I have decided to finally get my IDP hours in order and in doing so am contacting former employers. I recently had one guy email me back and say he would be glad to fill out my IDP forms but there would be a small fee.
I have not seen these forms yet but have always assumed there was just a signature involved (maybe a little hour checking). But otherwise not a whole lot of time would be spent on his part. Am I being naive? Is this standard practice? Or, if not, how might I politely say he's trying to rip me off? Thanks!
i think that sounds strange. did you have a bad relationship with him?
i have never backlogged hours, but it usually entails a brief perusal of your credits and a signature. if there's any question of the number of credits, it's fairly easy to estimate based on how long you were there and a 2,000 hour work year. because he was your supervisor, he should have a general sense of what areas you had covered. (though it's a good idea to at least note in your timecard what you were doing on a particular day so there is no question.)
i would mind since it is part of their responsibility to ensure the profession of architecture plods along into the future. if you have enough idp hours without him screw him just use your other jobs. i did this as well and one employer never filled anything out whereas two others did without a hitch.
John, I think it's bullshit. A very brief review of the NCARB IDP firm responsibility guidelines did not reveal anything saying that your employer HAS to sign your paperwork, or is/is not allowed to charge a fee for this time. However, I still think it's bullshit.
His review of your firm won't take him more than an hour, and then he just signs it. Charging you for that time is, IMO, unprofessional and childish, and potentially unethical: he's holding you hostage, in essence, by demanding that you return to him some of the money he paid you as an employee.
bloopox, can you weigh in here?
If it's really a problem, and you don't feel like a fight, perhaps jokingly offer to buy him a bottle of booze in lieu of paying him cash.
I'll say it again: I think his request for payment is bullshit, and if you tell me his name I'll call him and, as a fellow registered professional, tell him so.
buy him a mocha latte, tell him that's as far as your willing to go.
or better yet, tell him you'll need to sibsidize the fee, he should receive payement after you've completed all IDP requirements, and passed all ARE exams.
while I would never charge a fee to assist an intern with IDP paperwork myself, I do know some firms who do so when the intern has not been with the firm for a while and is looking for the firm to undertake a fair amount of research in order to document the hours and tasks. After a year or so, many firms will have dead-filed that data and, quite frankly, it's a pain in the butt to dig out again and make sense of it.
it's the responsibility of interns to keep track of their IDP hours from the very beginning and to clearly document those hours before they leave a firm for a new job. after all -- it's going to be their license, not the firm's.
while you may not think it fair to be charged a fee, many firms don't think it's fair to be asked to spend considerable administrative time compiling a record for someone who no longer is with the firm ... what's in it for them?
nevertheless, I complete these records all the time and never charge anything for my time or services. however, I do understand why some firms look at it differently.
He was sort of a merry prankster type, FOG but his email gave no hint of sarcasm or humor.
That's a very sensible perspective, distant. It has been awhile since I worked for him. I should still have all/most of my time/pay stubs. Do you think it would be a help if I included copies for his reference?
But distant: you're not filling out the form, you're reviewing what the intern has filled out, right? If you can recall - or, as John suggests doing, if the intern supplies documentation of - what projects and phases the intern worked on while an employee, it can't be too onerous to review, correct?
I understand that there is nothing monetary "in it for them" for a firm to review and sign paperwork for a non-employee, but I do think - and it sounds, distant, like you agree, since you have never charged for this process - that it IS the responsibility of an architect employer to contribute to the internship process, and charging a fee to do so is ridiculous.
distant your comment would ring true if the firm were required to substantiate and submit comapnion paperwork to support JC's intern work there. However, assuming that the supervisor is familiar with his work, and he provides a comprehensive account of what type of work/credits he is submitting for, then all that is needed out this past employer is a wave of the pen on the line.
If the firm has a disagreement about the credits claimed, then I can see it taking up more time, but really the burden of proof lies with JC, not with the firm, and it's his responsibility to be accurate and fill out his credit request with integrity in order to avoid any hoo-ha.
