Removal of Boundary Experience Requirement.

>...we have read that Idaho, Maryland, New York, Tennessee, Washington and "many other states" are using the NCEES model law to push for the removal of the boundary experience requirement for licensure.

While the Maryland licensing law has similarities to the NCEES model law (and has since I started surveying here in 1988), it also has separate licensing boards for surveyors and engineers. The chance that a board consisting of a majority land surveyors with a couple of consumer members will remove boundary experience from the licensure requirement is, as Elvis Costello sang, less than zero.

If you live in a state with a joint engineering/surveying licensing board and are looking for a windmill to tilt at, I would suggest lobbying for separate licensing boards would be the most effective way to protect the profession.

Removal of Boundary Experience Requirement - Missouri

Below is Per MO 20 CSR 2030-5.110 Standards for Admission to Examination—Professional Land Surveyors

(2) For professional field and office experience in land surveying to be deemed satisfactory,
the applicant shall have obtained at least one-third (1/3) of the required experience as
field experience and at least one-third (1/3) of the required experience as office experience.
Furthermore, all professional field and office experience in land surveying shall be completed
under the immediate personal supervision of a licensed professional land surveyor
as defined in 20 CSR 2030-13.020.

In evaluating satisfactory professional field and office experience in land surveying, credit shall be given as follows:
(A) Party chief—year for year;
(B) Office work (combination of record research, survey calculations and preparation
of property descriptions as relating to property boundary surveys and/or the reestablishment
of the U.S. public land survey corners) (year-for-year credit);
(C) Individual evaluation may result in less than full credit; and
(D) Engineering or construction surveying work experience will receive no more than
twenty-five percent (25%) credit (the maximum credit given shall be no more than twenty-five
percent.

Based on my exposure to the state Board and my serving on Local Chapter Boards I would be extremely surprised if Missouri were to ever even consider the removal of boundary experience. In fact the newly redesigned/formatted State specific exam is so boundary/USPLSS heavy that the current pass rate is only in the 30-40% range. If you don't have the experience you won't pass.

I'm not from the Midwest, but I think it's a bad idea unless they are going to make two different kinds of licenses. If you don't have boundary experience you can get a license that will only allow you to do topography or construction layout types of activities but you cannot make decisions regarding boundaries for example.

That probably would not work in NJ as you do not need a license to perform construction layout. So areas of practice for a licensed person excluding boundary work would be somewhat limited.

Do other states have separate licenses for different types of surveying?

Boards Do Not Write Laws, They Carry Out Laws

So, no matter what a Surveying Board may think, thy cannot outthink the Law.

Paul in PA

I'd be interested to know where you read that. I have not seen it as far as NY goes. NY has been trying to introduce and pass a re-definition law for several years, and it does look similar to the NCEES model (several differing versions have been tried).

Unfortunately, I'm convinced at this point that whatever finally passes will only look exactly as the engineers on the board of registration want it to look (much like continuing education law). So, you may be correct. The PE lobby has been taking steps to get surveying completely out of anything remotely engineering related or that could conceivably be performed by engineers rather than surveyors. Capturing land boundary under the PE license would be a logical extension of that.

I think we are probably better off leaving the definition as is, considering how the deck is stacked. The problem with that is those who stack the deck will simply introduce their own deck and that would turn out even worse (again much the same as ce law).

"If you live in a state with a joint engineering/surveying licensing board and are looking for a windmill to tilt at, I would suggest lobbying for separate licensing boards would be the most effective way to protect the profession."

I have suggested that route in NY, but it's so unlikely as to not be worth pursuing, according to most working on the issue.

Fact is, surveying societies may have waited too long to try to advance the learning, scope and prestige of the profession. Engineering societies have worked hard at it for decades and are now in a position to probably capture boundary surveying (the last piece they have not already captured) under their license.

Might be true in the Empire State, but the Garden State has some pretty specific delineations as to what type of license can sign certain plans, and I have seen people fined for overstepping those bounds.

http://www.njspls.org/resource/resmgr/imported/Services.pdf

Boards Do Not Write Laws, They Carry Out Laws

> So, no matter what a Surveying Board may think, thy cannot outthink the Law.

Actually here in Maryland the legislature has, by act of law, given the Board for Professional Land Surveyors the authority to set the licensure experience requirements by regulation.

Code of Maryland Regulations
09.13.07.01
Purpose.

