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Acquiring a California Land Surveyor License | Corona, CA

Are you looking for a career change? Thinking about land surveying? Here is some information to keep in mind:

To become a licensed land surveyor, you have to meet a few requirements. You must have at least six years of full-time (or its equivalent) land surveying experience. This must include a year with responsible office training and a year with responsible field training.

You can use one of two alternatives to reach the required experience. One option is if you graduated from a board-approved curriculum that emphasizes land surveying. This can count for up to four years of experience. The other is if you studied a board-approved curriculum and didn’t graduate. You can get a half-year of experience for every year you studied.

You also have to pass multiple examinations, including the NCEES Principles and Practice of Surveying (PS) Exam, the California-Specific Professional Land Surveyor Exam, the NCEES Fundamentals of Surveying (FS) Exam, and the California Professional Land Surveyors State Laws and Board Rules Exam. The last one is completed at home. You must also be fingerprinted and pay a fee.

As far as qualifications are concerned, The Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists waives the requirement to pass the NCEES Fundamentals of Surveying Exam in a few situations. This can be the case if you have an LSIT Certificate from a different state or a valid California Civil Engineer License. It also applies if you graduated from a four-year curriculum for land surveying and have at least 15 years of qualifying experience. The final exemption is if you graduated from a non-approved curriculum for land surveying with a Bachelor’s of Science or its equivalent and have at least 17 years of experience.

To find out more about a career in land surveying, please contact us at (800) CALVADA or visit www.calvada.com.

Calvada proudly serves Corona and all surrounding areas.

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The Teacher Land Surveyors Need Right Now | Corona, CA

Why Thomas ‘Tommy’ Boatright’s instructive videos are what land surveyors need right now.

May 24, 2021 by Emell Derra Adolphus

When Thomas “Tommy” Boatright was around 12 years old, his stepdad introduced him to land surveying and changed his life. The two of them were driving home from church when they made a stop at a local job site in their local neighborhood of Pensacola, Florida. 

“I was wearing my Sunday clothes,” Boatright remembers. “We are walking through the woods following an old wire fence, and he finds an old wooden post.” A corner. “He was so excited,” Boatright says. “Of course, at that age I didn’t care. He explained the history about the corner – but in one ear, out the other.” 

Somewhere along the way in Boatright’s teenage years, his stepdad’s enthusiasm for the land surveying profession stuck. Working part-time on a survey crew, Boatright found his niche in surveying as a “whiz kid” who could build a solution for just about any problem in the field. Now in his video column for pobonline.com, “Tommy’s Surveyor Toolbox,” Boatright is a “whiz kid” at heart with a passion for showing and telling how land surveyors can make their jobs easier in the field.

“I love to teach. I love seeing that light bulb moment in someone else’s eyes,” says Boatright. “I have produced several crew chiefs and techs.”

Among those crew chiefs and techs is William “Bill” Smith III, who says his time with Boatright helped confirm that he was on the right career path.

“I at random was just looking for a job. I thought maybe I will give this a try, and I liked it,” says Smith. “(Tommy) was my first crew chief and pretty much everything that I know I learned from him. He’s always teaching the new guys and stuff, that was a passion of his.”

With knowledge, their working relationship evolved and Smith says land surveying in Florida is better for it.

“I kind of loved it when we would work together toward the end because it was usually myself, who had made crew chief by then, Tommy and maybe another crew chief. So we had three chiefs,” he remembers. “We would just work and not have to talk about it because we all knew what needed to be done.”

“He is one of those kinds of people that don’t mind sharing his knowledge with others,” says Oscar Pittman, Boatright’s former boss at Pittman & Associates. “He’s a born teacher. He’s not shy about it. And he don’t mind helping other people. He’s always trying to think ahead, which is good. And really he’s a good guy to have around.”

Watch Tommy’s Surveyor Toolbox at POBonline.com.

To find out more about land surveying, please contact us at (800) CALVADA or visit www.calvada.com.

Calvada proudly serves Corona and all surrounding areas.

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Is Technology Taking Out the Land Surveyor? | Corona, CA

Traditionally the land surveyor had a job that the typical layman couldn’t do – use fancy equipment to survey a particular piece of land and report back any data needed. It was complicated and very necessary to the function of America. It was the backbone of progress.

Today, things have changed due to the continued progression of technological advances. There is now much more sophisticated equipment developed that is now accessible to the public. People have learned to use equipment used by the land surveyor. Perhaps not for land surveying purposes, but they use it for other purposes. They can use the scanners, they can fly drones. They may not have the knowledge that land surveyors do, but with all this technology at their fingertips, is there life after technology for the land surveyor?

Curtis Sumner of the National Society of Professional Land Surveyors spoke about the future of land surveying amidst the development of COVID-19 and technology, and how we can save the future of land surveying.

