Continuing Education and Licensing Administration
This domain covers the administrative plumbing: how a license is obtained, renewed, changed, and restored, and how the Board tracks continuing education. Items are procedural and reward attention to entity structure and deadlines.
Getting licensed
An applicant files an application with fees, documents qualifying experience in landscape contracting (approved education may substitute for part of it), and passes the Board's examination. Passing the exam does not by itself create a license; the license issues when fees, experience, and review are all complete, and it issues to the business entity with a designated qualifier.
Keeping it
- Renewal is annual; continuing education must be earned in Board-approved courses each renewal period, and the Board audits.
- Continuing education completed after a lapse does not retroactively authorize practice during the lapse.
- Report changes of name, address, and business structure promptly; notices go to the address of record, and the licensee bears the risk of a stale address.
- A new entity generally needs its own license and qualifier; a personal license does not blanket every company the licensee forms.
- Reinstatement of a lapsed license may require late fees, continuing education, or reexamination. The Board may license applicants from states with substantially equivalent requirements by reciprocity - it is discretionary, never automatic.
Worked example
A licensee renames his LLC and forms a second LLC with a partner, assuming his personal license covers both. It does not. Each entity contracting above the threshold must be licensed with a qualifier; the second LLC's work is unlicensed practice, and the qualifier faces discipline for allowing it.
Traps that cost marks
Assuming continuing education auto-renews a lapsed license; assuming a city privilege license or a general contractor's license substitutes; assuming reciprocal licenses transfer without Board action; forgetting that a change in entity structure can require a new application rather than a name change.