ALCI Passing Score 2026: Exactly What You Need to Pass

What "Passing" Actually Means for ALC

The Air Leakage Control Installer credential - commonly searched as ALCI, though Building Performance Institute (BPI) uses the official abbreviation ALC - does not use a single overall percentage. Instead, the Certification Scheme Handbook dated April 9, 2026 lays out three separate thresholds that a candidate must clear at the same sitting. Missing any one of them means the assessment is not passed, even if the other two scores look strong.

Those three requirements are:

• 90% on the 40-question oral component
• Successful completion of all three gated props in the hands-on practicum
• 93% on the 15 nongated props in that same practicum

If you're still getting oriented to the credential itself, the overview of what ALCI certification covers and the breakdown of ALCI requirements are good starting points before you dig into scoring mechanics. This article focuses purely on the numbers you need to clear on exam day.

The Oral Component: Hitting 90%

The oral portion consists of 40 questions delivered verbally rather than as a written multiple-choice form. This format matters for how you prepare: you can't skim answer choices or use elimination strategy the way you might on a paper test. You need to produce correct, complete answers on demand.

Passing requires 90% correct - a high bar that leaves very little room for guesswork. At 40 questions, that threshold means only a small handful of misses are tolerable before you drop below the line. There's no partial credit for a partially correct verbal answer in the way some rubrics allow; you either demonstrate the required knowledge or you don't.

Because the oral component is scored independently from the practicum, a strong practical performance cannot offset a weak oral score. You must clear 90% on the oral questions on their own merits. For a full walkthrough of how to prepare specifically for this format, the ALCI study guide for passing on your first attempt spends significant time on oral-question drilling technique.

Gated Props: Pass/Fail, No Partial Credit

The hands-on practicum includes three "gated" props, and these function differently from everything else on the assessment. A gated prop is not scored on a percentage scale - it's evaluated as successfully completed or not. Fail one, and you fail the practicum regardless of how well you scored elsewhere.

The three gated scenarios address:

These three gates exist because getting them wrong in the field isn't a minor quality issue - it's a safety issue. That's precisely why BPI treats them as absolute pass/fail checkpoints rather than folding them into the percentage-based scoring used elsewhere. Understanding how difficult the ALCI exam really is starts with recognizing that these gates, not the written-style questions, are where many candidates lose their first attempt.

The 93% Nongated Prop Threshold

Beyond the three gates, the practicum includes 15 additional "nongated" props. Unlike the gates, these are scored collectively on a percentage basis, and the passing bar is 93% - even higher than the oral threshold.

Because 93% across 15 props leaves essentially no margin for repeated errors, candidates need close to flawless execution across the full range of installation scenarios these props represent. A single significant miss can be the difference between passing and retesting.

This structure is one reason ALC is regularly discussed as a demanding credential relative to its field. If you want data-informed context on how candidates actually perform against these numbers, see the ALCI pass rate data breakdown.

18 Performance Line Items and 51 Abilities

The practicum isn't organized around weighted knowledge domains the way a written certification exam might be. Instead, it's built from 18 performance line items that collectively cover 51 discrete abilities. Each line item is a task-based checkpoint - proctors watch you actually perform an air-sealing or installation action correctly, not just describe it.

This is a critical distinction for study planning: you cannot memorize your way to a passing practicum score. Every ability has to be demonstrated with your hands, under time pressure, without reference materials. The complete guide to ALCI's content areas goes deeper into how these performance-based items are structured if you want the full task inventory.

Time Limits and How They Shape Pacing

The oral questions and the hands-on practicum are not given separate time allowances. Instead, seven hours is the maximum combined duration for both components together. That means your pacing strategy has to account for both halves of the test simultaneously - spend too long deliberating on oral questions and you compress the time available to work through all 18 performance line items in the practicum.

This combined-clock structure is easy to overlook when candidates focus only on the passing percentages. Knowing the shared time ceiling in advance lets you rehearse both components back-to-back during practice sessions, rather than treating them as two isolated study blocks. For scheduling logistics around when and where the combined assessment is offered, see the ALCI exam dates and testing windows guide.

If You Fall Short: Retake Rules

The two components have different retake structures, which matters if you clear one threshold but miss the other:

• Oral-only retake: limited to one hour, for candidates who need to retest just the 40-question oral component.
• Practical retesting: addresses specifically the leakage points that were failed, rather than requiring you to redo every prop from scratch.

This targeted retest design means a candidate who passes the oral component and the gated props but falls short of 93% on the nongated props doesn't have to relive the entire assessment - only the specific failed points come back into play on a retest. Understanding this in advance changes how you triage weak spots during your first attempt: it's often smarter to secure the gates and the oral threshold cleanly and accept that a couple of nongated props may need a retest, rather than rushing everything evenly.

Retesting also has cost implications worth planning for; the ALCI certification cost breakdown covers what initial exams and retests typically involve, since BPI Test Centers administer the assessment and set initial examination prices.

No Notes, No Manuals

One structural fact that shapes every other scoring number: notes and manuals are prohibited during the assessment. There's no reference sheet, no field manual, and no cheat sheet allowed in the room with you during either the oral component or the practicum.

This is why the 90% and 93% thresholds feel steep to first-time candidates - you're being held to near-mastery accuracy with zero lookup support. It also means that any last-minute review material you build for yourself has to live in your memory before test day, not in your bag. A condensed, memorization-focused reference like the ALCI cheat sheet of must-know facts is meant to be studied and internalized in the weeks before your appointment - not carried into the assessment room.

Mapping Prep to the Scoring Structure

Because ALC's passing score is really three separate hurdles, your preparation time is best split to mirror them rather than studied as one undifferentiated block. There's no mandatory prerequisite credential or training course required before you sit the assessment, so how you allocate your own study weeks is entirely up to you.

For a broader look at pacing this alongside other prep decisions, the full ALCI study guide and our practice test platform both give you repeated rehearsal opportunities that mirror this weekly structure.

It's also worth weighing the long-term picture before committing to this prep schedule. Certification lasts three years, and renewal has its own field-exam exemption paths - 3,000 relevant practitioner hours or 100 relevant trainer hours for the first two renewals, with a field-exam-exempt third renewal after nine years (application and payment still required, and CEUs don't count toward renewal). If you're weighing whether the investment makes sense against likely career outcomes, the ROI analysis of ALCI certification and the ALCI salary guide put the passing-score effort in context, and ALCI jobs outlines who actually hires for this credential.

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