The Professional Practice of Landscape Architecture, A Complete Guide to Starting and Running Your Own Firm – Walter Rogers

[Marsha Swider]

I recently purchased the Digital Book "The Professional Practice of Landscape Architecture, A Complete Guide to Starting and Running Your Own Firm – Walter Rogers" from Google Play.

Based on the content of the book, should it be assumed that this book can be used as a study reference material in lieu of "Project Management for Design Professionals - William Ramroth", or is this a newly added book to the list of reference materials for the updated 2017 exam? 

Any guidance or insight to this would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you. 

[Linda Endler]

Marsha,

I doubt it.  I would never assume anything with respect to the LARE.  If CLARB specifies books to read, those are the ones to study.  They often take questions right out of the reading material.

[Emily G]

CLARB used to have a list of books, like 20 books per section, they recommended you read.  I think people cried over it being too much material and they shortened it.  But you didn't have to read them all, it was just an alternative source.  If a topic in one book was explained in a way you could understand, you could check it in a different one.  So if you feel you understand the topics from PPLA then maybe you don't need PMDP, or you use PMDP to check those topics you needed more information on.  Truth is many books cover the same topics and are just as good as the ones recommended.  Any book that helps you with the topics listed on the orientation guides content list, is a good book.  I actually hate that CLARB only recommends the books they do - it really allows them to control authors credibility and also guarantees those books/authors' success - especially bothersome if you consider the latest book addition, Sustainable Sites Handbook by Calkins, was actually funded in part by ASLA via the Sustainable Site Initiative SITES (a reboot of GBCI's-LEED)- which is just another money maker for ??? and just another way for you to pay to become certified in something more. But I digress.  CLARB should site it's questions sources, that should be the list, so theoretically you should be able to answer all the question on the exams from the sources they recommend, but they are just that, recommendations.  Other books are good too.  And if you're confident you understand it all with just one book, bully for you!

I read them all, but I found Hinze most informative - I skipped the examples at the ends of each chapter and used a much earlier version.  PPLA is great too, I appreciated it's structure and bullet points. 

Best of Luck!

[Ray Freeman]

The Sustainable Sites Initiative is most definitely NOT a reboot of LEED. LEED is crap for site work. It has a small section on site, but is primarily architecturally oriented. SITES is far more comprehensive and was developed by a wide range of professionals.....LAs, engineers, ecologists, biologists, etc.

I ahave never heard of the Roger book, but any professional practice book should suffice for the subject matter covered there. Sharky and Marshall are two older but perfectly good Propractice books.  As for contracts, I found a cheap book by a guy named Acret which I like a lot. (I also have Hinze)  It's format is actually similar to the "... for Dummies" series of books. Very digestible.

[Ray Freeman]

The last sentence in Linda's post is quite correct!