SellmanA, post: 435387, member: 8564 wrote: I sure wish they would cite their cases/sources as this is news to me; frustrating when they don't IMO. Especially with such a profound topic.
Welcome to the new reality. "other people say" has become acceptable evidence in today society.
[MEDIA=youtube]NXJQOWsp6f4[/MEDIA]
Can't say that I disagree with old Milt. Not to say that physicians, etc should not be licensed, but barbers? Sounds like a "keep outsiders out" program.
John Hamilton, post: 435590, member: 640 wrote: Can't say that I disagree with old Milt. Not to say that physicians, etc should not be licensed, but barbers? Sounds like a "keep outsiders out" program.
You might feel differently if you were a barber.
JPH, post: 435591, member: 6636 wrote: You might feel differently if you were a barber.
Not only that, but I'm sure becoming a barber is much less restrictive than becoming a doctor. Maybe making sure they meet some level of minimum requirements isn't asking so much from them.
Hey, my sister cuts my hair sometimes and she is not licensed. Hope no one turns her in.
Of course, there isn't a whole lot of hair left to cut, but still....
I believe the licensing laws regarding barbers/beauticians came about because felons learn those trades in prison and upon exiting performed that work.
Just because someone can do a particular portion of a professions work, doesn't mean we should whittle down the scope of that profession.
I can create a grading plan, does this mean civil engineers should remove that from their work? NO.
If i only do grading plans for the required time to become licensed, does that mean I cannot take the PE exam? NO.
It does mean I must still know everything else on the test if I want to become a PE. This is how the land surveying license should be, but as long as there are people pecking away at what should be licensed, especially within the profession, then there won't be much of a license left.
People are saying the land surveyor license should only be for boundaries, but simultaneously conveyed boundaries are typically easier than geodetic control, so maybe we should remove that from the license as well.
I hope everyone gets my point. There are some very talented individuals that should be licensed, but aren't and that is BAD for the profession.
Bradl: your last sentence says a lot. I know quite a few people who are very good at a certain part of surveying, but cannot get licensed, not because they can't pass the test but because they won't let them sit for the test.
John Hamilton, post: 435594, member: 640 wrote: Hey, my sister cuts my hair sometimes and she is not licensed. Hope no one turns her in.
Of course, there isn't a whole lot of hair left to cut, but still....
I know it is one of the silliest licenses you can think of. Around here, hair stylists, barbers, and cosmetologists need licenses. Barbers need to be able to use a straight razor on someone's face I think that is really the biggest deal about a barber's license. Hair stylists need to know enough about dyes and chemicals so as to not burn someone's scalp or burn off their hair. I don't know if there's much more to it than that. I don't think there is a big concern about clipping off the ends of someone's hair. (oh and maybe they don't want felons to have a license to carry around a straight razor).
John Hamilton, post: 435607, member: 640 wrote: Bradl: your last sentence says a lot. I know quite a few people who are very good at a certain part of surveying, but cannot get licensed, not because they can't pass the test but because they won't let them sit for the test.
I understand life happens, it's difficult to work full time, have a family, and still try to find time to get a 4 year degree. Or financially it does not make sense to work for a Company to obtain the Boundary experience to sit for the exam.
I would not say they won't let them sit for the test, I would say they do not meet the requirements to sit for the exam.
Almost all of Surveying is based off the Boundary, from where the water flows, to the easements, to where the building is.
How can someone do grading or construction staking if they are not qualified to determined the Boundary.
I look at the big picture, is it worth making less money in the next 3 years so I can sit of the exam, so I can make more money over my career.
If it involves the Boundary they need to have a license, if they are doing volumes of a dirt pile anyone can do that.
Scott Ellis, post: 435611, member: 7154 wrote: I understand life happens, it's difficult to work full time, have a family, and still try to find time to get a 4 year degree. Or financially it does not make sense to work for a Company to obtain the Boundary experience to sit for the exam.
I would not say they won't let them sit for the test, I would say they do not meet the requirements to sit for the exam.
Almost all of Surveying is based off the Boundary, from where the water flows, to the easements, to where the building is.
How can someone do grading or construction staking if they are not qualified to determined the Boundary.I look at the big picture, is it worth making less money in the next 3 years so I can sit of the exam, so I can make more money over my career.
