Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

Both halves of the definition have to hold, or the hour is not an hour

The hours are the longest part of getting licensed and the part that depends most on somebody else doing something.

What the rule counts

On-the-job training is defined in 16 TAC 73.10 as training or experience gained under the supervision of an appropriate licensee while performing electrical work. The hinge is the word while. Supervision on its own is not it, and electrical work on its own is not it, and a stretch of time that satisfies one condition without the other falls outside the definition entirely.

That is worth reading as a sentence rather than as a summary, because the two conditions fail in different directions. Work you did with no licensee over it fails the first. Time you spent learning rather than working fails the second.

Classroom instruction is the case that catches people, and it does not fail because the department takes a dim view of schooling. It fails on the wording. In a classroom you are not performing electrical work, so the second condition never engages, and no amount of rigor in the course changes that.

Where training hours do convert into hours the department will count, they convert because some other instrument says so, not because the definition stretched. Since 1 July 2026, 16 TAC 73.112(l) awards a flat block of on-the-job training credit for completing an approved accelerated journeyman program. Separately, Tex. Occ. Code 1305.157(1)(B) lets a residential wireman applicant substitute an approved career and technology education program for the hours. Both are express, both are narrow, and neither one is a general rule about courses.

One number to check if you are reading anything written before this summer. The definition moved down a place on 1 July 2026, from paragraph (23) to paragraph (24), when a new paragraph was inserted ahead of it. Nothing about the duty changed. A citation written last spring to 16 TAC 73.10(23) now points at a neighbor.

Who is allowed to sign

Not whoever employed you. 16 TAC 73.26(b) opens by naming the signer as a licensee who is authorized by Occupations Code Chapter 1305 to verify on-the-job training, which makes the statute rather than the payroll the thing that decides.

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.153(b)(3) is the express grant, and it gives a master electrician authority to verify compliance with on-the-job training requirements for the master electrician, master sign electrician, journeyman electrician and journeyman sign electrician licenses. Those four.

If you are applying for something else, read the eligibility section for your own license and look at whose supervision it names. Tex. Occ. Code 1305.157(1)(A) puts a residential wireman under a master electrician or a residential wireman. Tex. Occ. Code 1305.158 puts a maintenance electrician under a master electrician or a maintenance electrician. Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1601 has a journeyman industrial electrician working as a licensed electrical apprentice under a master electrician. The person who supervised is the person with the knowledge the form asks about, and where you are unsure, ask the department before you rely on a signature.

The duty in 16 TAC 73.26(b) attaches to a licensee and not to a company. An office manager cannot discharge it, and a business that has changed hands does not extinguish it, because the person it binds is the individual whose license was over the work.

The knowledge limit is the constraint people trip on

16 TAC 73.26(b) tells the licensee to verify only on-the-job training within the licensee’s knowledge. That is a ceiling on what a willing signer can do for you, not a formality.

An earlier version of this page wrote direct knowledge. The rule does not use that word, and the correction is recorded here rather than quietly made, because the difference between the two phrasings is the kind of thing a reader might rely on.

The practical shape of it: a master of record who never came to your jobs has no basis for covering the year he did not see. A licensee who supervised you for eight months of a two year stretch can cover eight months. Neither of those is a judgment about anyone’s honesty. It is what the rule permits them to attest to.

So a long run of hours under several supervisors is several forms, and the gaps are worth finding now. A gap discovered while you are still working near the people who can close it is an afternoon. The same gap discovered at the point of application is a year.

What the licensee owes you, and by when

16 TAC 73.26(b) gives the licensee 30 calendar days from the request to provide the verification. Calendar days, so weekends and holidays are inside the count rather than outside it.

The request does not have to come from you. The rule opens with an applicant or the department requesting verification, which means the department asking is a route the rule already contemplates rather than a favor you are asking for.

The rule also fixes what goes on the form. The licensee verifies the dates of the on-the-job training, describes the work you performed, specifies the name of the business under which the work was performed, and provides whatever else the department’s form requires (16 TAC 73.26(b)).

Those thirty days sit inside your own year, not alongside it. The application clock at 16 TAC 73.20(b) starts when you file, so a signature chased after filing spends your window rather than the licensee’s.

The form itself

Hours reach the department on the department’s form. 16 TAC 73.26(a) has the applicant verify completion of the required on-the-job training by submitting the department experience verification form with the license application, and TDLR publishes it as ELC017.

The forms index lists it against eight applications: journeyman electrician, journeyman lineman, journeyman industrial electrician, journeyman sign electrician, maintenance electrician, master electrician, master sign electrician and residential wireman. One form, most of the ladder.

It goes in with the application rather than after it. That ordering is the whole reason to start collecting signatures before you are ready to file.

When a former employer will not sign

Start from what the rule actually created, which is a duty with a deadline rather than a courtesy. A licensee who receives a proper request and ignores it is not exercising a discretion.