B. Pursuant to Business Occupations and Professions Article, §15-305, Annotated Code of Maryland, an applicant for the appropriate licensing examination as a professional land surveyor shall meet certain experiential requirements. The experience that an applicant is to demonstrate pursuant to the above statutory authority must be acceptable to the Board for Professional Land Surveyors.

C. In order to assure a minimum acceptable level of competence of an applicant immediately after the passage of the applicable examination, the Board considers that it is in the best interests of Maryland consumers that the applicant has a diversified prelicensing experience in different aspects of land surveying.

Please, someone explain why a skilled surveyor without boundary experience should not be able to be licensed in the states where a license is required to perform all types of surveys.

Requiring a person to have boundary experience to be able to perform a geodetic control survey is like requiring a doctor to have experience in proctology to be a neurosurgeon, or vice versa.

If you don't want to license people without boundary experience but with plenty of other survey experience, then take the other types of surveying out of the law.

You might think I am against the requirement that one have a license to practice, for example, geodetic surveying, but in fact I am against the idea that one must first be proficient at boundary surveying in order to do any other kind of surveying.

Many states have a looming shortage of licensed surveyors. Open it up to other kinds of surveyors, don't just restrict it to boundary surveyors.

In the PE world, for example, there is no such thing as a structural PE, or a power systems PE, they are all PE's. Nor do they restrict entrance to the exam to only people with, for example, environmental engineering experience. Same for the MD world. You get an medical license, and you practice what you know. If you work outside your area of expertise, and foul up, you are probably headed to court as a defendant.

Yes, as a for instance, WV has a separate license for underground surveying. In my opinion that is a justifiable specialty.

Uh, John. There are now separate PE's, in a wide variety of titles with matching examinations. It has changed from the PE or not a PE circumstance that was in place when I obtained mine.

I agree with everything you say, but ....

Then there's always the guy that "will help a friend". By the time a boundary mistake is discovered multiple people may have been damaged and fixing the problem won't be solved by suing the guy that made the mistake.

Perhaps a better way to restrict practice is to put it in the hands of the private sector. Mandate that every surveyor must be covered by E&O insurance and let the insurance company tell the surveyor what they will cover - and what they won't.

Dave: agreed, that will always happen. Actually it also happens now with unlicensed people doing a "boundary survey" to help out a friend.

But there are plenty of cases I have seen and been involved with where the licensed surveyor FUBAR'd the control survey.

There are many conscientious surveyors who will decline to do work that they are not qualified to do. But there are others who will undertake anything just to make money.

Boundary work is far and away the primary function of land surveyors living in Kansas. A few companies in each of the three primary metro areas dominate construction staking as there is dang little call for it elsewhere. There may be 740 licensed by the State but more than half are from other States. Of those left, many are effectively inactive or handle just a few projects. I believe KSLS has about 250 members of which only about 50 are what you would call "active". The others are primarily focused on getting their CE requirements met.

So, most are boundary first with a little construction staking, flood determination and mortgage inspections thrown in.

Experience in varying aspects (admittedly not all) is usually required. I think that holds true with other professions as well.

So, why boundary in particular as an aspect that must be included?

Probably because the license allows one to offer professional opinions directly to the consumer on matters that directly affect them and they don't know anything about. This is mostly concerned with the boundary aspect.

Maybe more important is that it is generally believed that boundaries can't be taught, or are not being taught, or classes have not been taken by applicants for licensure. Whereas, other areas of surveying may have been extensively covered in whatever college the applicant has behind them. After all, geodesy and other measurement science is covered in many programs and a surveying degree is not required in most states. So, to know anything at all about boundaries one would have to have some experience on the job with them.

IN NY it's clear that the board of registration pretty much considers boundaries the only reason for the license. Others can perform any other surveying related task without it as far as I can tell. 50% of experience must be boundary. That could be 2 years for an applicant who has earned a BS degree in surveying engineering, worked 5 years becoming an expert in geodetic control, scanning, etc.. Now you want them to do 2 years of boundary to sit for the exam? I guess my question would be (here in NY) why do you want the license if you are not going to perform boundary surveying for consumers in NY? And if you are going to do that, yes you need some experience first, even though you may be brilliant and well schooled and experienced in other areas.

It's a tough question. The profession can (and has) lost some of the best and brightest under this process. If you are in a state that has captured a good scope of practice, I can see where boundary experience maybe should have less importance.