Surveying, Mapping and GIS

I was able to enjoy some time at the Pennsylvania Society of Land Surveyors' 2007 Conference. It was great to see many old friends again, such as the great folks at PSLS that put the conference on, the Penn State Wilkes-Barre Surveying faculty (they have an excellent program there - I was fortunate to be able to tag along as an observer in the last ABET visit to Penn State, and have known Tom Seybert since my own days at Penn State as a student), as well as many fellow surveyors, PAMAGIC members, POBers and other folks - the conversation was great, I got a lot of input and thoughts on Continuing Professional Competency, data standards and geodesy, and many other things swirling around in my life of late.

My focus was to attend some of the GPS sessions, and though I was tied up with many other things, I was actually able to attend some, such as the "Horizontal Control Survey with GPS " session by GPS guru Dr. James P. Reilly, and the "Static GPS Post-Processing" session by Brian Naberezny, of PSU and University of Maine.

I also greatly enjoyed the excellent presentation put on by Patrick Lee, as a Daniel Boone re-enactor. As a pioneer in his westward movements, Daniel Boone was involved in surveying and land grants - and some of my own Searcy ancestors were colleagues of Boone, and were also surveyors in early Kentucky.

Patrick Lee as Daniel Boone

Just as a reminder, the 2006 Pennsylvania Land Surveyors' Conference is next week at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately I have a meeting in Washington, DC on Monday, and meetings in Research Triangle Park, NC on Wednesday and Thursday, or I would definitely be there.

On another note, at yesterday's Registration Board meeting, we voted to hold a meeting at the 2007 Surveyors' Conference. Traditionally, up until a few years ago, the Board held a meeting at the Conference every year- this was great for Board outreach to the Surveying community, and for Board members to understand the issues of the Surveying community alike. Hopefully our Commissioner will approve.

The Pennsylvania Registration Board for Engineers, Land Surveyors and Geologists is meeting on January 18th at 9:30AM at the PA Department of State, 2601 North Third Street, Harrisburg, in Board Room C.

As Vice Chair of the Registration Board, one of the items that I have requested be placed on the Agenda is a discussion of Continuing Professional Competency for Engineers. Recently, the Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers has pursued legislation to require continuing education for Professional Engineers, in Senate Bill 655. Additionally, the Pennsylvania Society of Land Surveyors Board of Directors has also recently authorized pursuing similar legislation for Land Surveyors.

While I am generally very much in favor of Continuing Professional Competency for licensed professionals, some of the concerns I have regards logistics for implementing such a program at the State Registration Board, along with harmonization of these efforts with model legislation and requirements recommended by NCEES.

I have been reading several articles, but would be curious to hear how other states, professions and jurisdictions handle Continuing Professional Competency.

Over the last couple of months, an effort has been begun to institute Continuing Professional Competency for Engineers and Surveyors, as initiated by PSPE in Senate Bill 655 and by PSLS in their December 2005 Board of Directors meeting.

I believe the current NCEES guidance recommends 30 hours of continuing ed over each biennial registration period- the current proposal is geared for 24 hours. Some of the questions are-

• What kind of courses are appropriate - strictly technical topics, or also business practice, ethics, legal issues
  
• How to track and manage CPC requirements
  
• Others...?

I will probably be looking into a crosswalk of how the current CPC proposal relates to how CPC has been implemented in other states. The hope is that this can be a successful, transparent, and portable process that will benefit all licensees.