CEU and PDH information for Pedestrian Safety Workshops
Course instructors, course organizers, and course attendees often have questions regarding continuing education units (CEUs), Professional Development Hours (PDHs), and AICP Certification Maintenance (CM) credits for the Pedestrian Safety Courses offered through the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and/or the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC). The information below provides general guidance on the procedures for obtaining CM credits, PDHs and CEUs.
There are several types of professions for which registrants are required to participate in continuing education activities. The registration types include Professional Engineer (PE), Landscape Architect (RLA), Certified Planner (AICP), and more.
Each of our courses is submitted to the American Planning Association (APA) to be considered for certification maintenance (CM) credits. Once a course is scheduled and submitted to APA, it takes between one and three weeks to be approved and listed on their website. For a current list of our courses that are eligible for credits, visit http://www.planning.org/cm/search/provider.htm?ProviderCompanyID=266134.
Due to the relatively low number of attendees at these courses who are Registered Landscape Architects or have other certifications, no additional information on continuing education is provided here. If there is a desire for continuing education credits by one or more attendees, the local course organizer and the lead instructor should work together to identify what the requirements are.
For the pedestrian safety courses, professional engineers are the most common registered professionals. The continuing education requirements for professional engineers vary widely, depending on the state or states in which the engineer is registered. Fortunately, in most states, continuing education providers or courses have do not need to be preapproved. In these states, registrants simply self-report their CEUs or PDHs, usually without sending any documentation up front. If the registrant is audited at a later date, the registrant is then responsible for providing evidence that they attended the course and also must justify that the course is relevant to their area of practice. Therefore, the only thing that course instructors and organizers must do is provide a certificate of attendance to each attendee.
Course organizers and the lead instructor should work together to check the appropriate state's board of professional engineers (or similar agency) laws and rules to ensure that self-reporting is all that is necessary. Some states have more specific and stringent requirements. Additional information about these states is listed below.
Florida
The Florida Board of Professional Engineers (FBPE) has very strict reporting requirement. The provider needs to send in a spreadsheet after each course, showing the PE numbers of the PEs who took the course. The spreadsheet and instructions can be obtained from the FBPE website at http://www.fbpe.org/continuingeducation.asp. The provider code for these courses is 0004093, which is not for a specific organization, rather it is for "Federal Agency Impacting Engineering" — FHWA falls under this category. Since the spreadsheet includes PE numbers and not names, it is critical that a special sign in sheet be provided for Florida PEs to list their name and PE Number, and to place their initials for each day of training that they attend. The spreadsheet should be sent to FBPE by the lead instructor or course organizer. Although FBPE requires the provider to send in the spreadsheet, the Professional Engineers themselves are responsible for officially reporting the area of practice training they've done. Thus it is important to also include certificates for all attendees. Under FBPE laws and rules, it is safe to assume that each full day of training for all of the pedestrian safety courses is 7.5 PDHs, which should be used to calculate the value that should be shown on the certificates.
