Experience Affidavit: Who Can Sign It and Who Cannot

Pencil is not acceptable. Neither is a photocopied signature, a stamped one, or a faxed one. Neither is a correction the certifier didn't initial. Those rules sit on the first page of California's Certification of Work Experience, form 13A-11 (rev. 12/2024), above a single word about the work itself, and they are the cheapest way to lose a month.

The expensive way is the signature line. Four years of journey-level work goes onto that form, and the whole thing rests on whether the person who signed it was allowed to. The current California, Washington, and Nevada forms, read in August 2026 against the rules behind them, do not agree on who that person is. California names six categories of acceptable signer. Washington names one, and requires a notary to watch them sign. Nevada excludes your relatives outright and, if you were self-employed, sends you to your customers instead.

California asks for a "qualified and responsible person," then lists six — and prints seven boxes

The statutory phrase comes from Business and Professions Code 7068(g): "Statements made by or on behalf of an applicant as to the applicant's experience in the classification applied for shall be verified by a qualified and responsible person." Four words that decide the whole thing, and the statute doesn't define any of them.

Form 13A-11 does. The certifier is "a qualified, responsible person who is able to verify the work experience of the qualifier," and then, in a sentence that answers the question most applicants are actually asking: "The certifier can be an employer, fellow employee, journeyman, union representative, contractor, or business associate."

Read the second item on that list again. A fellow employee. If the company you gained the hours at has closed, or the owner won't return a call, California does not treat that as the end of the road — a coworker who stood next to you counts, and so does the union rep who dispatched you.

Then turn to line 7, where the certifier actually declares the relationship, and count the boxes. "My business relationship to [applicant] is or was (check all that apply)" is followed by seven: Employer, Contractor, Foreman or Supervisor, Journeyman, Fellow Employee, Union Representative, Business Associate. Seven, not six. "Foreman or Supervisor" has a box of its own on the form and no place in the sentence on the instruction page. If your certifier is the foreman who ran your crew — the single most likely person to hold direct knowledge of your work — the prose list doesn't name them and the form does. Check the box.

Two smaller things on that line. "Check all that apply" is not decoration: a working owner who was also your foreman can check both, and the form invites it. And of the seven boxes, only Contractor carries a parenthetical blank for a license number. Nothing on either page of 13A-11 conditions the certification on the certifier holding a license — the blank exists to identify a contractor who has one, not to require one.

The four years themselves have a window on them. Part 2 of the form requires "at least four (4) years of journeyman-level or higher experience in the classification for which they are applying," and adds that "the experience must have been obtained within the last 10 years." Work older than that is not a matter of finding a signer. It's outside the window regardless of who remembers it.

One line that people miss until it costs them a cycle: "Use a separate form for each employer or work setting." Four years spread across three companies is three forms with three signatures, not one form summarizing the decade.

"Direct knowledge" is a defined term, and it excludes the boss who heard about it

This is the sentence that decides most rejections, and CSLB puts the definition right on the page: "The certifier must have direct knowledge of the qualifier's experience during the time period listed. 'Direct knowledge' means personal knowledge of the experience that does not depend on outside information or hearsay."

Hearsay is doing real work in that sentence. A company owner who was in the office while you were in the field does not have direct knowledge of your conduit runs — the foreman does. A supervisor who joined in year three cannot certify years one and two. And the time period listed is the operative limit: a certifier with perfect knowledge of eighteen months cannot sign for four years just because they believe the rest happened.

There is a second requirement stacked on top of it. The certifier "must be able to certify that the qualifier demonstrated a level of knowledge and skills expected of a journeyman or higher in the classification for which they are applying." Which is why line 6 tells you to list specific trade duties and adds, in parentheses, "Do not list office work or individual project names." A description that reads "commercial electrical projects, 2019–2023" is not a description of journey-level skill. It's a job title with dates attached, and it's the same failure mode as an hour log that doesn't say what the hours were spent doing — what state boards count as a supervised OJT hour turns on the same specificity.