I'm with lb - the only point to charging a fee for this (however nominal) is on the past employer's head.
John -- it depends on what you're asking him to do for you.
If you asking him to compile a report, documenting how you spent your time while you were with the firm, perhaps you can do that yourself with the timesheets you retained. Then just have him look it over and sign off on it.
The time he needs to spend will be, in large part, a function of what sort of computerized accounting system the firm uses and how well it's implemented. Our firm can pull up former employee records pretty much at the push of a button. That's definintely not true at all firms.
If your former employer doesn't have a great computerized system, his effort may be of a completly different scale, especially if they're being called on to a) pull old timesheets out of dead-files,; b) manually scour those time sheets; and c) compile a summary. If you can do that for him, you're going to save him a lot of trouble.
Talk to the guy -- tell him what you're prepared to do, listen to what he says he needs to do and then work out something that makes sense for you both.
Actually, distant, it says clearly on the NCARB site that compiling all that info - records of hours worked and projects/phases/experience is the responsibility of the intern. Absolutely on the shoulders of the intern to keep those records. The employer's task is only to review and approve them.
this is the real world folks -- we can't just read what aia and ncarb write and assume that's the way it is.
i have to tell you -- at least 50% of the time when I'm asked to participate in these exercises, the intern didn't keep any meaningful records at all ... they wake up one day, wanting to pursue their license -- they then call me (usually in a hurry) saying they need to file their IDP paperwork by the end of the week and could I send them a summary of what they did while they were with our firm.
i'd really love for it to always be easy -- that would save me a lot of time. but, it ain't always easy -- and that's never my doing.
look -- when somebody leaves the firm, I'd be delighted to run them a report at that time for their records -- it's no real skin off my nose. but, I never - ever - get a request for that data.
I'd be surprised if he kept very accurate records of where my hours were spent. It was my first job out of school and most of the my time spent was working on construction documents and field verification trips. And I'm not in a rush to have this stuff filled out, merely starting the process. Hell, I don't even have 285 bones to spare for the NCARB registration fee. $285 buys a lot of diapers you know!
I know, distant - and I'm not saying your logic is wrong at all, I think all your points are totally valid, and think it would be equally ridiculous for a former employee to do what you say in the scenario above - expect you to do it all for him/her.
To those interns reading this thread: go to your employer (or in my case, the firm financial manager) RIGHT NOW and ask for a printout of all your time sheets showing what projects and phase your time has been logged to. It's very easy to keep track of this IF you keep on top of it. And if you show up a year later at your current office saying you need it by the end of the week, don't be dismayed when they say it's going to take longer than that (but do get mad if they try to charge you for it).
i am kind of surprised by your former employer's response. i had to go back and get one of the idp employment things signed by a former employer and had no problems whatsoever.
and this was a large multinational firm. and the person who signed it wasn't even technically my supervisor. maybe it helped that i went through a friend still working in the office. and it was only for about 3 months and they had filled out previous IDP sheets for me.
i agree with liberty bell - start doing it now! ncarb provides excel sheets to easily document everything you're doing. it's really easy to fill that out when you're filling out a time sheet.
good luck john! sorry your experience with this idp stuff is not so good.
liberty bell-- I was (loosely) interpreting Canon 5 - ES5.1, which talks about the responsibility of facilitating the professional development of associates/employees.
Although it's not spelled out, I would say that verifying a completed Form-123 would constitute the bare minimum of this; asking for payment would not be!
I assumed most interns kept up with their own timesheets, task sheets, etc. I did/do and I was sure to wrap up my IDP records for my previous/first job. Maybe it's because I graduated with the focus on getting my license, so I've maintained all the necessary paperwork.
there should be no fee. he owes you that signature. perhaps he's just messing with you. my feeling though is that if he wants the fee, there is little you can do about it without going through ncarb and creating a mess for both him and yourself. if the fee is reasonable, i'd just pay it.
