensing guidance tells them the policies — windows, validity, companion requirements — inside which the sitting sits. The reference shelf tells them the standards from which the items are drawn. The AMP drill rig candidate who can open each document to the relevant page without hesitation is not merely organised; they have internalised the map the examination was drawn from, and questions located anywhere on that map become findable. Build that familiarity deliberately, document by document, domain by domain, until the sources feel like tools rather than texts.
Retake, validity, and recertification planning
Two clocks govern this credential after the sitting, and both belong in the candidate’s diary from the day the result lands. The first is the completion clock, where the route imposes one: a pass is a component with a shelf life, and the remaining steps — companion examinations, practical sittings, applications — must be completed inside the window the facts table states. The second is the validity clock: Certification is valid for five years; candidates have 12 months after passing their first examination to pass the corresponding examinations for the designation. Recertification requirements should be read on the day of certification, not in the year of expiry, because some of them — an examination to schedule, a practical to arrange, education to complete — have lead times of their own. A shortfall result feeds the same system rather than breaking it: the domain reporting identifies the rebuild, the retake rules set its earliest date, and the two clocks, honestly re-read, set its latest.
The sitting itself
Arrive with the identification the issuing body requires and nothing the testing rules prohibit. Work the sitting in the order that suits the format: answer the certain items first, mark the uncertain ones, and return with the remaining time — the domains are interleaved in most sittings, so a difficult patch is a patch, not a verdict on the whole paper. Use the whole clock; a written examination of this kind rewards the candidate who checks arithmetic and re-reads stems in the final minutes over the candidate who leaves early on confidence.
After the sitting
Results and score reporting follow the issuing body’s published practice. A pass starts the completion steps in Step 4 above — plan them immediately, while windows and currency dates are fresh. A shortfall is information with an address: the domain structure of the outline tells the candidate where the rebuild belongs, and the retake rules in the issuing body’s handbook govern when the next sitting can happen. Neither outcome is a judgment on the candidate’s competence at the work itself; the examination measures examination performance, and preparation is how the two are brought into line.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Anchor/Micropile Drill Rig Operator (AMP) credential? It is the credential this page covers: Anchor/Micropile Drill Rig Operator — designation code AMP in CCO’s Drill Rig Operator program, developed with ADSC, the International Association of Foundation Drilling. An anchor/micropile operator runs the compact, powerful rigs that install ground anchors, tiebacks, and micropiles — the small-diameter, high-capacity foundation elements that hold up excavation walls, stabilize slopes, and retrofit foundations where a full-size foundation rig cannot go. The issuing body is CCO (NCCCO).
Who issues the AMP drill rig credential? CCO (NCCCO). That body writes or administers the examination, sets the requirements, and makes the certification or licensing decision. PassProfessor prepares candidates for the written examination and has no part in the decision.
What written examination must candidates pass? Two sittings: the Drill Rig Operator Core Examination (90 questions, 90 minutes) and the Anchor/Micropile Specialty Examination (45 questions, 45 minutes); calculator permitted, per the handbook’s written examination outline
Is there a practical or hands-on examination? Required for certification — the AMP practical examination (pre-operational inspection, site safety protocols, controls identification, tool positioning, pipe pickup and placement, pipe laydown, drilling, safe shutdown). This program prepares candidates for the written examinations only; the practical examination is not covered
What is the passing standard? CCO sets the passing standard for its examinations by criterion-referenced standard setting and reports each candidate’s performance by domain. This page states no percentage figure for the standard, because CCO does not publish it as a simple percentage for this designation — inventing one would misstate the record.
What does the examination cost? Third-party fees paid to CCO under its published fee schedule: Core written $140; AMP Specialty written $80; practical $70 Those are third-party fees owed to the issuing body — not PassProfessor charges. This page prints no PassProfessor price.
How long does the credential last? Certification is valid for five years; candidates have 12 months after passing their first examination to pass the corresponding examinations for the designation
What will the PassProfessor program cover? The written examination named above — its published domains, its format, and its pacing — together with the certification or licensing route around it as the issuing body publishes it. Where the credential has a practical component, that component is not covered, and the program says so wherever the credential is described.
How should preparation be sequenced? Work the published domains in the outline’s own proportions first, then sit full timed practice in the examination’s format, then return to the weakest domain with the handbook open. The preparation plan section of this guide lays the sequence out in phases, with the route’s deadlines — windows, currency dates, and approval gates — planned backward from the sitting.
What happens if a candidate does not pass? The candidate retakes the written examination under the issuing body’s published retake rules, using the domain-level performance reporting the score report provides to rebuild where the sitting was lost. Windows matter here: where the credential imposes a completion window on a set of examinations, a retake consumes it, and the route section of this guide states the window that applies to this credential.
When will the PassProfessor program open? The program is in the works and enrollment is not open yet. Join the notify list on this page and you will be emailed when enrollment opens; the companion exam guide is available to read now for planning your preparation.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with CCO (NCCCO)? No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider and is not affiliated with CCO (NCCCO). Nothing in the program is reported to the issuing body, and completing preparation is not a step in the certification or licensing process.