The signature block itself, line 9, is short: "I certify that I have direct knowledge of the work covering the time period outlined above. I certify under penalty of perjury, under the laws of the State of California, that the information stated above is true and correct."

The certifier is taking on risk, and the form tells them so twice

People asking for a signature rarely mention this part, and the person being asked deserves to know it before the pen moves.

BPC 7114.1 is one sentence: "Any licensee whose signature appears on a falsified certificate in support of an examinee's experience qualifications, or otherwise certifying to false or misleading experience claims by an applicant, which have been submitted to obtain a contractor's license shall be subject to disciplinary action." Their license, not yours. The form repeats it, then adds a colder line above it: "Anyone who knowingly procures or offers false or forged documents to be filed, registered, or recorded in any public office in California is guilty of a felony. (Penal Code section 115)."

And the certification is not filed and forgotten. BPC 7068(g) requires the registrar to "randomly review a percentage of such statements for their veracity"; the form puts a number on the regulation behind it — "A random three percent (3%) of applications are subject to review, and experience must be verifiable through payroll records and similar documents. CSLB staff may contact the certifier or other parties to verify experience." Which means the phone number on line 8 has to be one your certifier still answers, two years from now, and the experience has to survive a payroll check.

A note buried in the general information changes the calculus for anyone reapplying: "If you had a previous application that was denied on the basis of a lack of qualifying work experience, you must complete this form, regardless of whether or not you passed the examination." Passing the exam does not retire the experience question.

Washington will accept exactly one signature, in front of a notary

Washington's electrical trainee system runs on a different theory. Hours are reported as you go rather than certified in a lump at the end, and the state names the signer instead of describing them.

The current Affidavit of Experience for Washington Electrical Trainees (F500-149-000, rev. 07-2026) opens with a blank labeled "Name of Electrical Administrator or Master Electrician or Employer's Authorized Signer." Registered apprentices don't use this form at all — they use F500-152-000 — and WAC 296-46B-942(12) closes the door on any substitute: "For apprentices enrolled in a registered apprenticeship program, the training director or their designated authorized signer are the only authorized signatures the department will accept on affidavits of experience." Your journeyman on the crew can't help you here, however well he knows your work.

Subsection (13) requires the signer to "sign and have notarized the affidavit of experience attesting to the accuracy of all information contained in the affidavit," and the form's signature block spells out the sequence: "Sign below in the presence of a Notary Public," mail the original, "Do not email. No faxes." One concession the form does make, in small print under the seal box: "Electronic notarization accepted." The notary may be remote. The affidavit itself still travels by mail.

What Washington gives back, and California doesn't, is a deadline running against the employer. WAC 296-46B-942(12) again: the employer or training director "must provide the previous period's affidavit of experience to the individual within 20 days of the request." Trainees have their own clock, in subsection (8)(d)(i): affidavits "for the prior two years must be received by the department within 180 days after every electrical training certificate expiration date," and hours claimed on a late one "shall not count towards hours required to qualify for electrician certification examinations or unsupervised electrical training certificates unless otherwise allowed by the chief electrical inspector due to unforeseeable circumstances." Miss the 30-day mark after expiration and the form asks for a $67.90 update fee by check — "No online payment options. Mail check only." And one affidavit stretches only so far: "Claim no more than 24 months per affidavit."

The penalty rule is where Washington gets pointed, and it is worth quoting closely because the two halves are different kinds of trouble. WAC 296-46B-985(4) says the department "may file a civil action under RCW 19.28.271 against both the trainee and the contractor, apprentice training director, or other entity verifying the training hours and may subtract up to two thousand hours of employment from a trainee's total hours if the department determines a false statement or material misrepresentation has been made in an affidavit of experience." A lawsuit is one thing. The subtraction is the part that reaches your career directly — a year of full-time work, erased administratively, on a finding about a document someone else signed.

