Sharing Contractor Licensing, Transatlantic Experience Credit and Fingerprinting for Inactive License Renewal

You can ‘share’ so much in social media these days, but in the real world of contracting not this! You may detect a slight accent in one inquiry while another contractor plans on mixing business and pleasure while in California…

Q:  You recently helped our Iowa company obtain a California contractor’s license. Can you help me understand whether or not we could allow another entity to use it, such as one of our subsidiaries?  Or, if we entered into a temporary subcontract agreement with another entity, could the subcontractor use our license or vice versa? 

A:  Absolutely not.  One entity cannot “use” another entity’s contractor’s license under any circumstances.

Q:  We spoke a couple of weeks ago regarding our Corporation that is based in the United Kingdom.  You had informed us that our Qualifying Individual needs to document four years of experience.  Does his experience need to be in the United States?  If it makes any difference, he has a license in the UK and it is much more difficult to qualify for a license in the UK than it is in California.

A:  His experience does not need to have been in the US.  I’m not familiar with contractor licensing in the UK, however I do know that being licensed in the UK doesn’t offer any “shortcuts” for him.  If he is licensed in the UK and the requirements are more stringent, I would speculate that he would be qualified for a license in CA,  but give me a call at your convenience to further discuss his background so we can actually confirm it’s ‘trans-Atlantic’ experience. 

Q:  I moved to the Midwest years ago and when I did, I put my CA contractor’s license on “Inactive” status.  I’ve been contacted by a company who wants to hire me as a Responsible Managing Employee (RME).  The company is wanting this license quickly and they said I would need to come to CA to get fingerprinted.  I’m not familiar with the licensing procedure anymore but I don’t remember needing to fingerprint, and I if I did, I don’t remember that I had to specifically do it in California?  I’m trying to plan my summer vacations and if this is necessary, I’ll work a West Coast trip into my plans!

A: I looked up your contractor’s license and you were definitely originally licensed prior to the fingerprinting requirement, so you can “work” surf and sand in to your summer vacation!  Completing the fingerprints via Live Scan makes the licensing process much quicker, as opposed to fingerprinting outside of CA which can add weeks (and sometimes months!) to the process.