16 TAC 73.90 makes a violation of any provision of Chapter 73 grounds for proceedings to impose administrative penalties, administrative sanctions, or both, under Occupations Code Chapters 51 and 1305. And the administrative penalty in the electrical act reaches a person regardless of whether that person holds a license (Tex. Occ. Code 1305.301(a)), which closes the obvious escape.

The practical first move is the department, not a lawyer and not a workaround. Because 16 TAC 73.26(b) already contemplates the department requesting verification, the useful thing to hand over is the name and license number of the licensee who supervised you, the business the work was performed under, and the dates.

The paperwork behind you is meant to still exist. 16 TAC 73.51(a) requires an electrical contractor to maintain employee records and records of work performed for four years after completion of a project, and to make them available for inspection during normal business hours. A contractor who says the records are gone is describing a second problem rather than answering the first.

What to keep while you are accruing, which is our advice rather than a rule

No rule tells an apprentice what records to keep. What the rules do is tell you exactly which four things somebody will one day be asked to attest to, and a private record built against those four fields is the one that gets signed quickly.

• The name of the business the work was performed under, spelled as the business spells it. 16 TAC 73.10 defines assumed name for a reason, and the name on the truck, the name on the paycheck and the name on the contractor license are not always the same three words.
• The supervising licensee by name and license number, not by first name. License numbers survive a change of employer and memories do not.
• Start and end dates for each supervisor separately, because the form is filled in per licensee and per business.
• A short description of the work you actually performed, in the language the trade uses. The rule asks the licensee to describe the work, and a licensee reconstructing a year from nothing writes something vague.

Two more, from watching how these go wrong. Keep your own apprentice license number and its renewal dates, because they establish independently which months you were licensed in and give a check on your own arithmetic. And ask for the form while the licensee still remembers you, rather than at the moment you need it. Thirty days is the outer limit for an answer, not a measure of how long it takes somebody to reconstruct your work from memory.

The signature carries a criminal penalty, and it is not only theirs

Falsifying a certification of on-the-job training is one of four offenses in Tex. Occ. Code 1305.303(a), and an offense under that section is a Class C misdemeanor. In Texas that is a fine of up to five hundred dollars and no confinement (Tex. Penal Code 12.23).

Five hundred dollars is not what makes it serious. What makes it serious is that the exposure sits on the person holding the pen, so asking a licensee to round a number up is asking them to take a criminal risk on your behalf and to put their own license behind it.

The applicant is exposed separately and by a different instrument. Falsifying information on an application is grounds for denial, suspension or revocation of a license and an administrative penalty (16 TAC 73.22(c)). The signer answers to the statute. You answer to the rule.

Three routes that are not the ordinary one

A journeyman lineman applicant verifies completion of the required apprenticeship by submitting verification in a form acceptable to the department (16 TAC 73.26(c)).

A residential wireman applicant who completed a career and technology education program verifies that the same way (16 TAC 73.26(d)).

And 16 TAC 73.26 gained a subsection (e) on 1 July 2026, setting out when and how on-the-job training credit is awarded for completing the accelerated journeyman program, including how electrical work performed under the program’s optional cooperative component is treated. That last part matters to anyone taking that route, because work done for a third party during a cooperative placement is the one part of a school program that can look like ordinary supervised work.

What this page cites

• 16 TAC 73.10 Definitions. On-the-job training is training or experience gained under the supervision of an appropriate licensee while performing electrical work. The definition sits at paragraph (24) from 1 July 2026, having been (23). There is no separate definition of "hour" in the section. source
• 16 TAC 73.26 Documentation of required on-the-job training. (a) the department form with the application, (b) thirty calendar days and the knowledge limit, (c) journeyman lineman, (d) residential wireman, (e) accelerated program credit, added 1 July 2026. source
• 16 TAC 73.51(a) An electrical contractor maintains employee records and records of work performed for four years after completion of a project and makes them available for inspection. source
• 16 TAC 73.90 A violation of Chapter 73 supports proceedings for administrative penalties, sanctions, or both, under Occupations Code Chapters 51 and 1305.
• 16 TAC 73.22(c) Falsifying information on an application is grounds for denial, suspension or revocation and an administrative penalty.
• Tex. Occ. Code 1305.153 Master electrician. Subsection (b)(3) is the express authority to verify on-the-job training, and it names four licenses. source
• Tex. Occ. Code 1305.157 Residential wireman. (1)(A) is the supervised-hours route, (1)(B) the career and technology education program route. source
• Tex. Occ. Code 1305.301 The administrative penalty reaches a person regardless of whether that person holds a license. source
• Tex. Occ. Code 1305.303 Criminal penalty. Falsifying a certification of on-the-job training is one of four offenses, each a Class C misdemeanor. source
• Tex. Penal Code 12.23 A Class C misdemeanor is punishable by a fine not to exceed five hundred dollars. source
• TDLR, electrician forms index The department publishes the experience verification form as ELC017 and lists it against eight license applications. Read 24 August 2026. source