I served on the Board from 1997 until I retired after my two terms were completed in 2005. I was full Board Chairman from July 2003-July 2004 and Engineering Section Chairman for 6 of the 8 years that I served on the Board. Because of that background, I believe that I understand the issues involved with Continuing Education and what impact it will have on the regulants of our state.  During that time period the number of Liscensed Engineers alone jumped from ~18000 to over 22,500, with the total number for all professions approaching 28-29,000.

I would first like to say that I support the idea that all design professionals should do what they can to stay current with the technical advances within our respective professions.  Personally I make it a point to see that I take reasonable advantage to further my knowledge of engineering at every opportunity that I can. Having said that, I am catagorically opposed to the idea of the state Mandating and Regulating what design professionals need to do to stay current within  the needs of their own careers, so as to maintain the required level of competency to compete within todays work environment. It is my experience, that by in large, our professions are comprised of highly intelligent, highly educated and self motivated adults that do not need this level of state sponsored nannyism.

I came to these conclusions based on the facts below:

1. For a regulation to be imposed I believe there has to be a manifest need that such regulation will protect the public. In the eight years that I served on the Board, I can count less than 8 cases of complaints of incompetence being brought against existing regulants versus a regulant population that averaged over 20,000 for Engineers during that time period. When compared to some of the other professions (e.g. Accounting) that had continuing education requirements during that time period, all of the design professions had a complaint incidence rate of less than half of what they had. Of the 8 cases mentioned, most were dismissed with no violation. The primary case load for the board to adjudicate involves ethical violations, business violations ( Responsible Charge), complaints against regulants that have been found in violation in other states, and requests to be granted liscensure after having been turned down by the board through standard review. I submit that this was and is a solution in search of a problem!

2. As of March 2006 when the House Bill authorizing Continueing Ed was passed, there was no study or statistical evidence that conclusively proved  or supported the theory that Continuing Ed did anything to enhance or improve the protection of the Life, Safety or Health of the public. This was true no matter what profession was studied including all of the health, education, accounting or design professions. In fact, the most recent  and comprehensive study looking specifically at the design professions was commissioned by the California Liscensing Boards and completed in 2003/4. In their study, they found that there was no justification for requiring Continuing Education of their regulants at that time. Every year I was a member of the Board, the Board  would specifically request and direct staff to research this topic for us, each time ending with the same negative result.

3. The application of Continuing Education requirements on a State by State basis is haphazard at best with some states allowing some things to count with dubious value. As an example, Florida had been accepting attendance at their regular State Liscensure Board meetings as sufficient for meeting some of their regulants Continuing Ed requirements. Some other states have operated on the honor system, accepting written assurance that their regulants have read and studied the latest code revisions. While I firmly believe in the need for local state regulation, this situation has led to chaos. In the past, I have heard multiple complaints from multi-state regulants who have to comply with a hodge-podge of requirements.

4. Past experience by other states is that typically when Continuing Education is implemented, that the overall number of regulants in that state will decline by 1/4 to 1/3 with the first complete renewal cycle. Because the cost of regulation in Virginia by law must be born by the regulants, you can expect your fees to increase substantially. This is true because the regulants will now be required to not only pay for the overhead of the new regulatory staff and infrastructure, but there will be far fewer regulants to spread that cost over. Virginia at one point was one of the lowest cost states in the country for fees.

5. The review of courses for content and approval will be slow and cumbersome. Unless preliminary review responsibility is turned over all or in part by the board to the non technically trained staff this can and will be a major issue, particularly for the Engineering Section. When I was on the Board, all decisions had to be made and agreed on by a majority of the members of each section involved. As an example, 2 of 3 Engineering section members would have to review and agree that a course was valid with the third member being the tie breaker.  Why does this matter?  If a statistical review sampling of say 5% of the total population up for renewal is implemented, then 2 of the 3 members would have to agree that a regulant's information and course work is sufficient. For the Engineering section, this would mean that each board member would need to review > 800 of these applications annually. This would be on top of their current workload of ~ 600/yr new Liscense applications and the 60-90/month comity applications that are reviewed by each of the Section members. This taken with the need to review, hear and adjudicate cases for compIaints and other issues lodged against requlants, as well as the need to do speaking engagements and participate in the academic audits of the in state university programs, something is going to give. Quite frankly, I pity the Board section members that will be responsible for this workload.

Because of the above facts, I and I believe I can speak for a reasonable majority of the members that I served with, did not ever request the Assembly to provided us with either the responsibility of or the authority to administer a Continuing Education Requirement in Virginia. For that, you must thank the various Professional Societies that have continuously pushed for this legislation and Delegate Jack Reid who has since retired from the assembly. The societies pushed for this legislation based on a desire to enhance the standing of our respective professions and to prevent comity issues from arising with other states.

When this legislation was passed two years ago, we were in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, those of us who went to argue against it before the Senate General Laws committee did not meet with a rational response to our presentation on why it should not be passed. The reception of our comments can best be paraphrased by the response of one of the Senators when she said that: " She believed that all Engineers should be required to know and understand why the levees failed in New Orleans" Fortunately she went down to defeat in the subsequent election, but her understanding of the complexity of the issues involved mimicked I believe the understanding of most of the senators of both parties. Particularly for the Engineering Section a one size fits all approach is simply not practical to meet the needs of all the Liscensees, particularly those doing industrial as opposed to A & E work in support of construction.

I strongly recommend that everyone should come to the various open forums to discuss the implementation of these new regulations so as to insure that they have a minimal impact on both our regulants and the Board.