As used in this chapter:

(1) "ABET" means the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. "EAC" means the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET. "TAC" or "ETAC" means the Engineering Technology Accreditation Commission of ABET.

(2) "Approved engineering curriculum" means an engineering program of four or more years determined by the board to be substantially equivalent to that of an EAC/ABET accredited curriculum or the NCEES Engineering Education Standard.

(3) "Board" means the South Carolina State Board of Registration for Professional Engineers and Surveyors created pursuant to this chapter.

(4) "Branch office" means a place of business separate from the principal place of business where engineering services or surveying services are provided. A specific project or construction site office is not a branch office. Nothing contained in this chapter prevents a professional engineer or professional surveyor from undertaking an engineering project or a surveying project anywhere in the State.

(5) "Current certificate of registration" means a license to practice which has not expired or has not been revoked and which has not been suspended or otherwise restricted by the board.

(6) "Department" means the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.

(7) "Design coordination" includes the review and coordination of those technical submissions prepared by others, including as appropriate and without limitation, consulting engineers, architects, landscape architects, surveyors, and other professionals working under the direction of the engineer.

(8) "Direct responsibility", "direct supervisory control", "direct supervision", and "responsible charge" means that there is a clear-cut personal connection to the project or employee supervised, marked by firsthand knowledge and direct control and assumption of professional responsibility for the work.

(9) "Emeritus engineer" or "emeritus surveyor" means a professional engineer or surveyor who has been registered for fifteen consecutive years or longer and who is sixty-five years of age or older and who has retired from active practice.

(10) "Engaged in practice" means holding one's self out to the public as being qualified and available to perform engineering or surveying services.

(11) "Engineer" means a professional engineer as defined in this section.

(12) "Engineering surveys" means all minor survey activities required to support the sound conception, planning, design, construction, maintenance, operation, and investigation of engineered projects but exclude the surveying of real property for the establishment of land boundaries, rights-of-way, and easements and the independent surveys or resurveys of general land masses.

(13) "Engineer-in-training" means a person who has qualified for and passed the NCEES Fundamentals of Engineering examination as provided in this chapter and is entitled to receive a certificate as an engineer-in-training.

(14) "Ethics" means conduct that conforms to professional standards of conduct.

(15) "Firm" means a business entity functioning as a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability partnership, professional association, professional corporation, business corporation, limited liability company, joint venture, or other legally constituted organization which practices or offers to practice engineering or surveying, or both.

(16) "Fraud or deceit" means intentional deception to secure gain, through attempts deliberately to conceal, mislead, or misrepresent the truth in a manner that others might take some action in reliance or an act which provides incorrect, false, or misleading information on which others might rely.

(17) "GIS" means geographic information systems.

(18) "Good character" refers to a person of good moral character and one who has not been convicted of a violent crime, as defined in Section 16-1-60, or a crime of moral turpitude.

(19) "Gross negligence" means an act or course of action, or inaction, which denotes a lack of reasonable care and a conscious disregard or indifference to the rights, safety, or welfare of others and which does or could result in financial loss, injury, or damage to life or property.

(20) "Incompetence" means the practice of engineering or surveying by a licensee determined to be either incapable of exercising ordinary care and diligence or lacking the ability and skill necessary to properly perform the duties undertaken.

(21) "Licensed" means authorized by this board, pursuant to the statutory powers delegated by the State to this board, to engage in the practice of engineering, or surveying, or engineering and surveying, as evidenced by the board's certificate issued to the registered license holder.

(22) "Misconduct" means the violation of a provision of this chapter or of a regulation promulgated by the board pursuant to this chapter.

(23) "NCEES examination" means those written or electronic tests developed and administered by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying for the purpose of providing one indication of competency to practice engineering.

(24) "Person" means an individual human being, firm, partnership, or corporation.

(25) "Practice of engineering" means any service or creative work, the adequate performance of which requires engineering education, training, and experience in the application of special knowledge of the mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences to such services or creative work as commissioning, consultation, investigation, expert technical testimony, evaluation, design and design coordination of engineering works and systems, design for development and use of land and water, performing engineering surveys and studies, and the review of construction for the purpose of monitoring compliance with drawings and specifications, any of which embraces such services or work, either public or private, in connection with any utilities, structures, buildings, machines, equipment, processes, work systems projects, and industrial or consumer products or equipment of control systems, chemical, communications, mechanical, electrical, environmental, hydraulic, pneumatic, or thermal nature, insofar as they involve safeguarding life, health, or property, and including such other professional services as may be necessary to the planning, progress, and completion of any engineering services. The mere execution, as a contractor, of work designed by a professional engineer or supervision of the construction of such work as a foreman or superintendent is not considered the practice of engineering. A person must be construed to practice or offer to practice engineering, within the meaning and intent of this chapter who:

(a) practices any branch of the profession or discipline of engineering;

(b) by verbal claim, sign, advertisement, letterhead, card, or in any other way represents himself to be a professional engineer or through the use of some other title implies that he is a professional engineer or that he is licensed under this chapter; or

(c) holds himself out as able to perform or does perform any engineering service or work or any other professional service designated by the practitioner or which is recognized as engineering.