Some of us should have kept better records but failed to do so. When I worked at my first jobs several years ago, I did not keep copies of my time sheets or fill out my IDP log as I went along. After a couple of bad experiences, I left architecture for several years. Now I am trying to return to the profession, but it's not been easy. Even when I do get a job again, I hope to be able to go back and get some of those credits so I won't be starting from scratch. I only hope that my former employers will even be willing to sign off on the units for me.
It's true that we all need to take responsibility for IDP, but try not to be too harsh on those that weren't as dilligent as others in their efforts. With everything else that one has to do in the years right out of school, wrangling with IDP credits and the NCARB system can often seem daunting, and something that can easily be put off until some later time when you might feel you have more time and energy to deal with it.
As for your situation, John, I don't know whether your old employer has the right to do this, but it certainly seems stingy and mean-spirited to me. Sadly, he seems to have the advantage in this situation. I think some of the advice above is worth considering; at least try to discuss with him his reasoning. Even if you can't get him to back off of it, perhaps you can get him to reduce his asking price or something. It all sounds ridiculous, but I understand you need the credits; you might just have to bite the bullet if it means enough to you. Best of luck.
ok folks -- you're not reading John's posts very carefully -- as I read what he's written, it seems to me he's hoping his former employer will not only provide all the required data but also compile and organize it for him (John -- that may be an overstatement -- feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)
John admits in the intial post that he's never even seen the IDP forms himself and that the guy in question "would be glad to fill out my IDP forms but there would be a small fee"
The employer is suggesting that he be paid a little for actually doing work John should be doing for himself --- I don't see anything here that says the guy is proposing to charge John for providing a signature.
I plan on filling out all of the paperwork before hand so he simply has to sign on the line.
But this is now a moot discussion. I just emailed him and politely asked about the 'fee' he mentioned in his first email. Well, he was just kidding. I'm remembering how dry humored the guy was when working for him. Jeeze now I feel like a
The lesson learned is - Interns, keep current with NCARB and your IDP. It's not that hard if you adopt a very germanic record keeping system the minute you start that 1st job. I still keep organized records of all hours worked, even though I finished IDP quite some time ago.
This sounds like there may be some misunderstanding on both the employer's and employee's parts as to what's really involved here and what each of their time commitments would be expected to involve:
The part of the forms that the employer USUALLY fills out requires the employer to provide: his license number, his (and the firm's) name and address, and a brief multiple-choice-type evaluation of you. That last part asks a few questions about your general performance and he gets to rate you as "excellent", "good", "adequate", and "unsatisfactory" (or some similar terms) in four or five categories. The total of the employer's part of the form is half a page long and could be expected to take 10 minutes.
The part of the forms that the intern himself USUALLY fills out is the part that reports the unit totals in each category, the dates of employment, and the average number of hours worked per week.
Usually the intern calculates these unit totals by either using NCARB's spreadsheets (which do not get turned in to NCARB and are for your own use) or some other system of his devising. It can be very helpful to have copies of all of your old time sheets when you're doing this. Depending on how much experience you're retroactively reporting, how good your records are, how closely your employers' time sheets parallel IDP's categories, etc. this can take days. I retroactively reported over five years' experience and it took about 20 hours for me to go through all my old time sheets and sort it all into IDP units!
It is extremely strange for an employer to expect a fee to fill out his usual half a page.
However, if you are in fact expecting him to calculate your units for you then this is an unusual expectation on your part, and I don't think it's completely unreasonable for him to expect compensation since that could potentially take many hours.
Did this firm collect time sheets, or at least record employees' hours spent on each project? If so what I'd suggest is that you ask for copies of those records from the firm and offer to reimburse for the cost of the copies, and maybe even for the time to make the copies.
You'll be much better off if you calculate the hours yourself anyway. Since many typical tasks can fit into multiple different IDP categories you're in the best position to decide, based on your total employment history, which category you most need particular hours to fill.
