Assembly
PUBLIC HEARING
Committee on Labor and Industry
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
11:00 AM
225 Northwest
State Capitol
Assembly Bill 181
Martin J. Hanson, PE
Joint Board of Architects, Landscape Architects,
Professional Engineers, Designers & Land Surveyors--Chairman
Professional Engineers Section--Chairman
Committee on Labor and Industry
- Representative Honadel, chair,
- Representative Gottlieb, vice-chair
- Representatives Nass, Wieckert, Newcomer, Murtha, Nelson, Sheridan and Van Akkeren, members
Chairman Honadel and honorable members of the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Labor and Industry:
Hello, my name is Marty Hanson and I am the chairperson of the Examining Board of Architects, Landscape Architects, Professional Engineers, Designers, and Land Surveyors, which is also known as the A-E Joint Board.
The A-E Joint Board supports AB 181, which would grant the Joint Board the statutory authority to implement rule-making to require continuing education for the professions regulated by the Board. Legislative oversight would still exist through the rulemaking process.
Wisconsin is one of only a few remaining states that do not require continuing education, or Continued Professional Competency (CPC) as it is more often recently referred to. Establishing a requirement for professionals to become involved in activities that assist them keep pace and informed with changes in technology, research, and professional ethics will be a further step in the board’s mission to protect public health safety and welfare.
The A-E Joint Board is requesting that they be allowed the ability to initiate rulemaking to require continuing education for the professions that they regulate. Each section of the Joint Board will deliberate specific requirements for their respective discipline.
The A-E Joint Board is in support of this legislation.
I appreciate your time and request your support of AB 181.
Thank you.
Martin J. Hanson, PE
5 comments:
I can think of a number of reasons why it makes sense to require continuing education for licensed PE's.
First, nearly all other licensed professionals in Wisconsin have this requirement already. Don't Engineers face just as much change and have just as much need for updated knowledge and skills as Cosmetologists have?
Also, a solid majority of other states have this requirement already. I am licensed in 12 states, and only two (including Wisconsin) do not require continuing education.
Finally, our Code of Ethics requires that we hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public. How can we say we are doing this if we do not make an effort to ensure that the title Professional Engineer means an indivudual has the knowledge and skills to practice competently now, not just at some time in the past? The passing of a PE exam years or decades ago does not necessarily demonstrate knowledge of the principles and skills needed to practice competently today.
I have been registered in Iowa since their continuing education requirement was adopted and have never found compliance to be difficult or complicated. Expected professionals to demonstrate that they maintain their skills is reasonable.
I'm Glen Schwalbach and have been registered as a P.E. in Wisconsin for 35 years. Wisconsin is long overdue for continuing education requirements for P.E. license holders when compared to other professions and when compared to other states. Wisconsin P.E.'s are at risk for not getting reciprocity from other states who have CE requirements. Plus, recently, a leader from a Wisconsin government agency suggested they may require additional certification of P.E.'s in a particular field of work since there are no continuing education requirements for P.E.s in Wisconsin.
The adminstration of the requirement can be very simple for the Dept of Regulation and Licensing (DRL). The rules should just require the engineer to keep their records which would be subject of audit whenever the DRL gets a complaint or wishes to review the record for any reason.
The implementation of required CEU's is a good idea. Generally, the CEU requirement has not been difficult to meet in most states. However, the board should not adopt requirements similar to Florida where the registrants have to take classes on the board rules and regulations. In my opinion, this hasn't made Florida a safer state. It just spawned a CEU industry that provides expensive "band-aid" classes that help the registrants check a box on their renewal form.
I lean (slightly) in favor of Assembly Bill 181 that would grant our A-E Joint Board the authority to require formalized continuing education.
I believe there are nineteen states that currently do not require continuing education; that's more than a few, but there is easily a majority of states that do require C.E. Of the states adjacent Wisconsin (where a substantial amount of practice by PE's that live in Wisconsin take place) only Michigan does not have C.E. requirements. Several Wisconsin PEs have noted to me that it is somewhat difficult to obtain C.E. credits to maintain licenses they hold in other states because adequate courses that provide credits do not exist sufficiently in Wisconsin.
I believe a vast majority of us are taking advantage of continuing education in an informal way already in an effort to stay sharp with regards to technical, ethical, and legal (code changes) aspects of our profession. I can imagine there are specialized instances or fields for which finding technical CE credits that are applicable to that specialty could prove cumbersome, but for a vast majority of our disciplines the opportunities to make compliance simple will exist, I believe.
Martin Hanson's comments note that there will be Legislative oversight of the development of the continuing education requirements that become developed if AB 181 is passed. Along with legislative oversight WSPE strongly feels that industry groups such as WSPE should be involved in the development of any continuing education requirements to ensure that such requirements are reasonable and not overly cumbersome to obtain.
I look forward to hearing/reading more comment on this issue from Wisconsin PEs. Please remember to provide any comments that you have to your state assembly representative.
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