About
About Spreadcheck
Spreadcheck is an independent study site for the API 1169 Pipeline Construction Inspector exam, written by a small exam-prep team that is not part of the American Petroleum Institute. It exists to teach one habit: read the four answers, strike the two that cannot hold, and find the single word that splits the last pair.
Who
Who writes this site
The people behind Spreadcheck write practice material for certification exams and publish the iPhone app that the "Get the app" button opens. The site carries 104 of the bank's questions; the app carries the larger bank they were drawn from.
We do not sell courses, run a forum or take bookings. If a page here does not help you rule an answer out faster on exam day, it should not be here.
Every wrong option on an inspector exam is wrong for a reason you can name. Name it, and the right one is what is left.
Where API fits, and where it does not
API has no part in Spreadcheck. It does not write our questions, check them, sponsor the site or approve what it says, and a good run on our drills is not a forecast of your API score. We use the names API 1169 and RP 1169 because they are the only way to say which exam this site prepares you for.
What we do take from API is public: the Body of Knowledge that names the 5 main categories, and the effectivity sheet that lists which editions are in force. Both are read as sources and paraphrased; no API text is reproduced here.
API
Method
How a question gets onto this site
None of these are real exam items: API releases no exam content, so every question here is a practice item we wrote. They pass through the same five stations before they are published.
Pin it to one category
Each question belongs to exactly one of the 5 Body of Knowledge categories, judged against the whole category rather than a single sub-topic.
Write the stem against a named document
If the answer depends on 49 CFR 192 or 195, OSHA 1926 or API 1104, the stem says which. A threshold we could not find in a source on the effectivity sheet does not get printed.
Build the distractors from real near-misses
The wrong options are the mistakes inspectors actually make: the gas rule offered as the liquid rule, a 4 ft trigger offered where the 5 ft rule applies, a step pulled one rung out of order.
Explain every option
All four options get their own note, so a miss tells you which confusion caught you and which document settles it.
Re-solve it blind
A second pass answers each question without seeing the key. Where the two disagree, the key is checked against the source document before the item is kept or rewritten.
We also balance where the correct answer sits across A to D and check that it is not routinely the longest option, so the "pick the long one" habit earns you nothing here.
Editorial rules
| On the page | The rule we follow |
|---|---|
| Fees and test windows | Dated and linked to API. The 2027 schedule leads, because applications for the last 2026 window have closed; see the API fee page. |
| Category shares | Always our estimate. API publishes no weights, so every chart and figure says so. |
| Scores | Reported the way API reports them: a scaled score from 200 to 500, with 400 needed to pass; the raw cut can differ between exam forms. We never print a pass rate, because API publishes none. |
| Reference editions | Taken from the current effectivity sheet only; older or unlisted codes are not presented as exam references. |
| Mistakes | Reported through the contact page; a confirmed error is rewritten with its explanation and all four option notes. |
Rules
Start
Where to start
If you have an hour, take the practice test cold and read the note on every option you struck, not only the ones you missed. If you have weeks, the study guide maps the five categories to the documents behind them. Everything else starts from the home page.