Our president, Matthew Fisher, P.E., P.L.S., is now also a Certified Floodplain Surveyor. He sat for the CFS examination this spring and holds certification NSPSCFS-185 from the National Society of Professional Surveyors.
The CFS program is an intensive course of instruction followed by a four-hour national examination. It covers the National Flood Insurance Program, the federal regulations behind it, Flood Insurance Rate Maps, Elevation Certificates, no-rise certifications, and the full family of FEMA map changes — Letters of Map Amendment and Letters of Map Revision. In short, the entire framework that decides whether a property is in a mapped floodplain and what that costs its owner.
We pursued the credential because flood zone questions come through our door constantly. A homeowner gets a letter from their lender demanding flood insurance. A buyer discovers at closing that the house sits in Zone AE. A developer finds a mapped floodplain crossing the back third of a parcel. In every one of those situations, the answer runs through federal paperwork that has to be prepared precisely and defended with survey data.
That is where the certification earns its keep. An Elevation Certificate prepared correctly the first time can mean a fair insurance rating instead of an inflated one. A well-supported Letter of Map Amendment can remove a structure from the mapped floodplain entirely, which can eliminate a mandatory insurance requirement and save an owner thousands of dollars a year. And on development sites, sound floodplain analysis keeps permitting moving instead of stalling it.
It also fits how we already work. The same office that surveys your property and engineers your site now carries a national floodplain credential, so the flood zone question gets answered by the people who already have the survey data in hand — not referred out to a third firm.
If a flood zone touches a property you own or are looking at, send it our way. A short look at the map is often enough to tell whether there is real money to be saved.