If your former employer is actually asking you to pay him to fill out just his half a page then I'd clarify with him that he understands that it's only half a page! If he's being really difficult about this you could also remind him that the NCARB code of ethics and the AIA rules (if he's a member) both mandate that employers cooperate with IDP...
i've been putting off filing my IDP hours as well. I have close to 3 years worth of hours and none have been formally filed or been reviewed by my just recent former boss. During my employment in that office I've mentioned once about having him review and sign my IDP work sheet. Then I procrastinated. Before I left, I told him I was going to get my hours organized and set up a meeting sometime for him to review the IDP. He said "no problem"...i'm still procrastinating...
John, I guess when you meet with your former employer, you just have to make the process as painless as possible him. in addition to the forms/workbook, maybe even have a table showing hours/projects/tasks in a different format that is simpler and easier to read...i don't know, i have yet to go though this whole thing myself...that was my idea at least, in case my former employer asks how i allocated the hours. The bright side is that I've kept and maintained my own timesheets with some notes regarding the tasks i performed each day...i just gotta compile it. maybe next week
Dammson - here's something to get you off your procrastinating kiester. I filed several years' worth of TU's in March and NCARB is STILL in the process of reviewing everything (we have gone back & forth on several times on many of them). Foolishly, I thought I'd be through a few exams by now...
Sounds like usury to me. What if every doctor had to pay their former instructors to say they'd trained them? Or if former employers requested a fee to be put on your resume?
You should contact NCARB about this. They may have something to say (hopefully to him) about it.
A friend of mine recently left a job on bad terms. He'd been there for four years. Now the former employer is refusing to sign his IDP papers, even though my friend was a great employee while he was there.
Is this legal? If you did the work, shouldn't you be eligible whether or not you actually get along with your former boss?
the internet needs a sarcasm button. This is why emoticons and too many exclamation points are necessary. I can never tell if someone is being an asshole unless they give me something like this-
farwest: NCARB does have a procedure for dealing with a situation where the employer won't sign the forms. There's an "indirect employment report" that they'll sometimes allow. It requires that three licensed architects submit letters on the candidate's behalf. Your friend should call NCARB and discuss the situation. He could also try having another licensed architect in the former employer's office sign the forms. He could also reiterate that NCARB and AIA codes of conduct require cooperation with IDP.
It may be better to try to get somebody else in the office to sign, because if the employer has an axe to grind then unfortunately even if he does sign the forms he can choose to check the boxes that indicate that the employee's performance was "unsatisfactory" - and that can end up delaying processing and potentially disqualifying the units from that employment situation.
Sorry I am adding my two cents this late in the game, but I have to say this. In a profession that literally likes to eat its young and makes it as difficult as possible for someone to become registered I find it deplorable that someone would actually even THINK of asking for money for providing a damn signature. Joking or not...that's the most insulting thing I have ever heard!!!!!!! It's the employers RESPONSIBILITY to provide documentation for IDP. This is a good lesson on filling out your paperwork WHILE you are still employed with a firm so that jackasses like this one can't hold you over a barell later. That is not only morally corrupt but it almost feels illegal. You can't ask for money for some shi* that you are SUPPOSED to do!! I apologize for the rant but it really burns me when people in the profession make it hard for others trying to achieve licensure. Then they wonder why there is such a high rate of people leaving the field.
Former employers filling ouf IDP
I have decided to finally get my IDP hours in order and in doing so am contacting former employers. I recently had one guy email me back and say he would be glad to fill out my IDP forms but there would be a small fee.
I have not seen these forms yet but have always assumed there was just a signature involved (maybe a little hour checking). But otherwise not a whole lot of time would be spent on his part. Am I being naive? Is this standard practice? Or, if not, how might I politely say he's trying to rip me off? Thanks!
i think that sounds strange. did you have a bad relationship with him?
i have never backlogged hours, but it usually entails a brief perusal of your credits and a signature. if there's any question of the number of credits, it's fairly easy to estimate based on how long you were there and a 2,000 hour work year. because he was your supervisor, he should have a general sense of what areas you had covered. (though it's a good idea to at least note in your timecard what you were doing on a particular day so there is no question.)
I didn't leave on bad terms. He was a decent guy.
