Professional Land Surveyors Licensure Modernization Act - 2024

Overview Summary

In an effort to respond to the declining number of land surveyors in our state, The Surveying and Mapping Society of GA created the "SAMSOG Surveying Education Task Force” in late 2022.  This group was tasked with finding ways to make land surveying education more accessible to aspiring land surveyors and to determine ways to remove unnecessary barriers to obtaining licensure as a land surveyor in the state of GA. 

This task force, comprised of leaders from SAMSOG, Academia, and our State Board of Registration, met many times during 2023 addressing these issues.  The group quickly determined that “decoupling” the land surveyor tests (FLS and PLS tests) from the required experience would be an excellent way to streamline the licensing process.  Decoupling is a national trend being successfully implemented in other states for Professional Land Sureyors and Engineers.  The proposed changes to the licensure process would allow aspiring land surveyors to take both the Fundamentals of Land Surveying test (FS) and the Principles of Land Surveying (PS) test immediately upon completion of the required coursework vs. waiting until the required experience period has been completed. Importantly, land surveying experience will still be required before licensure, but can be obtained subsequently to passing the exams.   This effort was supported and approved by the Board of Directors of SAMSOG at the 2023 summer conference meeting in Charleston, SC.   The SAMSOG Legislative Committee immediately began working jointly with the SAMSOG Education Task Force to craft the language for this legislation.   This effort has now resulted a bill known as Senate Bill 374  introduced in the 2024 session of the GA General Assembly.   This bill is sponsored by Senator Larry Walker.

If passed, this bill will result in several positive changes to the laws governing the way land surveyors obtain licensure in Georgia.   Here are few important points about Senate Bill 374:

• The FLS and PLS exams can be taken immediately upon passing the required 18 semester hours in land surveying subjects.  This will allow for taking the tests while the studied material is still fresh in the applicant's mind and will likely result in a higher passing rate.  Under the current law, the tests are administered only after the experience has been obtained, often many years after the academic material was studied.

• Three distinct routes to licensure will be created based on the level of education of the applicant.  These routes are based on the level of education of the applicant - bachelors’s degree, associate’s degree, or high school.  The experience required for each route has been slightly reduced with the new proposed legislation, acknowledging that newer technologies have resulted in a shorter learning curve vs. the cumbersome technologies of the past.

• A formal two year “Apprenticeship” will be created and administered by the State Board of Registration.  Each applicant will be required to complete this apprenticeship after completing and passing the required 18 semester hours of land surveying coursework.  The apprenticeship will be attested by the applicant’s supervising professional land surveyor(s), with specific goals of developing professional level skill sets in appropriate areas.

• Experience gained prior to completing the required 18 semester hours will be credited to the applicant’s overall experience at a rate of up to 50%.  This will streamline and accelerate many years from applicants with several years of experience, while recognizing the integration of education and experience for younger applicants.

• The Georgia state specific land surveyor’s exam will be administered no sooner than during the last six months of the applicant’s apprenticeship period.

In summary, if passed, this legislation will result in a clearer and more efficient path to licensure for aspiring land surveyors.  Applicants will be allowed to take the exams immediately upon completion of course-work vs. later in their careers after their experience is completed, likely resulting in a higher passing rate for the examinations and more professional land surveyors for the State of GA.

The SAMSOG Education Task Force has developed several documents to assist members of the land surveying profession and the general public with understanding these changes.  Those documents can be downloaded via the following links:

SB 374 as Introduced With Strikethrough Edits

One Page "Executive Summary" 

Longer "Overview Summary" 

Graphic Path to Licensure Comparison for Bachelor's Degree Applicants

Graphic Path to Licensure Comparison for Associate's Degree Applicants

Graphic Path to Licensure Comparison for High School Diploma Applicants

Link to Follow the progress of SB 374 as it progresses
through the GA General Assembly Session for 2024

Questions regarding SB 374 should be directed to:

Trent Turk - Chairman, SAMSOG Education Task Force
trent@geosurvey.com

Spencer Johnson - Chairman, SAMSOG Legislative Committee
shj@wellstonassoc.com

We should be striving to expand out the entry and middle areas of the field. As an industry we are generally lacking in good field and office help more than anything else. 

Often I find when builders, construction companies, homeowners etc. state "they can't find a surveyor" more often than not it is actually they can't find a surveyor willing to work for free. 

This profession needs to do better at putting ourselves forward as professionals equal to the engineers or at the very least at least as prideful as the GIS professionals yet we seem to be looking for ways to continue a race to the bottom.

To really just distill this all down to the most basic of things with a real world example.

Today I managed to escape the computer and go do some actual surveying on a little job that the crew got rained out on yesterday. I arrived in a newer neighborhood home was probably built last fall and was pretty happy to see the neighbor property had wood stakes down both side lines. Stakes were faded but definitely placed by a surveyor. Glow pink flagging, faded ink of the PL combination, corners written up as "property corner". Well lucky me, not a single rebar was in on the neighbors property. I found only the subject property back left to be in place and used an angle point and another pin on the rear phase line to compute and set the corners. Everything checked out pretty tight between the three found corners. Wood stakes on the common line were .3-.5' different than my computations.

Best I can figure is the "builder" surveyor got called a few months back to mark the lines for the neighbor and slammed some stakes in off curb control or GPS, set no actual monumentation, and moved on. 

I guess the question is, does lowering standards, increasing the number of people with less money and time invested into their career path, increase, decrease, or make no change to such basic and blatant disregard of fundamentals of our field?  Sure there are individuals who will always do the right thing but with a broad brush people care more about things when they are harder to obtain.

          We need to rid our profession of the licensed quacks so as to insure that those aspiring to become licensed will work under well-qualified licensed surveyors and thus gain credible experience.  In my earlier years, I and some others filed complaints with the State Board against certain surveyors doing sub-standard work, but little was ever done about it.  I was very frustrated in attempting to find out why the State Board was so derelict in handling complaints--could get no real answers.  Somehow, the State Board needs to be beefed up so as to help rid our profession of those engaged in substandard practice.  The elimination of this element will result in all applicants receiving quality experience.

          Regarding the decline in the number of surveyors, I struggled financially in surveying for fourteen years, and finally had to give it up.  I could not maintain what I considered acceptable standards and compete with the consistently shoddy work being done by the competition.  Much of each job I dealt with was straightening out messes previous surveyors created for the tract before I could even begin my survey.  A number of other very competent surveyors, including most of the ones I worked for, have had the same experience and have had to drop out of the practice and do something else for a living.  Our profession has thus lost some of its best talent.

          Seems that allowing applicants to take the exams immediately upon completion of course-work "while the studied material is still fresh" on their minds, rather than being required to take the exams immediately before becoming licensed, "so as to increase the passing rate," is dumbing down the requirements somewhat.  Knowledge that is necessary for properly performing surveys should be possessed by persons when they become licensed.  If they once possessed this knowledge but it had slipped their minds as of several years later when they become licensed, they are not qualified to be licensed.