You do not have to pick a side. For a working Intern Architect, the best ExAC prep is mostly solo with one short group session a week: alone for timed questions, flashcards and tabbing your code books, together for contract scenarios, code routes explained out loud and accountability. In our experience, groups help most when they have a fixed agenda and least when they turn into shared rereading. This guide from Examitect, an independent ExAC prep platform unaffiliated with the CACB, sets out the trade-offs, a weekly plan, how to run a group, and the confidentiality line every group has to respect after the sitting.
| Weekly load | 6 to 10 hours, about one in five spent in the group |
|---|---|
| Do together | Contract scenarios, code routes out loud, splitting references, check-ins |
| Do alone | Timed questions, mock exams, flashcards, tabbing your own code books |
| Group size | Three to five people (our recommendation) |
| Hard rule | No sharing of actual exam content, ever (Preparation Guide p.13) |
Start with the exam itself. The ExAC Framework Document (p.10) says it is administered once a year in four three-hour sessions over two consecutive days in November, on paper, at proctored sites. The 2026 sitting is November 2 and 3. Section 1 has about 96 multiple-choice and 8 short-answer questions, Section 2 about 75 multiple-choice, Section 3 about 96 multiple-choice and 6 short-answer, and Section 4 about 130 multiple-choice (Framework Document, p.5). You write every one of them alone, with a pencil and a clock.
So study that looks like the exam has to happen alone. Study that builds understanding, of how parties, documents and code provisions connect, often goes faster with other people.
| Factor | Studying alone | Studying in a group |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduling | Fits around site visits, deadlines and evenings | Needs a fixed slot several people can keep |
| Pace | Yours; skip what you know | Set by the group, so some time goes on topics you already have |
| Exam realism | High: timed, silent, no help | Low: discussion is nothing like the exam room |
| Understanding | Limited by your own blind spots | Others catch misreadings and fill gaps from their own practice |
| Accountability | Easy to let a week slide | A weekly check-in makes skipping visible |
| Main risk | Isolation and drifting off the plan | Social time that feels like study but is not |
In Roediger and Karpicke's 2006 study in Psychological Science, students who restudied a passage felt more confident, yet students who took recall tests on it remembered substantially more a week later. A group that spends its evenings rereading notes together risks the same trap.
The best group sessions are the ones you could not run alone. Four uses stand out.
Section 4 covers Bidding and Contract Negotiations, Construction Phase office and field functions, and Management of the Project and Business/Practice Management, objectives 9 to 12 in Appendix 1 of the 2026 Preparation Guide (pp.20 to 21). Many of its specific objectives ask you to explain roles: 9.2.3 asks for the responsibilities of the parties to a construction contract, and 10.1 and 11.1 ask for the roles of the architect, the owner and the contractor. That is natural material for role play.
Give each member a party and a scenario. For example: the contractor finds an unexpected condition behind a wall and proceeds on a verbal instruction from the owner. The "contractor" argues for a price change, the "owner" pushes back, and the "consultant" has to say which clauses of CCDC 2 (2020) apply: GC 6.4 Concealed or Unknown Conditions, GC 6.2 Change Order or GC 6.3 Change Directive, and GC 2.2 Role of the Consultant. Ten minutes of argument fixes the difference between a change order and a change directive. Our posts on shop drawings, RFIs and site instructions and on evaluating contractor bids are good sources of scenarios.
Section 2 is the open-book code section, so the skill is finding the right provision fast, not remembering it. A good group exercise: one person reads a short building description, and another talks through the route out loud. Which Part applies? Division A, Article 1.3.3.3. says Part 9 covers buildings of 3 storeys or less in building height with a building area not exceeding 600 m2, in the occupancies it lists. Then which Section, table and Sentence? Listeners stop the speaker when a step is skipped.
There is some evidence behind this. A 2023 review by Keiichi Kobayashi in Frontiers in Psychology notes that several studies found students who expected to teach the material, for example by recording an explanation for another student, learned more while preparing than students who expected a test. We would not promise the same effect for code lookups, so treat the drill as our advice. Pair it with our guide to Part 3 vs Part 9 or the spatial separation worked example.
