ThisisEngineering via Unsplash Barely a day goes by that Sarah Matin, P.E., M.ASCE, a water quality manager, doesn’t consider her engineering license.
“I always think about my license when I make decisions. I don’t want to do something that would jeopardize my license,” Matin said. “For most – if not all – of my colleagues, the overarching belief is that: ‘I want to do good … because I hold a license, and I worked so hard for it.’”
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Allison Sadow, P.E., M.ASCE, is equally passionate about licensing for civil engineers.
"(Licensing) creates a system of checks to protect the health, safety, and welfare of our communities." – Allison Sadow
“We have a code of ethics, and our licenses dictate that that code of ethics is for the health, safety, and welfare of the public,” said Sadow, an active transportation engineer. “We’re taught that from Day 1 at engineering school; it’s tattooed in all of our brains. The license helps ensure that we continue to act in a way that makes everyone conduct their lives in a safe, healthy way.”
Their strong feelings about licensure led them both to serve as crusaders, of sorts, as legislatures in their respective states – Matin in Florida and Sadow in Arizona – took steps this year that could have diminished civil engineering licenses.
In the name of government efficiency, Florida legislators considered a plan that would have – among other things – eliminated 70 state boards and commissions. The Florida Board of Professional Engineers, made up of volunteers who oversee licensure for 46,000 professional engineers in the state, was one of the boards at risk. While the FBPE was not singled out for elimination, Gov. Ron DeSantis was focused on abolishing what he considered unnecessary state boards.
Not isolated to 1 state
Florida wasn’t alone in its overtures. ASCE was among the organizations that brought attention to the trend, issuing a March 6 statement titled “State legislatures scrutinizing professional civil engineer licensing.” In addition to the Florida situation, West Virginia, Indiana, and Nevada were cited as taking steps to diminish civil engineering licensing, the release noted.
ASCE called it “a growing trend across the country that calls into question the future of engineering boards and licensure as we know it.”
The Florida legislation passed the House but died in the Senate, at least temporarily putting the issue to rest in the Sunshine State.
Arizona had a similar bill in the spring that would have ended the state’s Board of Technical Registration, which licenses and regulates civil engineers, among others. That bill was amended to remove that portion after pushback, including a letter-writing campaign in which Sadow participated.
While Arizona and Florida did not ultimately pass any legislation that would alter how civil engineers are licensed in their states, Sadow and Matin say the issue is likely to come up again in future legislative sessions, as 2025 was not the first time that such measures were attempted in either state.
“It seems to be a pretty cyclical issue here,” Sadow said of her home state. “We tend to have a similar bill pop up every 2-3 years to end licensure in the state of Arizona for all technical backgrounds. They come at it from different angles in the bills, but in Arizona we have a sunsetting process where all boards are reviewed for efficacy, and that was the most recent angle.”
Florida’s thwarted plan to shift the responsibilities of its board of engineers to a general department of regulation for businesses would have taken important decisions away from engineers, Matin says. Engineers would have been replaced with staffers who likely would not have engineering backgrounds.
The board of engineers reviews licensed engineers for issues such as delinquencies and court cases. It also ensures the competence and validity of continuing education providers.
The legislation also would have removed the continuing education requirement, which has already been cut from four hours to two during Matin’s career. She views continuing education as an important part of the licensing process.
Citing the 2018 Florida International University pedestrian bridge collapse and the 2021 Surfside condominium collapse, Matin stresses the importance of licensed and competent civil engineers. Like Sadow, Matin participated in a lobbying campaign while the legislation was being considered.
“We said, ‘Hey, this is going to affect the public safety of Floridians, and that’s our job as engineers – to protect the health and safety of the public,” said Matin, who works for Advanced Drainage Systems Inc. in Winter Garden and is ASCE’s Region 5 director. “And this is going against everything.”
In Arizona, Sadow says, funded organizations often are the ones making the push to diminish licensure in some fashion.
“Their feeling is that all licensure is doing is preventing businesses from doing business, and that it’s bad business to have licenses, that the system would function much more efficiently if we simply all relied on things like internet reviews or word of mouth or regular advertising to have a product we can stand behind,” said Sadow, who is employed by TY Lin International and is president of ASCE’s Phoenix Branch’s Younger Member Forum and government relations chair for the Arizona Section.
‘They’ve been vetted’
This sentiment undercuts the value of the license, which Sadow holds dear.
“I find licensure to be extremely important,” she said. “When somebody has a license, you know a basic amount of that person’s qualifications to do what you need them to do.
“It means that they’ve been vetted by a third party that’s not interested in their ability to sell projects or do work. It just means that they’ve gone to a college that should teach them the things that they need to know. They have other engineers standing behind them that have vetted their work. It creates a system of checks to protect the health, safety, and welfare of our communities.”
Licensure also ensures that the parties responsible for engineering failures are held accountable.
“If something does go wrong, we need to be able to figure out where it went wrong, why it went wrong, and stop it from going wrong in the future,” Sadow said. “If there are no licenses, there are no checks for that accountability. You can do your best to hire good people and trust them, but it always makes things a little bit easier when there’s an enforcement angle.”
Matin said Florida lawmakers, like those in Arizona, seemed interested in removing processes viewed as restrictive toward businesses. She understands this concept – but not at the expense of safety.
"There’s a reason there’s a barrier to entry." – Sarah Matin
“If you’re taking away that umbrella of credibility that engineers in the state have, it really just diminishes what we do, and the effects are much greater than the savings,” Matin said. “The argument from the legislature was, ‘This is a barrier to entry to become a professional.’ Well, there’s a reason there’s a barrier to entry. You wouldn’t just want anyone to do (these jobs). If there’s an error, the repercussions are large.
“(The license is) to make sure that this person is competent to do the work they’re saying they’re going to do, and they then have a legal obligation to the state and to their clients and to the public. It’s that check for the public for their own good.”
Another important factor in protecting licensure is educating the general public about its importance.
While civil engineers are constantly thinking about infrastructure and what makes it safe, nonengineers don’t take notice of it as a normal course of action. Sadow says civil engineers can change that by making those in their everyday lives aware of the complexity and importance of the infrastructure around them.
“It’s only good engineering if you never have to think about it because somebody else already thought about it for a long time,” she said. “So I think the battle to keep licensure can only be won if people truly understand the effort that goes into their everyday lives.”
Also of note
- Colorado’s infrastructure received an overall grade of C- in the 2025 Report Card for Colorado’s Infrastructure, released last week. ASCE’s Colorado Section gave the same overall grade as it did for the state’s 2021 report card, with two categories rising and three falling.
- The U.S. Department of Transportation announced the awarding of $488 million for 30 projects through the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development grant program.
- House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Sam Graves, R-Mo., and Rick Larsen, D-Wash., the ranking member, introduced the Fixing Emergency Management for Americans Act of 2025, aiming to streamline the federal government’s management of its disaster and recovery programs.
- Dependable funding, permitting reform, and resilience were among the priorities raised by witnesses during the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works’ hearing on the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization bill.
