Interesting.  What LA City test are you talking about?  For the City of LA Deputy Building Inspector?  Or the one for shop QC verifying that they have some inspections and code knowledge? 

You have to have your CWI in order to take the test to be a Deputy Inspector for the City of LA.  As well as your ICC S1 & S2 for Structural Steel and Bolting, and Structural Steel Welding. 

When you take the City of LA test they want to see how much of D1.8, D1.3, and D1.4 as well as Bolting you know because not a lot of D1.1 Structural Steel inspectors are very versed in those codes.  They also hit us with questions in both parts of their test about the City of LA Bulletins and the City of LA version of ICC for Chapter 17 in particular on Special Inspections. 

Both parts, written and oral, of my City of LA Deputy test were open book but in the oral, every time I went to grab a book they would move on to another question since they could tell you knew where to go to get the answer and had the applicable code book available.

Oh, either way, they aren't very similar at all.  AWS test will blow you away. 

He Is In Control, Have a Great Day,  Brent