I came in hot and tired from the field to a message to call Steve at XYZ title company concerning an ALTA we had recently completed. Once on the phone, he proceeded to say "Your coordinates don't match the ones in the legal description." I replied "I have no idea, because neither contain coordinates". It went downhill from there. Later I received an email from him. His title is "Survey specialist". It's probably a good thing that I didn't know his "title" when I was on the phone with him.
Me. "What's the difference?"
T.C. Carroll "It's the difference between right and wrong!"
The silly boy misspoke. ?ÿHe meant bearings. ?ÿHis 44-1/2 degrees from 1881 does not match your 44 degrees 29 minutes 32 seconds.
The new guy gets to be the "survey specialist".?ÿ
After all they sent him to school for it one afternoon. ?ÿ
Not sure about your State rules, or the State Steve is calling from,but in Texas to have Survey / Surveyor in your title you need to be an RPLS or SIT, you should tell the specialist he may be in violation with his title.?ÿ
The move across the nation is to back off slightly on that approach. Some states still hold surveyor and engineer as protected terms, but recent court action makes this a risky stance...
I never worry about what the West Coast Courts say, the always get overturned in the Supreme Court.
Few (if any) boards are likely to take the issue to the Supremes. Given the current political climate heads would roll if they tried.
I agree the Supreme Court wont waste its time on a Engineer / Survey title, however if you go off the tract record of the West Coast having their judgement overturned, why even worry about what one State said about the title, you have 49 other State that enforce the rule.
Did they change the rules? When I worked there for 8-9 years in the early 2000s there was not a blanket proscription of the word "survey", but simply stated that one could not use a title or description that "tends to convey" that they are a licensed surveyor.
Considering the usage of the word in various unlicensed positions (that are commonly known to be such), there would be quite a few Survey Technicians, Survey Field Crew Leaders, Survey Instrument Operators and yes, Survey Specialists across the state who need to be reported to the Board.
There are about 57 boards regulating our profession. Those attempting to hold the base terms surveying and engineering as protected are a fading minority.
Give you give me a list of the 57 boards that are not enforcing the Surveyor and Engineering titles?
Yes I have a friend his title was Survey Manager, his company got a letter saying they were in violation since he had Survey in his title, he just passed the SIT exam, but they mailed the letter out before the results on the test were out, he passed the SIT exam, they call the board and the board said since he has his SIT title, he can keep Survey in his title.
In Texas to have Survey or Surveyor title you need to have RPLS or SIT.
I have been asked to draft an Executive Order to clear all of this up.
not a fun task but it pays well
Just one more rule should do it
You asserted 49 states were enforcing in that manner. I could chase the unicorn of proving a negative but it's a fools errand. The better approach is show some actions to the contrary.
That's interesting, I doubt our board would pursue a complaint concerning a survey specialist title. There would need to be more to it than the misnamed title, or a review position with the title company.
He is clearly out of his element.
It was just merged with the Engineering board to create Texas Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors
I only know of one case, someone with an Engineering degree, he may have had an Engineering license in another State or his home Country I cant recall all the details, disputed a traffic or red light ticket, he did the math and according to him the ticket was illegal. The board went after him since he signed Engineer on his report, the Board went after him for calling himself an Engineer in that State, he went to the Courts the Courts said he could use Engineer.
Can you provide me examples where the boards are looking the other way? According to you there should be a list of them.
I can assure you the US government has many thousands of engineering positions named as such with a small percentage being license holders in any state. ?ÿIn my days of working as an employee of a contractor with over a thousand workers at our location working directly for the Department of the Army, we had all sorts of engineering positions. ?ÿThere were safety engineers, design engineers, facility engineers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, project engineers and such with multiple levels of standing, i.e., junior, general and senior. ?ÿOf the approximately 60 positions so dubbed, seven of us held university diplomas in some category of engineering. ?ÿOf those seven, only three of us were licensed professional engineers. ?ÿOur pay depended on our job title. ?ÿWhen some employee was deemed worthy of a pay raise the company was allowed by the Army to change their job title to something like Senior Mechanical Engineer. ?ÿNearly all holding that job title had never attended college in any course of study, let alone engineering.
?ÿ
Also, one might consider the various professional societies that exist for the engineering profession. ?ÿThe Society of Petroleum Engineers with over 164, ooo members, with many of those living in Texas, would be lucky to have five percent of the members to be licensed professional engineers. ?ÿThat is an area for which there is very little use for having a license. ?ÿOn the other hand, the American Society of Civil Engineers with over 152,000 members would have a significantly higher percentage of licensed professional engineers as this, historically, been an area with many consultants. ?ÿThe Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers has over 420,000 members. ?ÿA tiny percentage of those members would be licensed professional engineers.
Yes, I am aware of that. But there are many reasons why that has occurred. The point that I was trying to make (poorly) was that many boards choose discretion and tact when dealing with situations such as protected titles and they consider such things as "How is the public being harmed in this specific situation?" when confronted with these issues. I can truthfully tell you that any board attempting to appear hard-nosed on the use of "Engineer" or "Surveyor" by itself without very good supporting evidence that the person was misleading the public, would have a very difficult if not impossible road ahead, they could easily be subjecting themselves to legislative scrutiny that they did not want in the first place.