He followed the small fee comment with " I hope you don't mind".
i would mind since it is part of their responsibility to ensure the profession of architecture plods along into the future. if you have enough idp hours without him screw him just use your other jobs. i did this as well and one employer never filled anything out whereas two others did without a hitch.
Thanks vado. There's nothing more fun than screwin' the man but unfortunately I'm going to need these hours.
John, I think it's bullshit. A very brief review of the NCARB IDP firm responsibility guidelines did not reveal anything saying that your employer HAS to sign your paperwork, or is/is not allowed to charge a fee for this time. However, I still think it's bullshit.
His review of your firm won't take him more than an hour, and then he just signs it. Charging you for that time is, IMO, unprofessional and childish, and potentially unethical: he's holding you hostage, in essence, by demanding that you return to him some of the money he paid you as an employee.
bloopox, can you weigh in here?
If it's really a problem, and you don't feel like a fight, perhaps jokingly offer to buy him a bottle of booze in lieu of paying him cash.
I'll say it again: I think his request for payment is bullshit, and if you tell me his name I'll call him and, as a fellow registered professional, tell him so.
I'm pissed off now.
lol, lb thanks for the insight. Didn't mean to get you riled up so early in the mornin'!
buy him a mocha latte, tell him that's as far as your willing to go.
or better yet, tell him you'll need to sibsidize the fee, he should receive payement after you've completed all IDP requirements, and passed all ARE exams.
Was he someone who fancied himself as a funny guy? Cause it sounds like a joke to me.
while I would never charge a fee to assist an intern with IDP paperwork myself, I do know some firms who do so when the intern has not been with the firm for a while and is looking for the firm to undertake a fair amount of research in order to document the hours and tasks. After a year or so, many firms will have dead-filed that data and, quite frankly, it's a pain in the butt to dig out again and make sense of it.
it's the responsibility of interns to keep track of their IDP hours from the very beginning and to clearly document those hours before they leave a firm for a new job. after all -- it's going to be their license, not the firm's.
while you may not think it fair to be charged a fee, many firms don't think it's fair to be asked to spend considerable administrative time compiling a record for someone who no longer is with the firm ... what's in it for them?
nevertheless, I complete these records all the time and never charge anything for my time or services. however, I do understand why some firms look at it differently.
He was sort of a merry prankster type, FOG but his email gave no hint of sarcasm or humor.
That's a very sensible perspective, distant. It has been awhile since I worked for him. I should still have all/most of my time/pay stubs. Do you think it would be a help if I included copies for his reference?
wow. that's the most unprofessional thing i've heard this year.
But distant: you're not filling out the form, you're reviewing what the intern has filled out, right? If you can recall - or, as John suggests doing, if the intern supplies documentation of - what projects and phases the intern worked on while an employee, it can't be too onerous to review, correct?
I understand that there is nothing monetary "in it for them" for a firm to review and sign paperwork for a non-employee, but I do think - and it sounds, distant, like you agree, since you have never charged for this process - that it IS the responsibility of an architect employer to contribute to the internship process, and charging a fee to do so is ridiculous.
distant your comment would ring true if the firm were required to substantiate and submit comapnion paperwork to support JC's intern work there. However, assuming that the supervisor is familiar with his work, and he provides a comprehensive account of what type of work/credits he is submitting for, then all that is needed out this past employer is a wave of the pen on the line.
If the firm has a disagreement about the credits claimed, then I can see it taking up more time, but really the burden of proof lies with JC, not with the firm, and it's his responsibility to be accurate and fill out his credit request with integrity in order to avoid any hoo-ha.
I'm with lb - the only point to charging a fee for this (however nominal) is on the past employer's head.
If the guy is a member of the AIA, he's obligated to do this anyway.
I've never heard of anyone having to nads to ask for a fee for this; that is totally ridiculous and out of line.
Really, snarkitect, is that in the AIA bylaws? Remembering that the AIA and NCARB are not related?
yikes...they must be hurting financially if there hitting up old interns by charging for a signature.
sounds very inappropriate to me and i'd even consider filing a complaint with the registration board or however oversee the ethics of such things.
