Guides · The ladder
The master license is the top of the ladder and the key to the owner gate. Its gate is not really an exam. It is time — licensed, verifiable time as a journeyman.
States set the master gate as journeyman time plus, in some, added hours: Maryland, for example, requires 2 years as a journeyman and 3,750 further hours before the master exam. Texas requires its masters to have held the journeyman license and worked at that level before the master examination. Everywhere, the pattern repeats: the board counts documented years, and only documented years.
The master license is the seat a company runs on. Texas's Responsible Master, Minnesota's responsible master, Florida's qualifier, California's RME — all are the master credential (or its state equivalent) doing legal work. That is why the master step, not the journeyman step, is where a plumber's license becomes a business asset other people will pay to have in the seat.
Start the clock-watching the day your journeyman license issues: keep renewals unbroken (a lapse can cost reciprocity value and, in the strict states, the license itself), and keep your employer records as you go. The eligibility checker runs the master gate for states that publish it in years; your state's full text is on its ladder page.