If it involves the Boundary they need to have a license, if they are doing volumes of a dirt pile anyone can do that.
As the licensing presently exists, I agree with most of your statement. However, although all of my work now is boundary, and for the past 15 years or so, most has been boundary, I take exception to your characterization of construction surveying as just "doing volumes of a dirt pile."
That is certainly one task of construction surveying, but it is by far one of the simplest tasks. And for that task, you're right, anyone who knows how to use the measuring tools can measure a pile for volumes as there is almost no judgment involved in the task.
Much of my early career was in construction. At that time, one of the primary tasks for a construction party chief was to check through the plans, item by item, to find and correct mistakes or send back to the engineer for correction, ensure that all plan elements needed to stake and build the design were included, and to prepare the info for use in the field. As a summary of the same discussion, different thread, much of that has been pulled from the chief's responsibilities for general site (dirt, sewer, g&g, etc.) work and is now done by the data collector and/or a tech at a CAD station.
But there is a lot of survey work that is highly specialized, requires a professional skill set of technical knowledge and high level judgment that does not necessarily directly involve determining boundaries. A person qualified for these specialty areas of practice don't necessarily need to be boundary experts to be at the top of their specialty.
I know that I am a very knowledgeable boundary surveyor. It's the area of practice I've found that I like the most and have chosen to build advanced knowledge in. However, I know that I am not qualified, nor am I likely to ever be fully qualified to do high rise work, high precision machine placement, or large scale geodetic projects. I have done some construction work that was every bit as challenging as the boundary work I've done. A wise person would not want the guy who typically measures dirt volumes to be responsible for the layout of a bridge or building. Likewise, unless there's no one else available, you wouldn't want to put the real construction talent on the task of measuring the dirt pile.
For a complex building project, you could have the boundary expert come in, identify the boundaries and have that expert consult with the construction control expert for purposes of creating a site/project control network tied into the identified boundaries, and then hand the rest of the job, actually the vast majority of the total surveying, to the construction expert. The construction expert doesn't need to know much about identifying boundaries, he just needs to know enough to recognize monuments and to converse professionally with the boundary expert.
As licensed surveyors, we should have a basic grasp of a fairly wide variety of areas of practice, partially so we can better recognize what we don't know and what we're not qualified to survey. That's the major failing of the current licensing model as I see it. If someone passes the exam, their generally not told by what margin or the portions of the exam that they did well on and those they did poorly on. It's simply "Here's your hall pass. Go forth and survey."
I'm not sure about the exam scoring in other states, but in CA, a person can pass the exam by completely bombing half the exam representing 2 or 3 practice areas but nearly acing the other half, representing other practice areas. There is no mechanism to tell this person that they are utterly incompetent in those 2 or 3 practice areas. Or, they can pass by demonstrating that they are barely minimally competent in 2 or 3 areas and not quite competent in other areas. Again, there is no mechanism to tell them that they barely squeaked by.
That's why, IMO, we should have a basic license that shows that we are minimally competent across a broad spectrum of practice areas, but have professional certifications (as opposed to technical certifications such as for a mechanic or HVAC tech) for advanced knowledge in various specialties. In engineering, they've been doing this for a while. In many states, a person is licensed as a professional engineer, and except for the administrative rule that most states have that says to only practice in those areas for which one is fully proficient, is statutorily authorized to perform nearly any type of engineering. Most states now also test for areas of specialty (civil, electrical, nuclear, etc.).
We've been beyond the point in surveying now for many years (probably many decades) where it is not reasonably possible for a person to be fully proficient at all, or even most areas. Granted, there are a lot of people, even surveyors who don't buy into that. They may have the impression that boundary is easy because it only employs simple trigonometry. Or they may think construction is simple because they only think of it as staking sewer lines and measuring dirt piles. The truth is, that they either haven't been exposed to areas of practice they look down on enough to know what they don't know, or (and unfortunately this is way too common), they engage in many areas of practice and no one with authority has ever told them that they are incompetent in some of those areas. And if someone has told them, "What the heck gives them the right to say that? The State gave me a license to survey after all."
