California Codes, Business and Professions Code - BPC, Division 3 — Professions and Vocations Generally, Chapter 15 — Land Surveyors, Article 3 — Application of the Chapter, Section 8730

The following persons are not required to be licensed under this chapter:

(a) Officers and employees of the United States of America, practicing solely as those officers or employees, except when surveying the exterior boundaries of federal lands in this state.

(b) Insofar as he or she acts in the following capacity:

(1) Any state, county, city, city and county, or district employee directly responsible to a licensed land surveyor or registered civil engineer.

(2) Any subordinate to a land surveyor or civil engineer licensed or registered as required by the laws of this state insofar as he or she acts as a subordinate.

(c) Any officer or employee of an electric, gas, or telephone corporation, as defined in Sections 218, 222, and 234, respectively, of the Public Utilities Code, with annual revenues of twenty-five million dollars ($25,000,000) or more, whenever he or she prepares a legal description of an easement for utility distribution lines and service facilities, provided the following conditions are met:

(1) Each description identifies the corporation that prepared the description and states that it was prepared pursuant to this exemption.

(2) Each corporation has in its employ, or on contract, an individual authorized to practice land surveying who shall be responsible for establishing criteria for determining the qualifications of technical specialists preparing those legal descriptions, specifying the format and information to be shown on maps or documents containing those descriptions, and capable of answering questions regarding the preparation of those descriptions.

(d) Any state, county, city, or city and county public safety employee investigating any crime or infraction for the purpose of determining or prosecuting a crime or infraction. This exemption shall not permit a public safety employee to offer or perform land surveying as defined in Section 8726 for any purpose other than determining or prosecuting a crime or infraction.