President's Message

February 2019

    We are off to a great start this year after a well-attended Board of Directors Meeting held on January 10th and 11th in Lakeland. I appreciate everyone who attended and participated in the various committee meetings on Thursday, and the board meetings on Friday. With everyone being extremely busy with their work and personal lives, the dedication and commitment of your Officers, Directors, Committee Chairs, and Committee members is to be highly commended. They are working hard for you, the members, and the Society.

      Our Membership Committee, led by Jim Sullivan, District 6 Director, is off to a good start and will be focusing on improving and enhancing Chapter membership. Membership renewals, as well as new member applications, have been coming in steadily since early December and numbers are looking good. Our Associate numbers are growing and that’s a great thing. Employers, remember that keeping your technical staff engaged in your profession encourages them to turn a “job” into a “career”. Remember our benefits of membership:

  • Maintaining and supporting a 63-year-old professional society network of surveyors  and mappers in Florida and across the U.S. This network serves and adds credibility and value to your daily interactions with your peers and business partners.
  • Protecting and enhancing your license and practice laws in Florida, through our work with the BPSM (Board of Professional Surveyors and Mappers).
  • Maintaining a full-time lobbyist and PAC - one of the largest surveying and mapping society PACs in the country – which constantly watches out for our industry and daily businesses.
  • Promoting and encouraging the future youth in our profession through several scholarship funds, college programs, high school programs, CST programs, technical programs and seminars.
  • Monitoring and addressing unlicensed practice in Florida with a very active state-wide Unlicensed Practice committee.
  • Provides a voucher for 3 credits upon full membership renewal, as well as additional credits for attending local meetings and seminars.
  • Supporting local chapters, where you can engage with surveyors in your local area who face the same professional challenges as you do.
  • Bolstering a state-wide network of surveying professionals, which can be utilized for career advice, business opportunities, and camaraderie!
  • NSPS membership, which gives you a voice and opportunities to support and protect our profession at the national level.   

  If your company is not currently a Sustaining Firm, please encourage them to join. Every Sustaining Firm receives a marketing benefit through our website’s directory of sustaining firms, as well as a monthly listing in The Florida Surveyor. It is important for ALL of us as professionals to support our Society, which protects and enhances our profession. Utilizing our website is the most efficient method of renewing or joining FSMS.

     Another important topic for our profession is the NGS 2022 Datum change that will be on us before we know it. Our Surveying and Mapping Council met on January 10th and achieved the first step in the process by aligning all the stakeholders in Florida to submit the proposed zones for Florida to NGS. A huge thank you to Rick Pryce, Allen Nobles and Randy Tompkins for doing the work necessary to analyze the possible solutions and develop the best scenario with the least amount of distortion for the users.

     Our FSMPAC is moving quickly to establish relationships with our new Commissioner of Agriculture as well as legislators across the board. Those relationships are what sustain us when our profession is challenged in the legislative arena. It is very simple to make a contribution to the PAC on the FSMS website. If you haven’t done so in 2019, please consider making that donation today.

     Lastly, as our license renewal period approaches this month, you can check your CEC hours easily on the DoACS website. Just remember you are capped at 6 credits for attending local meetings, so be mindful to account properly. Please take advantage of the many courses offered by FSMS to meet your Continuing Education needs.

    As always, thank you all for your continued support.

“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” – Pele

Dianne Collins