(26) "Practice of TIER A surveying" means providing professional services including, but not limited to, consultation investigation, testimony evaluation, expert technical testimony, planning, mapping, assembling, and interpreting reliable scientific measurements and information relative to the location, size, shape, or physical features of the earth, the space above the earth, or part of the earth, and utilization and development of these facts and interpretation into an orderly survey map, site plan, report, description, or project. The practice of TIER A surveying consists of three separate disciplines: land surveying, photogrammetry, and geographic information systems. A surveyor may be licensed in one or more of the disciplines and practice is restricted to only the discipline or disciplines for which the land surveyor is licensed. The practice of TIER A surveying does not include the use of geographic information systems to create maps pursuant to Section 40-22-290, analyze data, or create reports. The scope of the individual disciplines are identified as follows:

(a) Land surveyor:

(1) locates, relocates, establishes, reestablishes, lays out, or retraces any property line or boundary of any tract of land or any road, right-of-way, easement, alignment, or elevation of any fixed works embraced within the practice of land surveying, or makes any survey for the subdivision of land;

(2) determines, by the use of principles of land surveying, the position for any survey monument or reference point; or sets, resets, or replaces such monument or reference; determines the topographic configuration or contour of the earth's surface with terrestrial measurements; conducts hydrographic surveys;

(3) conducts geodetic surveying which includes surveying for determination of geographic position in an international three-dimensional coordinate system, where the curvature of the earth must be taken into account when determining directions and distances; geodetic surveying includes the use of terrestrial measurements of angles and distances, as well as measured ranges to artificial satellites.

(b) A photogrammetric surveyor determines the configuration or contour of the earth's surface or the position of fixed objects on the earth's surface by applying the principles of mathematics on remotely sensed data, such as photogrammetry.

(c) A geographic information systems surveyor creates, prepares, or modifies electronic or computerized data including land information systems and geographic information systems relative to the performance of the activities described in subitems (a) and (b).

(d) An individual licensed only as a geodetic surveyor before July 1, 2004, determines the geographic position in an international three-dimensional coordinate system, where the curvature of the earth must be taken into account when determining directions and distances; geodetic surveying includes the use of terrestrial measurements of angles and distances, as well as measured ranges to artificial satellites. A geodetic surveyor is not authorized to perform the other services a land boundary surveyor is authorized to perform.

(27) "Practice of TIER B land surveying" includes all rights and privileges of TIER A surveying discipline defined in item (26)(a); and in addition to these rights and privileges, TIER B land surveying includes, for subdivisions, preparing and furnishing subdivision plans for sedimentation and erosion control and storm drainage systems, if the systems do not require the structural design of system components and are restricted to the use, where relevant, of any standards prescribed by local, state, or federal authorities. Regulations defining the scope of the additional powers granted to TIER B land surveyors must be promulgated by the board.

(28) "Private practice firm" means a firm as defined herein through which the practice of engineering or surveying would require a certificate of authorization as described in this chapter.

(29) "Private practitioner" means a person who individually holds himself out to the general public as able to perform, or who individually does perform, the independent practice of engineering or surveying.

(30) "Professional engineer" means a license holder who, by reason of his special knowledge of the mathematical and physical sciences and the principles and methods of engineering analysis and design, acquired by professional education and practical experience, is qualified to practice engineering as defined in this section as attested by his license and registration as a professional engineer in this State.

(31) "Professional surveyor" means a licensee who is qualified to practice any discipline of TIER A or TIER B surveying in this State, as defined in this section and as attested by his license and registration as a TIER A or TIER B professional surveyor in this State.

(32) "Professions of architecture, landscape architecture, and geology" mean those specified professions as defined by the laws of this State and applicable regulations.

(33) "Registered" means the engineer or surveyor is licensed and registered in the State.

(34) "Resident professional engineer" or "resident professional surveyor", with respect to principal office and branch office requirements, means a licensed practitioner who spends a majority of each normal workday in the principal or branch office.

(35) "Retired from active practice" means not engaging or offering to engage in the practice of engineering or surveying as defined in this section.

(36) "Surveyor-in-training" means a person who has qualified for and passed the NCEES Fundamentals of Surveying examination as provided in this chapter and is entitled to receive a certificate as a surveyor-in-training.

HISTORY: 2000 Act No. 311, Section 1; 2016 Act No. 259 (S.685), Section 3, eff June 3, 2016.

Editor's Note

Prior Laws: 1991 Act No. 99, Section 1; 1993 Act No. 185, Sections 2, 3; 1976 Code Section 40-22-10.

Effect of Amendment

2016 Act No. 259, Section 3, in (1), inserted "ETAC", and inserted "Engineering" before "Technology Accreditation"; in (2), inserted "or the NCEES Engineering Education Standard"; deleted former (3), reserved paragraph, and redesignated (4) through (9) as (3) through (8); in (4), inserted "project" following "undertaking an engineering" in the last sentence; in (8), substituted "means that" for "all mean that"; redesignated former (33) as (9), definition of "Emeritus engineer"; added (10), definition for "Engaged in practice"; redesignated former (10) through (12) as (11) through (13); in (11), substituted "means all" for "include all"; in (13), inserted "NCEES"; added (14), definition of "Ethics"; redesignated former (13) through (18) as (15) through (20); redesignated former (19) as (36); redesignated former (20) through (22) as (21) through (23); added (24), definition of "Person"; redesignated former (23) through (32) as (25) through (34); in (25), inserted "commissioning," following "creative work as", inserted "chemical," before "communications", and inserted "environmental," following "electrical,"; in (25)(a), inserted "or discipline"; in (27), deleted "the" before "TIER A", and substituted "item (26)(a)" for "Section 40-22-20(24)(a)"; in (31), substituted "licensee" for "person", and deleted "legal" before "license"; redesignated former (34) as (35); and in (36), definition of "Surveyor-in-training", inserted "NCEES".