There's even a rule for the supervisor who won't cooperate on the jobsite. Under subsection (15), if an inspector finds no supervising electrician present and that electrician "fails or refuses to assist the trainee in completing the form, the trainee must return the form with a signed and dated statement stating the supervising electrician's name and saying that the supervising electrician refused to assist." That is worth knowing exists, because it is the only place in these three rulebooks where the state tells a worker what to do when the signature doesn't come.

Nevada: not your brother, and if you worked for yourself, your customers

Nevada wants four completed Certification of Work Experience forms (rev. 12/2021) plus a résumé, covering four years gained "within the past 15 years" — five years longer than California's window. The board's application page states the restriction plainly: "Certificates should be completed by employers, other than the applying company. If you are a self-employed contractor, customers for whom you have performed work should complete the forms. Relatives cannot complete the certificates, unless they were your employer."

The form's own vocabulary is wider than that instruction, in a way worth reading carefully rather than optimistically. Part 1 asks the applicant to "indicate your business relationship to the certifier at the time experience was gained," and the boxes are Supervisor, Foreman, Journeyman, Contractor, Employee — and Supplier. Part 2, where the certifier states the level of work you performed, offers the same list minus Supplier.

Supplier appears on the relationship line and nowhere else, and the form does not say which side of the relationship the box describes — whether the certifier was the supplier or you were. The board's application page names employers and, for the self-employed, customers; it does not mention suppliers at all. So this is a box on a form, not a promise. If the only person who can speak to four years of your work is a supply house counterman, that is a question for the board before you spend a certificate on it, not an inference to act on.

The required fields tell you what the board actually checks. Signature, printed name, address, city, state, ZIP, daytime phone, and email carry asterisks. "Company or Business Affiliation" and "License No(s)." do not. Nevada is verifying that it can reach your certifier, not that your certifier is licensed. The board's own warning on that page is short: "Certificates that are not complete or not specific regarding actual work performed will not be accepted," and any certificate "determined to be false or misleading may be considered misrepresentation and can result in denial of your application."

One thing worth checking against the form rather than against a summary: notarization. Secondhand write-ups of the Nevada certification sometimes describe it as a notarized document. The 12/2021 revision is not. It is a single sheet — the footer reads "Page 1 of 1" — and its certification block runs from the penalty-of-perjury sentence straight to signature, printed name, address, phone, and email, with no notary line, no seal box, and no "signed before me" language anywhere on it. Washington's affidavit does carry that block, which may be where the idea travels from, though that is a guess and not something the documents say.

The narrow claim is the one worth relying on: this form, in this revision, has no notary requirement printed on it. That is not the same as saying nothing in a Nevada application packet is ever notarized — other NSCB forms in the same filing carry their own requirements, and the board can change a form without changing the page that links to it. Check the revision date in the footer of the copy you are about to sign.

Before you ask, decide what you're asking them to swear to

Line up the three and the pattern is clear enough to act on. California is permissive about who signs and strict about what they know. Washington is strict about who signs and puts a notary and a 180-day clock around it. Nevada is permissive about the signer's credentials and strict about their relationship to you.

So read your board's form before you approach anyone, work out which named category your person falls into, and tell them the exact period and the exact duties you need certified. "Direct knowledge... during the time period listed" is what they're signing, not a general endorsement of your ability. Then check whether the version on your desk is current. Forms change: CSLB's is on a 12/2024 revision, Washington's on 07-2026.

Then photocopy the thing before it leaves your hands. Both California and Nevada tell you to, in nearly the same breath, and for the same reason: CSLB's form "becomes the property of CSLB and is kept as a matter of record," so the only copy you will ever see again is the one you made — and you may still "be asked to provide further documentation or testimony to verify your experience." Nevada's is blunter: "For your records, it is suggested that you keep a copy of the certificate(s) you have completed." The signature you collected this month is the one a reviewer may call about two years from now, and by then the company may be gone.

If you're building the packet the certification goes into, the surrounding checklist matters as much as the signature — what boards ask you to attach to a journeyman exam application covers the rest of it, and what a journeyman license costs end to end has the fees you'll pay again if the file comes back.