I agree with those who say that we are hurting our own profession if we try to limit it do only boundary surveying. But under the present licensing model, I also agree that anyone with a license should need to demonstrate at least enough competence in boundary that they can recognize when they've run into a boundary situation that exceeds their ability to solve it. Unfortunately, in CA at least, one can become licensed while being utterly incompetent in boundary yet not be advised of that when given their license. If the states aren't going to certify advanced knowledge in particular practice areas, IMO, they owe it to the new licensee and the public they exist to protect to provide a scoring breakdown so that the new licensee has the info to know what they don't know, what areas to get additional training in, and/or what areas of practice to avoid until and unless they get additional training.
eapls2708, post: 435737, member: 589 wrote: As the licensing presently exists, I agree with most of your statement. However, although all of my work now is boundary, and for the past 15 years or so, most has been boundary, I take exception to your characterization of construction surveying as just "doing volumes of a dirt pile."
That is certainly one task of construction surveying, but it is by far one of the simplest tasks. And for that task, you're right, anyone who knows how to use the measuring tools can measure a pile for volumes as there is almost no judgment involved in the task.
Much of my early career was in construction. At that time, one of the primary tasks for a construction party chief was to check through the plans, item by item, to find and correct mistakes or send back to the engineer for correction, ensure that all plan elements needed to stake and build the design were included, and to prepare the info for use in the field. As a summary of the same discussion, different thread, much of that has been pulled from the chief's responsibilities for general site (dirt, sewer, g&g, etc.) work and is now done by the data collector and/or a tech at a CAD station.
But there is a lot of survey work that is highly specialized, requires a professional skill set of technical knowledge and high level judgment that does not necessarily directly involve determining boundaries. A person qualified for these specialty areas of practice don't necessarily need to be boundary experts to be at the top of their specialty.
I know that I am a very knowledgeable boundary surveyor. It's the area of practice I've found that I like the most and have chosen to build advanced knowledge in. However, I know that I am not qualified, nor am I likely to ever be fully qualified to do high rise work, high precision machine placement, or large scale geodetic projects. I have done some construction work that was every bit as challenging as the boundary work I've done. A wise person would not want the guy who typically measures dirt volumes to be responsible for the layout of a bridge or building. Likewise, unless there's no one else available, you wouldn't want to put the real construction talent on the task of measuring the dirt pile.
For a complex building project, you could have the boundary expert come in, identify the boundaries and have that expert consult with the construction control expert for purposes of creating a site/project control network tied into the identified boundaries, and then hand the rest of the job, actually the vast majority of the total surveying, to the construction expert. The construction expert doesn't need to know much about identifying boundaries, he just needs to know enough to recognize monuments and to converse professionally with the boundary expert.
As licensed surveyors, we should have a basic grasp of a fairly wide variety of areas of practice, partially so we can better recognize what we don't know and what we're not qualified to survey. That's the major failing of the current licensing model as I see it. If someone passes the exam, their generally not told by what margin or the portions of the exam that they did well on and those they did poorly on. It's simply "Here's your hall pass. Go forth and survey."
I'm not sure about the exam scoring in other states, but in CA, a person can pass the exam by completely bombing half the exam representing 2 or 3 practice areas but nearly acing the other half, representing other practice areas. There is no mechanism to tell this person that they are utterly incompetent in those 2 or 3 practice areas. Or, they can pass by demonstrating that they are barely minimally competent in 2 or 3 areas and not quite competent in other areas. Again, there is no mechanism to tell them that they barely squeaked by.
That's why, IMO, we should have a basic license that shows that we are minimally competent across a broad spectrum of practice areas, but have professional certifications (as opposed to technical certifications such as for a mechanic or HVAC tech) for advanced knowledge in various specialties. In engineering, they've been doing this for a while. In many states, a person is licensed as a professional engineer, and except for the administrative rule that most states have that says to only practice in those areas for which one is fully proficient, is statutorily authorized to perform nearly any type of engineering. Most states now also test for areas of specialty (civil, electrical, nuclear, etc.).
We've been beyond the point in surveying now for many years (probably many decades) where it is not reasonably possible for a person to be fully proficient at all, or even most areas. Granted, there are a lot of people, even surveyors who don't buy into that. They may have the impression that boundary is easy because it only employs simple trigonometry. Or they may think construction is simple because they only think of it as staking sewer lines and measuring dirt piles. The truth is, that they either haven't been exposed to areas of practice they look down on enough to know what they don't know, or (and unfortunately this is way too common), they engage in many areas of practice and no one with authority has ever told them that they are incompetent in some of those areas. And if someone has told them, "What the heck gives them the right to say that? The State gave me a license to survey after all."