Plans rarely fail in Week 1. They fail in Week 7, after a work deadline eats two evenings. A weekly check-in where each person says what they finished, what they scored and what comes next is the cheapest accountability tool there is.
Appendix 3 of the Preparation Guide (pp.30 to 34) lists far more references than anyone reads cover to cover. A group can split the secondary ones: one person skims the CCDC 24 guide, another the RAIC Document 6 and Document 9 commentary, another a sustainability reference, and each brings back a one-page summary keyed to the objective numbers. A summary is a starting point, not a substitute for the primary references (the CHOP, the NBC 2020 and the NECB 2020), and should be checked against the source before anyone relies on it. Our sustainability reading list shows how to triage one long list.
Three kinds of work lose most of their value in company.
Timed questions are a rehearsal of the exam room, and the exam room is silent. The Preparation Guide (p.13) forbids communicating "in any manner whatsoever" with other candidates during the exam. Talking through the options together skips the skill being tested: choosing alone, against the clock. The house target in our 12-week plan is 30 to 40 timed questions a week from Week 2, rising to 60 to 90 a week in the final block, roughly 500 to 800 across the cycle. Do those alone. Bring only the questions you got wrong, and why, to the group.
Full mock exams are solo work too: three silent hours is part of the training, and Section 2 especially is about pacing.
Flashcards work through retrieval: you try to recall the answer before you see it. A 2013 review of ten study techniques by Dunlosky and colleagues in Psychological Science in the Public Interest gave its highest utility rating to two of them, practice testing and distributed practice, meaning short sessions spread over time. Rereading and highlighting were rated low. In a group, the fastest person answers first and everyone else hears the answer without retrieving it. Run your deck alone, a little every day. The free flashcards sample shows the format.
The Preparation Guide (p.12) lets your paper copies of the NBC 2020 and the NECB 2020 carry handwritten annotations, highlighting, circling, underlining and tabs made beforehand. You may not add pages such as an index or a table, and you may not mark the books once you are in the room. A group can share a tab list, but each person should place and label tabs in their own copy, in the order they search, then practise lookups with it. Start with our guides to tabbing the NBC 2020 and tabbing the NECB 2020, and the free NBC tabs sample.
Here is how we would split an 8-hour week, the middle of the house range of 6 to 10 hours. The group session is fixed. Everything else moves around your work.
| Block | Time | Alone or together | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reference reading | 2.5 hours | Alone | This week's objective in the CHOP, the code or the contract |
| Timed question sets | 2 hours | Alone | The week's set under exam conditions, then a review of every miss |
| Flashcards | 1 hour | Alone | About 10 minutes a day rather than one long session |
| Tabbing or lookup drills | 1 hour | Alone | Section 2 weeks only; otherwise more reading or questions |
| Group session | 1.5 hours | Together | Check-in, one objective taught, scenarios, misses discussed |
On a 6-hour week, cut reading first. On a 10-hour week, add a second timed set, not a second meeting. Going past ten hours a week for twelve weeks risks burnout for most working interns, and adding meetings is the easiest way to get there.
The group's role should also change across the cycle:
If your firm will pay for prep or give you study time, a group of colleagues can make the request together. Our sibling post on getting your firm to support your ExAC prep covers how to ask.
Nothing in the official ExAC documents covers study groups, so what follows is our own recommendation.
Fewer than three and one absence cancels the session. More than five and some people stop talking.
A first registration covers all four sections, so most groups study all four. Agree one shared calendar of objectives, keyed to Appendix 1 of the Preparation Guide.
Same day, same time, online or in person. A slot that moves every week stops happening.
Each week one member owns one objective, prepares a short explanation and three scenario prompts, and runs the session.
Ten minutes of check-in, thirty of teaching, thirty-five of scenarios and misses, fifteen to set next week.
Prepare before you come, no rereading notes together, cite the source for every answer, and never share actual exam content.
"Cite the source" means a page, clause or article, not "my firm does it this way". Firm habits and provincial practice can differ from the national references the exam uses; the Preparation Guide (p.12) allows the NBC 2020 "without the provincial adaptations". When two members disagree, whoever finds the answer in the book reads it out, and the group moves on.