John -- it depends on what you're asking him to do for you.
If you asking him to compile a report, documenting how you spent your time while you were with the firm, perhaps you can do that yourself with the timesheets you retained. Then just have him look it over and sign off on it.
The time he needs to spend will be, in large part, a function of what sort of computerized accounting system the firm uses and how well it's implemented. Our firm can pull up former employee records pretty much at the push of a button. That's definintely not true at all firms.
If your former employer doesn't have a great computerized system, his effort may be of a completly different scale, especially if they're being called on to a) pull old timesheets out of dead-files,; b) manually scour those time sheets; and c) compile a summary. If you can do that for him, you're going to save him a lot of trouble.
Talk to the guy -- tell him what you're prepared to do, listen to what he says he needs to do and then work out something that makes sense for you both.
Actually, distant, it says clearly on the NCARB site that compiling all that info - records of hours worked and projects/phases/experience is the responsibility of the intern. Absolutely on the shoulders of the intern to keep those records. The employer's task is only to review and approve them.
Which it sounds like John has done.
this is the real world folks -- we can't just read what aia and ncarb write and assume that's the way it is.
i have to tell you -- at least 50% of the time when I'm asked to participate in these exercises, the intern didn't keep any meaningful records at all ... they wake up one day, wanting to pursue their license -- they then call me (usually in a hurry) saying they need to file their IDP paperwork by the end of the week and could I send them a summary of what they did while they were with our firm.
i'd really love for it to always be easy -- that would save me a lot of time. but, it ain't always easy -- and that's never my doing.
look -- when somebody leaves the firm, I'd be delighted to run them a report at that time for their records -- it's no real skin off my nose. but, I never - ever - get a request for that data.
by the way -- I'm not defending John's former employer -- I'm just saying I understand where he may be coming from.
I'd be surprised if he kept very accurate records of where my hours were spent. It was my first job out of school and most of the my time spent was working on construction documents and field verification trips. And I'm not in a rush to have this stuff filled out, merely starting the process. Hell, I don't even have 285 bones to spare for the NCARB registration fee. $285 buys a lot of diapers you know!
cloth diapers be a whole mess cheaper.
I know, distant - and I'm not saying your logic is wrong at all, I think all your points are totally valid, and think it would be equally ridiculous for a former employee to do what you say in the scenario above - expect you to do it all for him/her.
To those interns reading this thread: go to your employer (or in my case, the firm financial manager) RIGHT NOW and ask for a printout of all your time sheets showing what projects and phase your time has been logged to. It's very easy to keep track of this IF you keep on top of it. And if you show up a year later at your current office saying you need it by the end of the week, don't be dismayed when they say it's going to take longer than that (but do get mad if they try to charge you for it).
holz: and a whole lot messier ;-)
i am kind of surprised by your former employer's response. i had to go back and get one of the idp employment things signed by a former employer and had no problems whatsoever.
and this was a large multinational firm. and the person who signed it wasn't even technically my supervisor. maybe it helped that i went through a friend still working in the office. and it was only for about 3 months and they had filled out previous IDP sheets for me.
i agree with liberty bell - start doing it now! ncarb provides excel sheets to easily document everything you're doing. it's really easy to fill that out when you're filling out a time sheet.
good luck john! sorry your experience with this idp stuff is not so good.
liberty bell-- I was (loosely) interpreting Canon 5 - ES5.1, which talks about the responsibility of facilitating the professional development of associates/employees.
Although it's not spelled out, I would say that verifying a completed Form-123 would constitute the bare minimum of this; asking for payment would not be!
I assumed most interns kept up with their own timesheets, task sheets, etc. I did/do and I was sure to wrap up my IDP records for my previous/first job. Maybe it's because I graduated with the focus on getting my license, so I've maintained all the necessary paperwork.
there should be no fee. he owes you that signature. perhaps he's just messing with you. my feeling though is that if he wants the fee, there is little you can do about it without going through ncarb and creating a mess for both him and yourself. if the fee is reasonable, i'd just pay it.
