Nevada to Virginia: journeyman plumber license reciprocity

Virginia issues a statewide Journeyman Plumbing tradesman license to individuals (never to companies) through the Board for Contractors' Tradesmen Program at the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation (DPOR). A first-time applicant qualifies for the PSI journeyman plumbing exam under 18VAC50-30-39(B) with a combination of practical experience and vocational training (four years plus 240 hours down to seven years plus 40 hours), a related degree plus experience, or eight years of verified experience; a registered Virginia apprenticeship can exempt the exam. The application fee on the 2026 Tradesman Exam & License Application is $171.75, which includes the $7.25-per-year technology fee on top of the $150 fee in 18VAC50-30-90; the PSI journeyman exam fee published on the Tradesmen page is $100. A journeyman or master plumber license from another governing body outside Virginia is itself an accepted qualification to sit the Virginia exam without documenting hours, and a licensee who has held that out-of-state license for at least three years may instead apply through Universal License Recognition (ULR) and receive the license without the Virginia trade exam. DPOR's reciprocal-agreements list does not name any origin state for plumbing (the only plumbing-related partner is WSSC, a Maryland bi-county commission, not a state). Licenses expire three years from the last day of the month of issuance; renewal is $160 plus three hours of board-approved plumbing building-code continuing education. Anyone contracting for work over $1,000 also needs a Class A, B or C contractor license. A separate Residential Plumbing license (April 1, 2025) is a lower residential-only rung and is not this journeyman credential.

Nevada has no statewide journeyman plumber license. The Nevada State Contractors Board (NSCB) licenses plumbing and heating contractors under classification C-1 (NRS/NAC 624), issues licenses only to businesses with a qualifying individual, and its FAQ says it does not license individual journeymen, so an out-of-state journeyman plumber license has nothing to transfer to at the state level and is not needed to work for a licensed C-1 contractor in most of the state. A personal credential exists only under local building codes: Clark County Code Chapter 22.02 requires a plumbing qualified individual or a journeyman plumber on site for permitted plumbing work and issues a renewable county journeyman plumber certificate to people who pass the journeyman exam accepted by the Building Official (plumbing is the one trade for which the county code publishes an experience prerequisite for the exam), and the City of Reno requires anyone installing, altering or adding to a plumbing system to hold a valid journeyman certificate under Reno Municipal Code Title 14. Neither jurisdiction publishes a waiver of its exam for an out-of-state license: Clark County's only equivalency is for a certificate from its accepted testing agency or another Nevada political subdivision within the county, while Reno lets contractors with a reciprocal license from another city, county, state or country work inside the city for 12 months before they must obtain the Reno certification. The City of Las Vegas, Henderson and the rural counties were not surveyed for plumbing cards.