I can't speak for the United States but here in Canada, only architects
and engineers can seal drawings for large buildings.
The provinces all adopt the National Building Code and may modify it to
suit their own requirements and make it law, but generally outside of
life-safety issues they are almost all identical. These codes allow
small buildings and houses (under 600 sq metres and 3 storeys or less)
to be built to prescriptive requirements and just about anybody can
prepare the drawings for these. Large buildings are those over 600 sq
metres or 3 storeys. Here in Ontario, the provincial government has
mandated that (large) buildings for people e.g. residential, are to be
approved by an architect whereas other buildings eg, factories, can be
approved by an engineer or architect and certain buildings have to be
designed by both, e.g. assembly occupancies; and generally non-building
structures can only be designed by an engineer. Ontario does not seem
to use building surveyors, but municipalities rather employ engineering
or architectural technicians and/or technologists and/or engineers to do
the functions you ascribe to building surveyors.
I believe the practise in the states are generally the same, with maybe
more variation from state to state, as they have had more codes to
follow. I believe the International Building Code is an attempt to
bring in a single code.
Gary
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