To read more about his speech, click here.

To find out more about the future of land surveying, please contact us at (800) CALVADA or visit www.calvada.com.

Calvada proudly serves Corona and all surrounding areas.

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Information Regarding NSPS and COVID-19 | Corona, CA

Recognizing that federal legislation addressing the COVID-19 pandemic won’t be final until the Senate and House reach agreement, National Society of Professional Surveyors (NSPS) wants to share with members the information that is known from time to time. Below is a summary of the current situation provided by American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC). 

Business Tax Relief

  • Deferral of payment of the employer portion of the Social Security tax, with half due by December 31, 2021 and the other half due by December 31, 2022.
  • Allows net operating losses arising in 2018, 2019 and 2020 to be carried back for five years.
  • Modifies the loss limitation applicable to passthroughs and sole proprietors so they can utilize excess business losses and access cash flow.
  • Increases business interest deductibility from 30 to 50 percent for 2019 and 2020.
  • Provides a refundable payroll tax credit for employers whose operations are partially or fully suspended by a COVID-19 shutdown order or whose gross receipts declined by more than 50 percent compared to the same quarter in the prior year.
  • Provides a technical fix for the qualified leasehold improvement provision in the TCJA.

Small Business Assistance

  • Provides $562 million for Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) to small businesses. 
  • The package also authorizes $350 billion worth of 100 percent guaranteed SBA loans, a portion of which SBA will forgive based on allowable expenses for the borrower.
  • This small business package also includes $10 billion in direct grants for businesses that do not qualify for the EIDL program, and $17 billion to have SBA step in and make six months of principle and interest payments for all SBA backed business loans.
  • Establishes the maximum 7(a) loan amount to $10 million through December 31, 2020 and provides a formula by which the loan amount is tied to payroll costs incurred by the business to determine the size of the loan.
  • Note that 501 c(3) non-profits qualify for small business assistance programs, not 501 c(6) entities; ACEC will work with ASAE and other associations to address in the next package.

Individual Assistance

  • The agreement provides direct payments to individuals with incomes up to $75,000 ($150,000 for couples), $1,200 for each adult ($2400 for couples), as well as $500 for each child.
  • The bill would add $600 per person per week onto the base maximum unemployment benefit for four months.
  • The bill enables employers to provide a student loan repayment benefit to employees on a tax-free basis, contributing up to $5,250 annually toward an employee’s student loans, and such payment would be excluded from the employee’s income. The $5,250 cap applies to both the new student loan repayment benefit as well as other educational assistance (e.g., tuition, fees, books) provided by the employer under current law. The provision applies to any student loan payments made by an employer on behalf of an employee after date of enactment and before January 1, 2021.  Note that this provision is based on legislation that ACEC has advocated for to Congress as part of the Council’s workforce agenda.

Transportation

  • $25 billion for mass transit systems
  • Available for operating expenses to prevent, prepare for, and respond to COVID-19, and reimbursement for lost revenue
  • Distributed under current transit program formulas
  • $10 billion for airports
  • $7.4 billion available for any purpose, distributed 50/50 by number of enplanements and ratio of overall debt service
  • $2 billion for AIP formula grants, available for any purpose
  • $500 million to cover the 100% federal cost share of FY20 programs
  • $1 billion for passenger rail
  • $492 million for Amtrak Northeast Corridor, to prevent, prepare for, and respond to COVID-19

State Assistance – Provides $150 billion to States, Territories, and Tribal governments to use for expenditures incurred due to the public health emergency with respect to COVID-19 in the face of revenue declines, allocated by population proportions, with a minimum of $1.25 billion for states with relatively small populations.

Community Development Block Grant – $5 billion is provided for the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program to enable nearly 1,240 states, counties, and cities to rapidly respond to COVID-19 and the economic and housing impacts caused by it, including the expansion of community health facilities, child care centers, food banks, and senior services.

Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund — Provides $500 billion for loans, loan guarantees, and other investments, distributed as follows:

$25 billion for passenger air carriers, eligible businesses that are certified under part 145 of title 15, Code of Federal Regulations, and approved to perform inspection, repair, replace, or overhaul services, and ticket agents

$4 billion for cargo air carriers

$17 billion for businesses important to maintaining national security

$454 billion, as well as any amounts available but not used for direct lending, for loans, loan guarantees, and investments in support of the Federal Reserve’s lending facilities to eligible businesses, states, and municipalities. Federal Reserve 13(3) lending is a critical tool that can be used in times of crisis to help mitigate extraordinary pressure in financial markets that would otherwise have severe adverse consequences for households, businesses, and the U.S. economy.

To find out more about COVID-19, please contact us at (800) CALVADA or visit www.calvada.com.

Calvada proudly serves Corona and all surrounding areas.