Some of us should have kept better records but failed to do so. When I worked at my first jobs several years ago, I did not keep copies of my time sheets or fill out my IDP log as I went along. After a couple of bad experiences, I left architecture for several years. Now I am trying to return to the profession, but it's not been easy. Even when I do get a job again, I hope to be able to go back and get some of those credits so I won't be starting from scratch. I only hope that my former employers will even be willing to sign off on the units for me.
It's true that we all need to take responsibility for IDP, but try not to be too harsh on those that weren't as dilligent as others in their efforts. With everything else that one has to do in the years right out of school, wrangling with IDP credits and the NCARB system can often seem daunting, and something that can easily be put off until some later time when you might feel you have more time and energy to deal with it.
As for your situation, John, I don't know whether your old employer has the right to do this, but it certainly seems stingy and mean-spirited to me. Sadly, he seems to have the advantage in this situation. I think some of the advice above is worth considering; at least try to discuss with him his reasoning. Even if you can't get him to back off of it, perhaps you can get him to reduce his asking price or something. It all sounds ridiculous, but I understand you need the credits; you might just have to bite the bullet if it means enough to you. Best of luck.
ok folks -- you're not reading John's posts very carefully -- as I read what he's written, it seems to me he's hoping his former employer will not only provide all the required data but also compile and organize it for him (John -- that may be an overstatement -- feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)
John admits in the intial post that he's never even seen the IDP forms himself and that the guy in question "would be glad to fill out my IDP forms but there would be a small fee"
The employer is suggesting that he be paid a little for actually doing work John should be doing for himself --- I don't see anything here that says the guy is proposing to charge John for providing a signature.
I plan on filling out all of the paperwork before hand so he simply has to sign on the line.
But this is now a moot discussion. I just emailed him and politely asked about the 'fee' he mentioned in his first email. Well, he was just kidding. I'm remembering how dry humored the guy was when working for him. Jeeze now I feel like a
(or maybe he's been reading this thread)
So now, in the funny way that karma works, you basically have to give him something!!! I suggest a nice bottle of his favorite booze.
Glad to hear this is how it worked out, John, and I hope other interns reading here are taking action for themselves!
The lesson learned is - Interns, keep current with NCARB and your IDP. It's not that hard if you adopt a very germanic record keeping system the minute you start that 1st job. I still keep organized records of all hours worked, even though I finished IDP quite some time ago.
This sounds like there may be some misunderstanding on both the employer's and employee's parts as to what's really involved here and what each of their time commitments would be expected to involve:
The part of the forms that the employer USUALLY fills out requires the employer to provide: his license number, his (and the firm's) name and address, and a brief multiple-choice-type evaluation of you. That last part asks a few questions about your general performance and he gets to rate you as "excellent", "good", "adequate", and "unsatisfactory" (or some similar terms) in four or five categories. The total of the employer's part of the form is half a page long and could be expected to take 10 minutes.
The part of the forms that the intern himself USUALLY fills out is the part that reports the unit totals in each category, the dates of employment, and the average number of hours worked per week.
Usually the intern calculates these unit totals by either using NCARB's spreadsheets (which do not get turned in to NCARB and are for your own use) or some other system of his devising. It can be very helpful to have copies of all of your old time sheets when you're doing this. Depending on how much experience you're retroactively reporting, how good your records are, how closely your employers' time sheets parallel IDP's categories, etc. this can take days. I retroactively reported over five years' experience and it took about 20 hours for me to go through all my old time sheets and sort it all into IDP units!
It is extremely strange for an employer to expect a fee to fill out his usual half a page.
However, if you are in fact expecting him to calculate your units for you then this is an unusual expectation on your part, and I don't think it's completely unreasonable for him to expect compensation since that could potentially take many hours.