I agree with those who say that we are hurting our own profession if we try to limit it do only boundary surveying. But under the present licensing model, I also agree that anyone with a license should need to demonstrate at least enough competence in boundary that they can recognize when they've run into a boundary situation that exceeds their ability to solve it. Unfortunately, in CA at least, one can become licensed while being utterly incompetent in boundary yet not be advised of that when given their license. If the states aren't going to certify advanced knowledge in particular practice areas, IMO, they owe it to the new licensee and the public they exist to protect to provide a scoring breakdown so that the new licensee has the info to know what they don't know, what areas to get additional training in, and/or what areas of practice to avoid until and unless they get additional training.
I never said construction surveying is just volumes of dirt, I do a lot of construction staking myself. I have had companies who have hired me just to come out and calculate the volumes of dirt, spoils, strip asphalt, etc... that is all I meant with that statement it had nothing to do with construction staking,and I do believe anyone can do volumes without a survey license. Most of the time they just want to know how many dump truck loads is in the pile, to make sure they got the amount they paid of, or paid to get hauled away.
eapls2708, post: 435737, member: 589 wrote: ....I'm not sure about the exam scoring in other states, but in CA, a person can pass the exam by completely bombing half the exam representing 2 or 3 practice areas but nearly acing the other half, representing other practice areas. There is no mechanism to tell this person that they are utterly incompetent in those 2 or 3 practice areas. Or, they can pass by demonstrating that they are barely minimally competent in 2 or 3 areas and not quite competent in other areas. Again, there is no mechanism to tell them that they barely squeaked by....
This has always annoyed me about the CA exam. A person could get zero points on the real boundary aspects of the test and still pass due to the test composition and the extremely low cut score.
eapls2708 wrote:
I'm not sure about the exam scoring in other states, but in CA, a person can pass the exam by completely bombing half the exam representing 2 or 3 practice areas but nearly acing the other half, representing other practice areas. There is no mechanism to tell this person that they are utterly incompetent in those 2 or 3 practice areas. Or, they can pass by demonstrating that they are barely minimally competent in 2 or 3 areas and not quite competent in other areas. Again, there is no mechanism to tell them that they barely squeaked by.
Edward Reading, post: 435750, member: 132 wrote:
This has always annoyed me about the CA exam. A person could get zero points on the real boundary aspects of the test and still pass due to the test composition and the extremely low cut score.
Actually this is no longer true and hasn't been since the California state PLS exam went Computer-based testing in 2012. Candidates only answering correctly on 50% of the questions would be a far cry from passing the exam.
That is great to hear, Ric. I think all of us who were involved in the old exam grading and development prior to the format change in 2012 had heartburn over the cut score. I used to tell employees, or people I had signed for, going to take the exam "Just get a good solid "F" and you will be fine." I had always hoped that someday it would take closer to a 70% success rate to establish "minimal competency."
Ric, I am glad to hear that.
On the BPELSG website, the results for exams between 1998 and 2016 are posted. The cut scores for years 1998-2009 are posted, but not since then. Why not?
Between 1998 and 2009, the cut score ranged between 45% and a nearly respectable 63%, averaging 51%. The average passing rate was 20% for those years.
From 2010 to 2016, the average passing rate has been 23%. It would be informative to know the cut scores for those years.
I also ran across a publication explaining an Exam Diagnostic Report. I never got one of these, but apparently, they're provided to examinees who do not pass the exam. Why not provide those reports to all examinees, pass or fail? IMO, the new licensee, recently unleashed to serve the public (or in some cases, inflicted upon the public) could get as much or more value from such a report as those who will have an opportunity to retake the exam.
The only problem I can see with doing that is that there will be a few who pass, but would also have all marginal and deficient ratings for the testing areas. That would be difficult to explain.
eapls2708, post: 435853, member: 589 wrote: On the BPELSG website, the results for exams between 1998 and 2016 are posted. The cut scores for years 1998-2009 are posted, but not since then. Why not?
Between 1998 and 2009, the cut score ranged between 45% and a nearly respectable 63%, averaging 51%. The average passing rate was 20% for those years.
From 2010 to 2016, the average passing rate has been 23%. It would be informative to know the cut scores for those years.
On the advice of psychometricians and to be consistent with many other licensing/certification processes across the nation regardless of profession, the Board decided to no longer publish cut scores for all states exams. This is very common practice at licensing boards across the nation and national exam providers such as NCEES, etc.
I also ran across a publication explaining an Exam Diagnostic Report. I never got one of these, but apparently, they're provided to examinees who do not pass the exam. Why not provide those reports to all examinees, pass or fail? IMO, the new licensee, recently unleashed to serve the public (or in some cases, inflicted upon the public) could get as much or more value from such a report as those who will have an opportunity to retake the exam.
The only problem I can see with doing that is that there will be a few who pass, but would also have all marginal and deficient ratings for the testing areas. That would be difficult to explain.
You didn't receive a diagnostic because you never failed the exam. Issuing this for passing candidates serves no purpose from a licensing board perspective. As another land surveyor in my office says, most newly licensed individuals will tend to practice within their areas of strength and not just jump into areas of practice they do not feel comfortable in until they increase that knowledge/experience. I know you will most likely disagree with that...and I can certainly understand the rationale behind your viewpoint, but the process is in place only to determine minimum competency. Its not about the profession. Its about ensuring that the candidates for licensure meet the minimum requirements established by law to protect the general public from members of the profession.
Your concerns about where the newly licensed individuals go from that point in acquiring an increased level of knowledge/experience to effectively grow in their profession are well founded and very much in line with some of the other comments in this thread. Someone licensed has the responsibility to be self-aware of their strengths and weaknesses. I don't disagree with much of what you said related to recognizing your(my) own strengths and weaknesses in terms of what projects I would agree to undertake.
I should add that a little over a year ago, the Board asked the psychometrician for a diagnostic report reflecting the performance of the overall group that failed some of the state exams. This was provided to the CLSA - BPELSG Liaison to encourage CLSA to recognize how their members could improve upon mentoring future candidates. I'm not sure where that went or if anything ever happened from that, but it was very telling where the failing candidates were not receiving adequate training from the profession.
Ric Moore, post: 435863, member: 731 wrote: On the advice of psychometricians ... the Board decided to no longer publish cut scores for all states exams. This is very common practice ...
What is the basis for that advice. It seems to me that psychometrician advice is largely based on the "defensibility" of the exam. If that is the basis here, then I don't think that it serves the public. Cut scores, together with pass rates are valuable indicators of whether there is a problem with the exam process. A low cut score together with a low or average pass rate indicates a problem. Determining whether that is a problem with the exam or a problem with the quality of the candidates requires a review of the exams of several years and a comparison of the statistics for those years.
Ric Moore, post: 435863, member: 731 wrote: You didn't receive a diagnostic because you never failed the exam.
Someone in another thread a couple weeks ago suggested that I might be a bit lacking in tact. I was trying to exercise a bit of tact by not pointing out that fact.
Ric Moore, post: 435863, member: 731 wrote: Issuing this for passing candidates serves no purpose from a licensing board perspective. As another land surveyor in my office says, most newly licensed individuals will tend to practice within their areas of strength and not just jump into areas of practice they do not feel comfortable in until they increase that knowledge/experience. I know you will most likely disagree with that...and I can certainly understand the rationale behind your viewpoint, but the process is in place only to determine minimum competency. Its not about the profession. Its about ensuring that the candidates for licensure meet the minimum requirements established by law to protect the general public from members of the profession.
Dallas, the other surveyor in your office had good guidance coming up in the profession and probably exercised better sense than some others regarding assuming competency in different areas of practice because of it. One surveyor comes to mind who works in the county where Dallas and I both live. That guy passed on, IIRC, his 7th attempt (he was playing the license lottery and apparently matched enough numbers to get a free ticket) - of course the results of the first 6 opportunities were the fault of the exam writers and graders - and upon getting his license, presumed he knew everything he ever needed to know about surveying. This is the guy who thought another licensee in his office was stupid because he forced the bearings and distances of record lines to match the locations of found original monuments rather than, as was his (Mr. Lucky 7) practice, choose one monument to anchor the record figure to, and another to rotate to, calling everything else off. He would do this when retracing entire subdivisions.
