By Madden                                              H.B. No. 200
                                 A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
    1-1                                AN ACT
    1-2  relating to professional surveying.
    1-3        BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
    1-4        SECTION 1.  Section 2(1), Professional Land Surveying
    1-5  Practices Act (Article 5282c, Vernon's Texas Civil Statutes), is
    1-6  amended to read as follows:
    1-7              (1)  "Professional surveying" means the practice <for
    1-8  compensation> of land, boundary, or property surveying or other
    1-9  similar professional practices.  The term includes any service or
   1-10  work the adequate performance of which involves the application of
   1-11  special knowledge of the principles of geodesy, mathematics,
   1-12  related applied and physical sciences, and relevant laws to the
   1-13  measurement and location of sites, points, lines, angles,
   1-14  elevations, natural features, and existing man-made works in the
   1-15  air, on the surface of the earth, within underground workings,<;>
   1-16  and<,> on the beds of bodies of water for<,> the purpose of
   1-17  determining <determination of> areas and volumes<,> for:
   1-18                    (A)  the location of real property boundaries;
   1-19                    (B)  the platting and layout of lands and
   1-20  subdivisions of land; and
   1-21                    (C)  the preparation and perpetuation of maps,
   1-22  record plats, field note records, easements, and real property
   1-23  descriptions that represent those surveys.
   1-24        SECTION 2.  Section 3A, Professional Land Surveying Practices
    2-1  Act (Article 5282c, Vernon's Texas Civil Statutes), is amended to
    2-2  read as follows:
    2-3        Sec. 3A.  This Act does not require the use of a registered
    2-4  land surveyor to establish an easement, or a construction estimate,
    2-5  which does not involve the monumentation, delineation, or
    2-6  preparation of a metes and bounds description.
    2-7        SECTION 3.  This Act takes effect September 1, 1995, and
    2-8  applies to conduct that constitutes professional surveying that
    2-9  occurs on or after that date.  Conduct that occurred before that
   2-10  date is governed by the law in effect on the date that the conduct
   2-11  occurred, and the former law is continued in effect for that
   2-12  purpose.
   2-13        SECTION 4.  The importance of this legislation and the
   2-14  crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
   2-15  emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
   2-16  constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
   2-17  days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended.