Protection of Public Health, Safety, and Welfare

• Landscape architects directly impact public health, safety, and welfare.

Licensure is the most appropriate form of regulation to ensure that the public

is adequately protected.

• Licensure of landscape architects ensures that professionals are qualified by

virtue of their education, experience, and examination.

• Licensure of landscape architects ensures that untrained individuals are

prevented from engaging in professional practice that substantially (or

significantly) impacts public health, safety and welfare. Licensed landscape

architects fulfill educational training and examination requirements that

prepare professionals to protect the public from both physical and monetary

harm.

Landscape architects are called upon for complex services that require highly

technical skills, making it difficult for prospective clients to evaluate the

competency of professionals. Licensure as a measure of competence can

assist consumers in identifying appropriate professionals for design services.

• The scope of landscape architectural practice includes site plans, plans of

development, grading plans, vehicular roadways and pedestrian systems

design, stormwater and erosion control plans, and the siting of buildings and

structures, all work that localities and federal agencies require to be sealed by

licensed professionals. Consequently, the scope of landscape architecture

overlaps with other licensed design professionals including architects,

engineers, and Class B land surveyors.

Without licensure, landscape architects would likely be prohibited from

leading multidisciplinary teams. Currently, landscape architects serve as the

prime consultants on projects where they coordinate and administer the

services of engineers, architects, and land surveyors.

• Without licensure, landscape architects will be unfairly disadvantaged in the

marketplace. Oftentimes, federal, state, and local contracts require the work

to be completed by licensed individuals.

• Virginia landscape architects would be excluded from federal, state, and local

work in Virginia that requires licensure.

Virginia landscape architects would be excluded from federal, state, and local

work in Virginia that requires licensure.

• Licensure of landscape architects is necessary to keep the profession on an

equal footing with its related licensed design professions, architecture and

engineering. This equality enables landscape architects to lead projects, form

certain business partnerships, and serve as principals in multidisciplinary

firms.

• Licensure for one profession, and certification, registration, or no regulation

for the other, can cause confusion in the marketplace and may be perceived

by the consumer as an endorsement of the skill and competence of one

profession over the other. Where the professions overlap, it provides a state sanctioned

advantage for one profession over the other. This destroys the

competitive, free market in which design professionals compete.