Protection of Public Health, Safety, and Welfare
• 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.
• Licensure of landscape architects ensures that professionals are qualified by
virtue of their education, experience, and examination.
• 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. Licensed landscape
architects fulfill educational training and examination requirements that
prepare professionals to protect the public from both physical and monetary
harm.
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.
• 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. Consequently, the scope of landscape architecture
overlaps with other licensed design professionals including architects,
engineers, and Class B land surveyors.
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.
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. This equality enables landscape architects to lead projects, form
certain business partnerships, and serve as principals in multidisciplinary
firms.
• 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.