Posted on 03/18/2017 8:34:50 PM PDT by rintintin
In 2007, David Hansen was a recent college graduate with an architect's degree trying to make some money. He and his business partner, who was a licensed architect in Washington, started an architectural firm there. At the time, the economy was still sluggish and there was not a lot of construction. So, to earn some extra cash and to get the business going, they agreed to do marketing work for a property development company in Oregon.
Cognizant that they weren't licensed architects in Oregon, they limited their work to creating drawings of potential developments for the sole purpose of attracting investors. The drawings were not architectural "blueprints" or "plans," and could not be used for construction. In fact, if the development moved forward, the development company planned to hire Oregon-licensed architects to make the actual plans. David's task was essentially to draw pretty pictures for marketing purposes. David and his partner were shocked, then, when the Oregon Board of Architect Examiners slapped them with a $30,000 dollar fine for practicing "architecture" without a license.
David's story is just one example in a trend of licensing bodies interpreting their authority broadly to prevent people from competing with licensees.
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
This is insane. It’s like punishing kids who made concept cars for the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild Model Car Competitions.
This nation needs some regulatory decapture!
We’ve unilaterally decided what you did was under our jurisdiction and as you’ve not paid us money, we’ve decided to take it from you anyway. I’d say just ignore it, but as I’m personally dealing with some idiocy from another jurisdiction which is preventing me from getting a federal job, you really can’t anymore.
It is conceptional artwork, not architecture. This type of commission is so incredibly common that a friend’s son who just graduated from Pratt did much the same, and he is most certainly not a licensed architect.
It is an intriguing concept that the Oregon board is pushing forward, especially since so many local jurisdictions invite conceptional proposals for public buildings from around the world.
Which is pretty much where I’d start any battle over this; if you did not assign a fine to x firm from China or France for a public building in Portland, how can you possibly justify assigning a fine for conceptional artwork for a housing development?
Here are the jerks
https://public.orlicensing.oregon.gov/ORBAEPortal/BoardAdditional.aspx?board=BAE&boardLinkID=205
This is a known and time honored service — Architectural Delineation. It makes detail artistic images of buildings and developments for marketing, review, and presentation. There are artists that have done this as a niche market for a hundred years.
My dad (also a builder as I have been) had an artist friend and his wife who were his pals for fifty years and he was internationally known in that business. He was never a licensed architect.
It’s all about the money. Here in Louisiana, when certain municipalities decided they wanted to start using redflex cameras at intersections and radar equipped speed vans, the Louisian Private Investigator Licensing board argued that Redflex was conducting private investigations without a license, which they were clearly doing. Nevertheless, the State Government got involved under pressure from the municipalities (all who stood to gain from the redflex fines) and waived the licensing board requirements.
Licensing boards run amok.
The property development company should have hired some architectural renderers in Vietnam, or Philippines, China, Thailand etc. That way the licensing board would have a hard time going after non-citizens.
Are they really this dense? This type of work is being done by very talented people all over the planet ... and it is all transmitted electronically.
All they are doing is making developers want to hire non-Americans for design work. Not only can they get excellent work done cheaply, no one has to run into trouble with licensing boards, tax authorities, labor boards, etc.
Self-regulating or licensing professional bodies are, first and foremost, government sanctioned and enforced monopolies.
Wow, Crazy!
Just for some perspective from this field, I am a cad drafter, I have done structural drafting my whole career, from ‘84 to now, but Since ‘06 I have been self employed doing contract labor. The past few years, I have made a couple new contacts with contractor’s doing little remodel jobs and needing drawings to get through the city. Most of these are little things like enclosing a patio or extending it out... Little nothing jobs most architects don’t want to mess with.
Anyway, since things were slow, I made up a title block with my last name followed by “Drafting” and my contact info. thinking it might help drum up some work by advertising. Well within a week or so of submitting a job to the city of Surprise, I get an email from a licensed architect asking me to sign a petition that would require any job submitted for review to any city/county agency in the state of Arizona to be stamped by a licensed architect... in essence sign a petition to put myself out of the only work I could find... or at least make me hire somebody else to review all my work and stamp it. I looked into it after that and here in Arizona, for typical residential construction, there is no architect required, which made the petition make sense. I say typical because there are exceptions, i.e. anything requiring hillside review needs to be stamped by a registered architect. The requirement is there for commercial projects, I could not draw architectural construction documents for a nursing home or any medical facility for that matter... actually I could draw the drawings, they would just have to be reviewed and stamped by a registered architect. That is how all my structural drawings are done, sometimes they tell me exactly what to draw, others I will do a complete structural design including details etc. but the structural engineer will review them, do calculations and size all the beams, footings etc.
I was going to put a disclaimer across my title block basically saying I am only providing drafting services and creating drawings to what the homeowner or contractor have specified and NO architectural design work is being done. I talked to my old boss (a registered structural engineer) and he told me the other guys he knows doing what I am doing leave their names off the drawings completely just for that reason, just to be safe...
After getting hassled with stupid city comments asking for obscure code references added for 5 or 6 of these little minor projects and more recently doing (2) million dollar renovations that went through 2 different cities agencies without a single comment, I pulled my logo and added the contractor’s instead for this last patio extension in Surprise and that job sailed through without a comment too. Just stupid the silly games we have to play now!
Basically the review board in Oregon has called these guys conceptual drawings, design work and fined them for it. Maybe I am glad I did not move to Oregon when we were planning to last year. FWIW, I know the designers in the one firm I worked in that was multi-discipline, Civil/Structural/Architectural, the designers that drew these funky bubble drawings with fat felt pens made 5x what the registered architects that created working drawings made.
This is one case I want to hear from the other side. The whole story is not here.
My best guess is that Oregon architects pushed for this law to limit competition, just as taxi drivers pushed for laws that kept taxi prices high and limited competition (before Uber/Lyft). This abuse of government power disgusts me, but it’s an Oregon thing so it does not surprise me.
These boards love their power. And the power to destroy a little person prime excites them most of all. They are small minded people who like to see others grovel before them. The best response would be to sue them into oblivion, since one can’t legally kill them.
exactly - there is a whole lot more to this story than meets the eye. Typically, people practing Architecture or Enginneering w/o qualifications get hit with a warning letter and only in most extreme repeat situations is a trivial fine assessed.
The size of the fine suggests something quiet different.
What do you know, it’s back to the 13 century. Guilds are making a comeback.
The Oregon Board is scum.
The taxpayers of Oregon should be forced to pay the legal expenses of the defendants.
What they did is called ‘rendering’, which is simply a mock-up or conceptualization of a plan. Oregon lives only in Nancy Pelosi’s mind.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.