Requirements: In order to renew licensure, a surveyor must have 12 continuing education (CE) credits/hours by December 31 of each calendar year. These must include a minimum of 3 credits/hours over the Act/Rules and/or Ethics that must be taken every year and cannot be carried over. You may, however, carry over up to nine units of other approved CE from the previous year.
The intent is for the continuing education program to be self-administered. TBPELS does not pre-approve any courses, seminars, presentations, or other activities to meet the CEP requirement. The board does not have a list of approved courses or activities. It would be very difficult to include every possible course, seminar, or activity available to engineers or land surveyors nationwide.
There are two basic criteria for an activity to count:
1) Is the specific activity on the list of activities in the rule? (see below for an excerpt from the rule)
2) Is the activity relevant to the practice of your profession and does it include educational, technical, ethical, or managerial content? If the activity is related to engineering or land surveying in an educational, technical, managerial, or ethical manner, then it will count.
PDH units may be earned as follows:
(1) Successful completion or auditing of college credit courses.
(2) Successful completion of continuing education courses, either offered by a professional or trade organization, university or college, or offered in-house by a corporation, other business entity, professional or technical societies, associations, agencies, or organizations, or other group
(3) Successful completion of correspondence, on-line, televised, videotaped, and other short courses/tutorials.
(4) Presenting or attending qualifying seminars, in-house courses, workshops, or professional or technical presentations made at meetings, conventions, or conferences sponsored by a corporation, other business entity, professional or technical societies, associations, agencies, or organizations, or other group.
(5) Teaching or instructing as listed in paragraphs (1) through (4) above.
(6) Authoring published papers, articles, books, or accepted licensing examination items.
(7) Active participation in professional or technical societies, associations, agencies, or organizations, including:
(A) Serving as an elected or appointed official;
(B) Serving on a committee of the organization;
(C) Serving in other official positions.
(8) Patents Issued.
(9) Engaging in self-directed study.
(10) Active participation in educational outreach activities involving K-12 or higher education students.
See Board Rule 137.17(i) (engineers) or 138.17(i) (surveyors) for a detailed list of how many PDHs you can claim for each activity.
Self-Study
The Board allows four (4) hours of self-directed study in a topic related to the practice of surveying to meet part of your required 12 hours of continuing education necessary for registration renewal. See the Continuing Education Program (CEP) Frequently Asked Questions for more information on what qualifies as self-study.
Documentation and Tracking
If you have utilized self-study, please document the amount in writing to including:
Date(s) of study
Number of hours claimed
Topic goals
Resources used
Short summary of the outcome of your study
Audits
After renewals, a percentage of the population will be audited and required to provide continuing education certificates and logs.
Please see the Continuing Education Program (CEP) Frequently Asked Questions for further information.