Along the Houston Ship Channel, security work moves with the contracts. Officers leave for a plant job, come back two or three years later, and discover the hardest question is not how to renew but whether renewal is still on the table.
Why this comes up so often in Pasadena
Pasadena has one of the denser concentrations of armed post work in the state. Petrochemical plant gates, terminal and tank farm perimeters, port-adjacent warehousing, contractor lay-down yards. It also has a labor market that pulls people out of security and back into it. An officer who spent three years in a plant operations job and now wants a commissioned post again is a completely ordinary story here, and it is exactly the story where the renewal course may not be what you need.
The provision that decides it
§35.141(d) provides that a person who is inactive or expired and has not been employed in the industry for three years or more must submit current training certificates to the department. That sentence is short and it carries a lot of weight, because it shifts the question from “how do I refresh what I have” to “what current training can I show.” An officer in that position is usually looking at the full Level 3 commissioned security officer course rather than six hours of continuing education.
We want to be straight about the limits of an article, though. The rule sets the trigger; it does not adjudicate your file. How long you were actually employed in the industry, what your record shows, and what the department wants from you specifically are things to confirm with the bureau or with us before you pay for a class. A wrong guess costs you the price of a course and the time you spent in it, and neither comes back.
And if renewal is the right route
Then the shape of it is set by §35.161(g): commissioned security officers and personal protection officers complete six hours of continuing education by completing the renewal portions of the Level III or Level IV training course, as applicable, with that education taught by department-approved training schools and instructors. Commissioned officers must also submit a firearms proficiency certificate with the renewal application.
Timing has its own rule and it is easy to get backwards. §35.161(n) makes continuing education valid only if completed within the two-year period preceding the license’s current expiration date. That is a window around your expiration, not an instruction to renew biennially, and hours taken outside it do not count. Meanwhile §35.161(a) prevents a renewal application from being submitted until the required hours are earned.
A contractor’s own training will not cover it
This surprises supervisors at the larger Ship Channel contractors. §35.162(d) says the in-house continuing education exemption available to companies with ten or more licensed employees does not apply to commissioned security officers or personal protection officers, and §35.162(f) says credits earned through outside entities may not be used to satisfy their requirement. Site-specific safety and orientation training is valuable, and it is not continuing education for a commissioned officer. Those hours come from an approved school, full stop.
Unarmed officers are outside all of this. §35.161(b) exempts noncommissioned security officers from continuing education, so a Level 2 license carries no CE burden. It is also worth separating the two credentials that do renew here: Level 3 is the commissioned security officer, Level 4 is the personal protection officer. The bodyguard credential and its own distinct course. Job postings blur them constantly. The rule does not.
What you walk away holding
- A certificate of completion, referred to on our site as PSP 31.
- Under §35.161(m), a two-year personal retention obligation. You keep the certificate and furnish copies to the department on request.
- Under §35.162(b)(3), a certificate showing your name and license number, date of attendance, number of hours and courses attended, signed and dated by the school director; the school keeps its own records for two years.
- Under §35.161(a), proof maintained by your employer in your personnel file, with completion indicated on the renewal application.
The classroom portion runs 100% online, which matters when your post is a twelve-hour tour on a plant gate. The price covers the online training only; the in-person firearms qualification is not included and is arranged separately once you have finished online. Service members should note §35.182, which grants two additional years to complete a continuing education or other renewal-related requirement, alongside §35.181 waiving late-renewal penalty fees for them.
Everything cited here sits in 37 TAC Chapter 35, and the licensing side is handled by the Texas DPS Private Security Bureau. If your situation is somewhere between the two paths described above, start with our FAQ page and then talk to us.
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