Unfortunately, I believe that there are far more like him than you might care to acknowledge.
Ric Moore, post: 435863, member: 731 wrote: Your concerns about where the newly licensed individuals go from that point in acquiring an increased level of knowledge/experience to effectively grow in their profession are well founded and very much in line with some of the other comments in this thread. Someone licensed has the responsibility to be self-aware of their strengths and weaknesses. I don't disagree with much of what you said related to recognizing your(my) own strengths and weaknesses in terms of what projects I would agree to undertake.
You say that providing a diagnostic report to a passing examinee would serve no purpose, but within the course of a few sentences talk about ensuring minimum competency and that it is the licensee's responsibility to recognize what areas he or she is competent in and where they lack competence.
The statement about self recognition is also an admission that while a new licensee may be, in broad contemplation, minimally competent, they can be and as a practical matter, always are at least minimally competent in some areas of practice yet not competent in others. Competence and comfort don't necessarily correlate. The new licensee may have barely made it over the cut score but have all the confidence in the world that they aced the whole thing. They may have answered one whole aspect of the exam according to what a poorly informed mentor taught them over several years and failed that whole area of the exam.
Unless they fail the exam overall, they may not learn of their incompetence for several years and after causing problems for many members of the general public.
Case in point: The pre-82 RCE in a N. CA mountain town who had been surveying for many years without anyone telling him he was doing much of it wrong. He was very conscientious about doing what he thought was correct, made careful measurements and created very good looking maps, but rejected original monuments because 1) some weren't shown on a filed map, 2) the surveyor who set them 40 years prior didn't appear to measure very carefully, and 3) his GPS was more accurate than the transit and tape used to set the existing monuments.
After more than 30 years of doing what he thought was the right way to survey after the State gave him a license that told him he was competent to survey, the State told him he wasn't competent and fined him in excess of $20k.
If the State is going to tell someone that they are competent to survey without supervision, and it is the State's responsibility to ensure minimum competence and to protect the public from incompetent practice, then it seems a very minor burden on the Board, and a useful communication not only for the new licensee, but far more importantly, for that new licensee's present and future clients, that he or she be put on notice that while they may be minimally competent in a broad sense, they may not be adequately competent in all the areas they think they are, and here is a breakdown for you to properly assess your strengths and weaknesses as we turn you loose on an unsuspecting public.
Providing the diagnostic to a candidate who failed the exam is primarily a benefit to the examinee in preparing for the next exam opportunity but has little or no benefit with regard to protecting the public. And while the new licensee would receive the benefit of being better able to identify their own training needs, providing the diagnostic would very much serve the Board's primary purpose of protecting the public to put new licensees on notice of where their professional weaknesses lie.
In fact, the public would be the prime beneficiary of that. It would probably have a noticeable effect on the number of future enforcement cases your staff needs to process. Just as usefully, if a licensee has a complaint filed against them related to an area of practice in which they did not prove at least minimal competency, and that licensee cannot show having participated in additional training in that area since taking the exam, the Board (and the complainant) will have the advantage by having put that licensee on notice of his or her lack of demonstrated competence in that area of practice. Having previously provided that notice, it puts the burden on the respondent licensee to show additional meaningful training. Without it, the licensee is presumed competent and the Board must prove the incompetence. Seems like that might help the enforcement program by encouraging more licensees to settle sooner, agree to pay their fine and get some training.
Ric Moore, post: 435865, member: 731 wrote: I should add that a little over a year ago, the Board asked the psychometrician for a diagnostic report reflecting the performance of the overall group that failed some of the state exams. This was provided to the CLSA - BPELSG Liaison to encourage CLSA to recognize how their members could improve upon mentoring future candidates. I'm not sure where that went or if anything ever happened from that, but it was very telling where the failing candidates were not receiving adequate training from the profession.
I wasn't aware of that. Perhaps Rob brought it to the CLSA Board of Directors attention during a meeting I missed. I'll ask him about it. Sounds like it would be a good tool for the chapters that offer review courses for the exam. I've also been suggesting to a few chapters that are complaining of dwindling numbers that offering more educational opportunities geared primarily to the LSIT and new licensee level members would be a great way to boost interest in chapter activities. Maybe your report would tie in to such efforts.
