Re: CONSTRUCTION "SURVEYOR"

I agree pretty much with all said here.

A robotic station, etc. would be really cool, but if I was on a site where
that would really pay for itself, it would be time to get a surveyor. I know
of a surveyor who uses one.

Now this gets me off on a tangent. A friend of mine got a contract
renovating a large playfield for a public school. The owners, construction
management, and architect did not use a surveyor before they drew up the
plans (?????). The architect did the drawing off some sort of aerial
picture. When my friend the contractor got a surveyor out there to lay out,
(the one with the robotic) he found that the kids running on the new track
were going to be dodging traffic on the busiest 6-lane street around. The
change orders and delays from that "cost savings" cost them far more than a
surveyor would have.

I would not have wanted to touch that with a 20' pole.

I don't set property lines, I don't do the original topo. Also here, a LS is
required to do a building height verification toward the end of the job. I
don't research whatever it is that LSs research.

But we really need someone who can be on the site frequently on a moments
notice and set out the myriad things that the guys on the job need, and
that's me. And I do need to be accurate. So the total station is my buddy.
But it's as far as I will probably go. It suits my purposes just fine.

I would probably enjoy being a surveyor. Maybe next life.

GC


"Jim Lux" <james.p.lux@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ecvfgb$dao$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
sat_alight@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Bart,

Your post is typical of a surveyor

read: "any profession"

who is feeling the squeeze from
technology and a profession that is changing. I don't mean that in a
derogatory manner, but if I had a dime for every time I heard comments
like yours, I'd be retired. Surveyors are struggling with their
indentity and your statement says it perfectly..."I have invested a lot
in my profession and would like to see it protected".

Protected by who? We are a capitalist economy. We are not society of
entitlement and your don't deserve "protection". You are paid what the
market says you are worth. If you don't like your pay, then you have to
increase your value (in the eyes of the market).

The land surveyor's scope of work is shrinking and construction layout
is only one area. Many, if not most, states don't require a license for
construction staking and most general contractors aren't going to use
an LS if they don't have to.


I think you are wrong to say there would be more surveyors if your
rates were higher. We are in the middle of the biggest construction
boom in recent history. It's not going to get any better than it is
right now. If you can't attract people to your industry during the best
of times, what happens when the next recession hits?

Interestingly, I was reading in FSB (Fortune Small Business) that the SBA
says that surveying has historically been the most successful small
business to enter. It has an extremely low failure rate, and this has been
the case since Washington was staking out property in Virginia 250 years
ago, and probably a lot longer.

Look, IT is changing very dymanically and your industry is part of that
change. You either adapt and excel or you get left behind. You can't
keep doing the same thing you've done for the past 25 years and
complain because it doesn't work anymore.

This is sort of in the "who moved the cheese" sort of category, and is
true of all professions, and lines of business as well. While often cited
as an example of a dead industry, it happens that there ARE still buggy
whip makers out there, just a lot less of them than 100 years ago. Many of
those whipmakers moved to doing other things that required similar skills
and/or technology.



Sat


GC, Like I said, I have no problem with you making a living off of your
skills and equipment, but you reinforced my point. We are more expensive
and
we should be due to the Requirements we must meet in order to call
ourselves
"Professionals". I don't personally go in the field for every staking job
but I do take on the liability for the accuracy of our work.

And there is the key difference between "staking out a construction job"
and "surveying": Liability.

A surveyor can establish the legal boundary for a piece of property, which
includes not just the mechanics of measurement (something that technology
is making ever easier), but also the professional interpretation of land
records, and a certain amount of field experience to find reference
points, establish control, etc.

This is why surveyors need licensure, and why someone staking out a
construction site doesn't. The former is part of a legal process. The
latter is, from a legal standpoint, not doing anything different than the
carpenter measuring a piece of wood before cutting it.


The reason you
have to wait so long to get a surveyor on site is because there are not
enough of us to go around. If we could set our rates at a higher level
more
people would be interested in pursuing a career as a Land Surveyor. The
education and experience requirements in most states for registration is
close to the same as a P.E. so most opt for the higher earning career. In
my
state a land surveyor must pass four seperate tests whereas a P.E. only
takes two, not that I could pass the P.E. but most engineers couldn't
pass
the L.S. without further education. In my opinion all field work
including
construction layout should be done under the supervision of a
Professional
Land Surveyor. I have invested a lot in my profession and would like to
see
it protected.

Hmm. as a P.E., I'd wonder why I couldn't supervise the construction
layout, just as I would supervise the carpenters, the cement masons, the
folks welding the structural steel. They're all making safety critical
measurements, etc. I wouldn't presume to set the property boundaries,
though, or worry about things like chain of title. The mechanics of how
it's done aren't really at issue. Say you're laying landscape drain lines
which need a 1% fall. Do I get a PLS to do this, or do the guys digging
the ditch and laying the pipe just get a laser level and put the pipe in
with the right pitch.

Certainly, there are going to be times where it's a grey area. But I
would trust in the professionalism of the person doing the work to say
"hey, I don't know if I can do this job properly". The difference between
the PLS and a skilled instrument operator who isn't licensed is really
that the PLS has a legal obligation to say when they're not able to do the
job, while for the unlicensed person, it's just their personal ethics.
One also has to factor in that without the formal credential, it's
possible that the person might not realize that they're not competent to
do the job, but that's true for lots of jobs, and really comes back to
what the risk acceptance posture is.

So, I'd view licensure not as a "restraint of trade to protect certain
jobs" measure, but rather as a certification that you have certain
background knowledge, AND, that you have a legally authenticated identity
(that is, if you screw up, we'll know where to find you), AND, because
there's an experience requirement for most licenses, that you have *some*
practical field experience.

I don't think licensure should be viewed like a Microsoft Certified
Systems Engineer kind of thing: signifying that you've got some
specialized knowledge on a specific fairly narrow domain.


Jim Lux, P.E.


.

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