Did this firm collect time sheets, or at least record employees' hours spent on each project? If so what I'd suggest is that you ask for copies of those records from the firm and offer to reimburse for the cost of the copies, and maybe even for the time to make the copies.
You'll be much better off if you calculate the hours yourself anyway. Since many typical tasks can fit into multiple different IDP categories you're in the best position to decide, based on your total employment history, which category you most need particular hours to fill.
If your former employer is actually asking you to pay him to fill out just his half a page then I'd clarify with him that he understands that it's only half a page! If he's being really difficult about this you could also remind him that the NCARB code of ethics and the AIA rules (if he's a member) both mandate that employers cooperate with IDP...
Thanks Bloopox. Fantastic insight.
that is unless the employer takes the time to verify what the intern has marked down....no cheating.
i've been putting off filing my IDP hours as well. I have close to 3 years worth of hours and none have been formally filed or been reviewed by my just recent former boss. During my employment in that office I've mentioned once about having him review and sign my IDP work sheet. Then I procrastinated. Before I left, I told him I was going to get my hours organized and set up a meeting sometime for him to review the IDP. He said "no problem"...i'm still procrastinating...
John, I guess when you meet with your former employer, you just have to make the process as painless as possible him. in addition to the forms/workbook, maybe even have a table showing hours/projects/tasks in a different format that is simpler and easier to read...i don't know, i have yet to go though this whole thing myself...that was my idea at least, in case my former employer asks how i allocated the hours. The bright side is that I've kept and maintained my own timesheets with some notes regarding the tasks i performed each day...i just gotta compile it. maybe next week
or you can just..
Dammson - here's something to get you off your procrastinating kiester. I filed several years' worth of TU's in March and NCARB is STILL in the process of reviewing everything (we have gone back & forth on several times on many of them). Foolishly, I thought I'd be through a few exams by now...
Sounds like usury to me. What if every doctor had to pay their former instructors to say they'd trained them? Or if former employers requested a fee to be put on your resume?
You should contact NCARB about this. They may have something to say (hopefully to him) about it.
A friend of mine recently left a job on bad terms. He'd been there for four years. Now the former employer is refusing to sign his IDP papers, even though my friend was a great employee while he was there.
Is this legal? If you did the work, shouldn't you be eligible whether or not you actually get along with your former boss?
farwest1 - read the post above the lollipops !
thos are suckers! =)
the internet needs a sarcasm button. This is why emoticons and too many exclamation points are necessary. I can never tell if someone is being an asshole unless they give me something like this-
^_^!!! LOL
Proper punctuation just doesn't cut it.
farwest: NCARB does have a procedure for dealing with a situation where the employer won't sign the forms. There's an "indirect employment report" that they'll sometimes allow. It requires that three licensed architects submit letters on the candidate's behalf. Your friend should call NCARB and discuss the situation. He could also try having another licensed architect in the former employer's office sign the forms. He could also reiterate that NCARB and AIA codes of conduct require cooperation with IDP.
It may be better to try to get somebody else in the office to sign, because if the employer has an axe to grind then unfortunately even if he does sign the forms he can choose to check the boxes that indicate that the employee's performance was "unsatisfactory" - and that can end up delaying processing and potentially disqualifying the units from that employment situation.
funny shit
Sorry I am adding my two cents this late in the game, but I have to say this. In a profession that literally likes to eat its young and makes it as difficult as possible for someone to become registered I find it deplorable that someone would actually even THINK of asking for money for providing a damn signature. Joking or not...that's the most insulting thing I have ever heard!!!!!!! It's the employers RESPONSIBILITY to provide documentation for IDP. This is a good lesson on filling out your paperwork WHILE you are still employed with a firm so that jackasses like this one can't hold you over a barell later. That is not only morally corrupt but it almost feels illegal. You can't ask for money for some shi* that you are SUPPOSED to do!! I apologize for the rant but it really burns me when people in the profession make it hard for others trying to achieve licensure. Then they wonder why there is such a high rate of people leaving the field.
: lighten up a little .... even John Cline now realizes this all was a tempest in a teapot.
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