Posted By Charles Morgan on 8/7/2008 at 8:10 PM

From the NC State Board of Examiners Website:

"The creation and design of the controls, profiles, and cross sections for the electronic data, used in the Digital Terrain Models, for the purposes of earthwork grading and stake-out is within the definition of the practice of land surveying and engineering and shall be done under the responsible charge of a Professional Engineer or Professional Land Surveyor".

There appears to be some ongoing confusion on this issue. The board has not published a newsletter and mailed it out in quite a while, preferring to post new issues on their website. Hopefully, this will change soon.

In the meantime, it is up to the surveyors and engineers to spread the word to the contractors and the unregistered individuals who might be operating in violation of the above ruling.

While the contractors are not directly under the board's supervision, they will have to accept the risk and liability of their use of any unsupervisied models. It won't take many trips to court to settle the issue for their insurance providers.