Landscape Architect

Smithsonian's National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute Landscape Architect

Smithsonian National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute is hiring a Landscape Architect based at the Zoo in Washington, DC. All applications should be submitted through the official job announcement on USAJobs.gov, found here:
USAJOBS - Job Announcement
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The Landscape Architect (LA) reports to the Associate Director, NZCBI Planning and Programming. This position provides professional advice and guidance on a comprehensive landscape program within the Smithsonian Institution NZCBI properties.

In this position, you will:

• Oversee and initiate the programming and the design of NZCBI-wide construction projects to include aquatic and animal holding, containments.
• Provide input on construction funding to finance new garden installations, educational initiatives, and horticultural exhibits.
• Prepare justification for capital maintenance and funding landscape improvements and develops grant proposals.
• Facilitate development projects and other major fiscal outlays for construction to include, unique, novel and/or experimental designs, methods and/or materials.
• Review and provide comments on all phases of design and construction projects.
• Assist architects, designers, and contractors, to help plan, design, renovate, construct, and open exhibits.

Degree:
Landscape Architecture or Landscape Design.

Note:

Successful completion of a 5-year program of study of at least 160 semester hours leading to a bachelor's degree in landscape architecture in an accredited college or university is qualifying for GS-7.

or

Combination of education and experience -- for each year short of graduation, the applicant must have had 1 year of experience under professional leadership and guidance of such character and diversity as to be a satisfactory substitute for the required education. This experience must have included original landscape design.

Experience Equivalent to a Degree in Landscape Architecture: A degree in landscape architecture indicates that an applicant has the basic background to perform professional landscape architectural work at the beginning levels and has the potential to develop the skills and abilities required at the higher levels. Experience may be substituted for education to the extent that it provided the equivalent background.

However, because an education provides some knowledge that cannot be measured in terms of course content, but rather is part of general knowledge and cultural background gained as a result of interrelationships among courses, careful judgment must be used in evaluating experience substituted for education as provided for in paragraph B of the basic requirements.

The objective of providing for the substitution of experience for education is to avoid excluding proven professional landscape architects from the Federal service. However, relatively few applicants will qualify on the basis of experience alone. The time required in the case of an individual applicant to acquire the required experience may take substantially more than 4 years. In view of the breadth and depth of training required, it is rare that a person will qualify without some course work in addition to experience.

Applicants who apply on the basis of experience in lieu of education are required to show how their background is equivalent to a degree. In order to qualify at the entrance level, non-degree applicants typically must have experience or study that included site planning; layout of circulation patterns; grading and drainage plans; planting plans; collaboration with architects and/or engineers; and the supervision or review of landscape construction.

Evaluation of

Experience:

The following kinds of experience are not acceptable as professional landscape architectural experience: routine drafting or developing of plans where original investigations or designs are not involved; laying out or executing illustrations in black-and-white or in color; nursery work involving the propagation of trees, shrubs, vines, etc.; experimental, horticultural, or landscape gardening; breeding, testing, propagation, culture, and production of…