AIA California believes continuing education is crucial for professionals who strive for excellence, career growth, and personal development. It provides a pathway to acquire new skills, adapt to changes, expand professional networks, and stay competitive in a dynamic and evolving job market. AIA CA provides access to hundreds of hours of peer-reviewed, high-quality, low-cost (or free!) CE to help you be successful.

Mandatory Continuing Education (MCE) is education required by a state to retain licensure. Each state has the legal right to establish its own guidelines and requirements. However, most state’s requirements are similar, whether they require architects to meet them annually or biannually. The average AIA member holds four or more state licenses and must meet the continuing education requirements for all the states in which you intend to practice.

In California, architects, as a condition of license renewal, must complete five (5) hours continuing education (CE) coursework on disability access requirements and another five (5) hours on zero net carbon design (ZNCD) for a total of 10 CE hours during each renewal cycle.

To discover more:

CA Mandatory CE laws 
Contact California Architects Board 

Members of AIA are required to complete 18 continuing education credits (LUs) from registered AIA/CES providers each year. Of the 18 LUs, 12 must be in the topic areas of health, safety and welfare (HSW).

Most states that require MCE will accept AIA/CES transcripts as documentation for completion of valid continuing education credit. For AIA members, this single record-keeping system is the documentation needed for reporting your state MCE requirements when requested. We do, however, strongly suggest that you keep backup documentation (i.e. a certificate of your activities. This documentation is required for Accessibility and ZNCD courses if audited by the California Architects Board.