Working with published material is fair game. Appendix 2 of the Preparation Guide (pp.23 to 29) contains sample examination questions, and page 5 lists the five question types: multiple choice, matching, ordering, completion and short answer. Work those together, then write your own scenarios in the same style.
If you cannot find local people to study with, Examitect's Community is an online forum where candidates discuss ExAC topics in threads sorted by section, and members can open a discussion from a practice question. Anyone can read a preview; posting and replying are for paid members.
Groups often keep going after the exam, to compare notes or plan a retake. That is where a well-meaning group can get a candidate into trouble.
The rule is short. Under Candidate Conduct, the 2026 Preparation Guide (p.13) says you must sign the Confidentiality Agreement included with the ExAC registration form, "which states that you are forbidden from reproducing or disclosing the nature and contents of the exam." The same page says no portion of the ExAC, including the question booklet, appendixes, answer sheets and scratch paper, may be copied or removed from the room. Discussing actual exam content is prohibited, before results, after results and in any format.
The Framework Document explains why this matters. The exam is written at staggered start times across Canada's time zones so that no candidate finishes a section before every candidate is in an exam room somewhere, isolated from communication (p.10). Items repeated from one year to the next are tracked to keep cut scores equivalent (p.15), so a question you describe to a friend may be on their paper next year. The Preparation Guide (p.14) lists possible responses to cheating or misconduct from the candidate's home regulatory jurisdiction: a formal written warning, suspension of future ExAC privileges, invalidation of exam results and legal proceedings.
| Safe to discuss | Not allowed |
|---|---|
| The published objectives, item types and sample questions | Any question you saw, in full, in part or paraphrased |
| Your own study process and what you would change | Answer options, drawings, tables or case details from the booklets |
| Logistics: ID, permitted items, breaks, how the day felt | "There was a question on..." hints about what appeared |
| Which objectives you plan to strengthen, by number | Rebuilding or "recalling" questions as a group |
The same line applies online, including in exam-experience threads on any forum. If a group member starts recounting a question, stop the conversation. If someone in your group fails a section, the Framework Document (p.16) gives three consecutive attempts, and the performance report gives pass or fail per section with constructive information on any failed section. Build the retake from that report and the objectives, as our retake plan sets out, never from what anyone remembers of the paper.
Keep the group for talking, keep the clock for yourself, and leave the exam in the exam room.
For most working Intern Architects, a mix works best: mostly solo study with one short group session a week. Timed questions, mock exams, flashcards and code tabbing are better alone, while contract scenarios, explaining code routes and accountability are better with others.
We recommend three to five people for an ExAC study group. With fewer than three, one absence cancels the session; with more than five, quieter members stop contributing.
A study group should take about 90 minutes a week, roughly one fifth of a 6 to 10 hour weekly study load. The rest goes on solo reading, timed sets and flashcards.
Section 4 benefits most from group study, because many of its objectives ask you to explain the roles and responsibilities of the architect, owner and contractor. Role-playing scenarios against CCDC 2 (2020) clauses such as GC 6.2 Change Order and GC 6.3 Change Directive makes those roles easier to remember.
Timed practice questions should be done alone, because the ExAC is written alone and the Preparation Guide forbids communicating with other candidates during the exam. Bring your misses to the group afterwards.
A study group can share a tab list, but each candidate should tab their own paper copy of the NBC 2020 and NECB 2020. The Preparation Guide allows tabs and annotations made beforehand but no added pages and no marks in the room, so the system has to be yours and practised.
You cannot discuss actual ExAC questions after the exam. The Confidentiality Agreement you sign at registration forbids reproducing or disclosing the nature and contents of the exam (Preparation Guide p.13). You can discuss the published objectives, the sample questions in Appendix 2, logistics and your own study process.
A candidate who shares exam content breaches the Confidentiality Agreement. The Preparation Guide (p.14) says cheating or misconduct may lead the candidate's home regulatory jurisdiction to issue a formal written warning, suspend future ExAC privileges, invalidate the exam results or start legal proceedings.