My name is Shawn Balon and I am a registered landscape architect in Virginia and currently a project manager at Timmons Group, a multi-disciplinary firm including engineering, landscape architecture, planning, environmental, electrical, geotechnical, and technology services. As a landscape architect, our team provides services throughout the state of Virginia and along the east coast ensuring that health, safety, and welfare is regulated through all project types and sizes ranging from parks and trails to complex mixed-use residential developments. In many of these projects, I assist in leading a team of engineers and architects to ensure that the design, detailing, and implementation of all exterior components are constructed to ensure the public is adequately protected.

I urge the Board to continue licensure for landscape architects in Virginia for the following reasons:

• 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. As stated above, many projects that we renovate or develop include a deep dive into the design of project elements and sufficient site grading for accessibility and safety.
• 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.
• Licensure of landscape architects ensures that professionals are qualified by virtue of their education, experience, and examination. 
• 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. As a licensed professional, I feel equipped to work on complex projects including the design and construction of multiple rooftop terraces on a mixed-use urban development where ongoing coordination is needed between landscape architects, structural engineers, MEP, and architects.  
• 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.
• 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.
• Licensure of landscape architects is necessary to keep the profession on an equal footing with its related licensed design professions, architecture and engineering.
• 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.