Referred to by a variety of names—incidental practice, overlapping practice, scope of practice—this concept has posed challenges for both licensing boards to regulate and for practitioners to navigate. To protect the public, licensing boards are responsible for ensuring only competent individuals are practicing in each of these professions.

ICOR member professions share common licensure elements as well as performing some of the same tasks. While this “practice overlap” does exist, it is important to note each of these professions are unique and distinct, with a role in protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public. It is common to see these professions regulated by a multi-disciplinary board, as well as having these separate professions working on the same design project. That collaboration is vital to the design process and does not diminish the individual impact that each profession has on protecting the public. 

Architecture, engineering, interior design, landscape architecture, and surveying professions intersect when working on buildings, the environments surrounding buildings, transportation corridors, and our nation’s infrastructure. Collaboration between licensed professionals is essential to collectively protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public.

Practice Overlap Guidance Resource

The Practice Overlap Guidance resource was developed collaboratively by ICOR’s four national regulatory bodies. It provides a defensible framework for identifying where professional competencies across architecture, engineering, interior design, landscape architecture, and surveying overlap—and where they remain distinct. Grounded in shared regulatory inputs, the guidance supports fair, consistent, and competency-based regulation across jurisdictions.

Download the Practice Overlap Guidance Resource

The guidance was developed through a rigorous, multi-step, consensus-based process involving: 

• Model definitions of practice used across the professions developed by the respective ICOR member organization 
• Education standards and curricula established by each profession’s accrediting body 
• Licensure and certification examination domains, which identify the competencies each profession is tested on 
• Structured experience categories and practice areas required for licensure 
• Results from a survey of ICOR member boards, identifying real-world regulatory challenges related to incidental practice 

Subject matter experts from all five professions participated in detailed analysis through cross-profession subcommittees, using these inputs to determine areas of overlap and differentiation. This ensures the guidance is valid, defensible, and consistent across all five disciplines. A complete list of professional input references is included in the guidance document. 

Explore frequently asked questions about the Practice Overlap Guidance.

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