Recordkeeping Roulette: Credentials Management - Licenses, Professional Affiliations, Continuing Education

What record keeping method are you using to stay on track with your license renewals, your continuing education, and maybe even your professional memberships in AIA, NSPE, ASLA, IIDA? Are you shuffling spreadsheets and file folders? Do you as a Principal of your firm assume responsibility for credentials management, or do you delegate the task? Do you rely on membership benefits within a professional affiliation to record your continuing education on a transcript?

Typical methods of record keeping have unlimited potential for failure: "My basement flooded and all my records were destroyed”; "I lost my job and I was forced to leave all my records behind and I have no access to the files”; or "I didn't receive my renewal postcard because the state licensing board data base failed".

"To be blunt, if you can't provide the proof of attendance, then (from my auditing standpoint) you were not in attendance," says Tony Whitt, Continuing Education Coordinator at the Texas Board of Architectural Examiners, quoted in his column, "CE Documentation" in the June 2012 biannual Licensing News.

Licensed design/construction professionals are able to increase their firm’s productivity and efficiency by adopting systems that allow them to accurately track reporting requirements such as credentialing. In adopting this approach, firms can increase their value by focusing on projects and clients. That translates into a healthier bottom line!

Lexi Selvig, CDT, President, LS Credentialing Services LLC, is a registered consultant on Industry Speaks™. She can be reached at lexi@aecredentialing.com.