i feel your pain.....i'm in the same boat....

here's what I say, establish a mentor/supervisor now. if you have one, great. present your work, and provide as much information as you can, (hours, years, responsibility)... and come to a reasonable estimation of the TU's you deserve. then have them agree and sign off.

however, there is that whole direct supervision by licensed architect thing... hmmm.

those are the rules... all monitored by your "moral compass"

yeah i want to be honest. and i dont mind losing yrs of design work form the credits..I just cant even seem to find anyone.

Your mentor can also be your supervisor. While I was working in Japan, my supervisor was also my mentor and he was licensed in the US. Getting the direct supervisor is key and could be tricky if you are working freelance. I think the mentor can be anyone really. They are just like a career adviser.

you were lucky hasselhoff. when i was working for japanese office i logged all my hours for accounting reasons, including dividing it up into work on site, design, presentation whatever, and because the hours were insane (as you know from experience) i had accumulated an enormous amount of experience...when i took that stuff to canada the boards told me in no uncertain terms to fuck off. and that was all perfectly professional experience.

can't imagine if i had been freelance on top of that. how and who could document the work?

i get the idp system and the need for oversight by proper mentor so i don't really begrudge the fact my license, and all my experience right now would be mostly meaningless if i moved to usa or canada. what i did was my choice after all. i think the reality is that if the powers that be say "no go" your best realistic choice is to start from zero in an office setting or similar.

i guess that doesn't fit with your plans (you are still freelance?), so maybe easiest way is to befriend architect in the area...surely that is not so hard?

The best I could get was one year of hours (NCARB rules). And there were huge voids that I could probably never fill in without lying, such as construction documents. Even just at interviews I've had since I've been back in the States, I've noticed that when I finally get a new job here, there will be so much that I will learn/have to learn that I could NEVER learn at the Japanese firm just because of the nature of that firm's work. So eventually, when people start building again and I get a job, I'm going to learn a lot. I interviewed at a firm in my small hometown that does a lot of renovations and strip malls and stuff (among some pretty good work too) and the issues they encounter are so much more complex than what was going on at my firm in Japan. A lot of the firms in Japan work with the major construction companies which deal with all the materials, permits, code, CDs etc. The architect just designs, does DD, hands over the drawings and confirms it during construction. My firm was fairly well known, but scope was very limited. Mostly facade and some interiors. So long story short, someday...when I'm working again, I will be glad to be back in the States getting more direct "IDP" experience to learn the whole deal, from design to the boring stuff.

ah, you know i guess i did know that hasselhoff, but i somehow forgot. my office wasn't like that. we did structures, electrical, and architectural stuff on our own, and the way the office was set up we were all required to do all of that as very carefully thought out education process. i was a bit special because of my foreigner status, but i still did steel structure drawings, complete with welding labels and all the rest. no calculations thank goodness (the engineering software in those days was a real chore to use), although i did study the math while i was doing the work so i could understand better what i was drawing. as a result my understanding of steel and concrete construction is pretty damn good if i say so myself.

for our own office we did/do all of the detailing, from window connections to custom furniture, to landscape plans, electrical and mechanical (our work is small scale so that is easy enough). I frankly don't understand how any office can do otherwise, but that is a reflection of my training i think more than any real objection to the way your office was set up.

anyway, even though i had buildings with my name engraved on a bronze plate as the architect, when i went to canadian archi-license people they were not impressed. they were in fact very rude. such is life.

actually, to be honest, none of the offices in canada i spoke to were very impressed either. my impression was that experience and skills count less in north america than one's place in the process. i don't think that is really how things are ( i refuse to believe an entire profession could be that petty), but when i went to london every office took my portfolio at face value and didn't worry about the license. something about the culture, i can't put my fingers on it, but there really is a point where the entire IDP thing is not working the way it should....then again, i am not a big fan of protectionism either, so what do i know.

At my interviews, the firms were far more interested in my school work than what I did on the job. Flashed through my DD and flipped past the work parts of the portfolio. One interviewer said "Oh, I know XXXX, they just do facade," and on to the grad school work.

ff33º - I fail to understand why an IDP mentor necessary for you. What would be the problem with showing the work you have done yourself to your new potential clients/employers? They wouldn't believe you've done it yourself? or ..i don't understand :S

Could you please explain? thanks.

ff33 - you won't have a mentor issue, you'll have a supervisor issue (at least with ncarb). they will not, in any circumstance, take hours where you were not under the direct supervision of a registered architect. the big key in determining 'direct supervision' is that you both have to have been at the same company or address for the time in question. and, from going through this with someone, i can vouch that ncarb will back check with the supervisor to make sure you were under their watch. they will make them sign an affidavit to the same effect. honestly, there aren't too many supervisors that will fake that form simply because lying on the affidavit could very easily lead to losing your own license.

i do feel your pain, but unless ncarb has been taken over by mother teresa's reincarnation, you're probably out of luck.

technically, freelance/contract work isn't supposed to count toward idp