Hi everyone, I’m a business student studying the surveying industry. I’m trying to understand why so many firms say they lose money on 'unbilled field time.' Is it because field crews hate filling out timesheets, or is the software just bad? I’m trying to build a cost-model for a project—any insights help! Thank you in advance!
Fieldwork is a bit like bathroom renovations, you don't know if the framing is rotten till you get the lining off. In the same way with fieldwork it is hard to guess from the office just how thick the vegetation is, whether the site has been modified or if a utility contractor has done work in the area recently and taken out all the reference marks you wanted to use. Hence you try to both cover what the cost may be and not give the client a heart attack; not uncommon for an estimate to be way out due to reasons above.
While it's true that there are numerous external factors that can negatively impact field crew production, it's ultimately poor business practices that are to blame. Many PLSs bill only for labor with no risk/reward assessment and little to no value placed on their professional knowledge. Many land surveyors approach billing with timidity, often hesitating to bill at the full professional rates their expertise deserves. I've been told by many surveyors that a PLS should bill lump sum and deliver a quality survey regardless of the cost. This type of thinking is a noble way of going out of business and destroying the profession but its negative impact is less obvious to PLSs that work solo, don't track their time, or who disproportionally care more about their clients than their employees. To stick with the renovation analogy, many surveyors will bid a job, peel back the floorboards and find termite damage, then bemoan their bad luck rather than calling the client and letting them know that their $3000 project will now cost $5000 due to unforeseen complexities.
Field crews are not the problem. Unforeseen complications are the norm not the exception and can be mitigated with proper contract language. My guess is that many PLSs come from more of a blue collar background than the other professions and find it difficult to assign commensurate value to their knowledge. Sadly, these same PLSs are often quicker to blame their employees than themselves. My first PLS could be a monster to his employees but was generally a gentleman to everyone else. Long after I parted ways, I came to the realization that his employees good work reminded him that he was to blame for losing money on projects. Like most people, he hated most that which reminded him of his inadequacies.
Do you really mean predicting field crew time?
Tracking it isn't difficult.
I don't know what "firms" you're discussing this with, but my experience is office time is the killer. It's easy for the "higher-ups" to point fingers. CYA types are legion.
While it's true that there are numerous external factors that can negatively impact field crew production, it's ultimately poor business practices that are to blame.
This, 100%.
Most surveyors i have met are great surveyors but poor businessmen. I was there once until an Engineer, yes Engineer, showed me how to properly bill for our work and to setup smart contracts.
@wa-id-surveyor it would be interesting if you could elaborate on this some?
To the topic at hand, in my opinion, I think it is all the unknowns one encounter in the field.
How many of you have bidded a job that appeared to be rather simple, yet turned out to be the complete opposite once you started? An entire can of worms was hidden under that floorboard. After hours and hours of not only field time but office time (not part of the equation for this topic) but all that is looked to be blamed was how difficult the survey turned out to be. Only if, had I known...
It's not a problem with tracking time. The field portion is the easiest part of the operation to track time on. The problem is getting paid enough to cover all the time that is spent.
Field time is the most productive of all surveying time.
Frankly, I don't understand how this became a question.
If you imagine a circumstance that would make the field crew put in more time........................it will happen eventually and sometimes frequently. Anything from a flat tire to realizing all of the batteries are back at the office, four hours away. We nearly completed a boundary survey in a swampy area one afternoon and two hours later a tornado struck that exact area. The last bar we had set was driven two feet deeper and skewed off to one side because a large hedge tree toppled such that a broken limb hit that exact spot like a two ton sledge. Total station days.
Never kept close track of hours, just my overall income vs perceived effort. An hourly rate is for manual labor not a professional service.
Charge all the market will bear for every job easy or not.
It is simply this: when estimating costs during the negotiation phase we simply underestimate the field time required. And if we don't we are probably undercut by somebody who does. So when it comes time to do the work there are not enough hours in the budget.
Tracking field crew costs is one thing, straight forward enough. Anticipating what those costs are going to be is entirely another. Underestimate it and you lose money, overestimate it, and you don't get the work, which can be a blessing in disguise. One surveyor mentor put it to me this way years ago, it's like drilling a water well. How deep will you need to go before you find water? If you drilled a well next door, you have a decent idea, but if you are in uncharted territory, you'll need to consult a crystal ball.
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.
For subdivision work it can be the simple curse of high privacy fences and low limbs and extremely precious plantings versus nothing over three inches high to block your view and/or satellite reception. For working in the boonies, it can be a wide/deep body of water requiring a 16 mile drive to get to the other side and back, several times. Had that exact circumstance about eight years ago fifty miles from home. Passed on a job that required attempting to survey in the center of a river over the majority of nine miles where the owner owned multiple tracts in several different sections. It was running at low flow at the time so the boat used could not be big enough to satisfy this landlubber's safety desires.
I’m trying to understand why so many firms say they lose money on 'unbilled field time.'
It's called passing the buck. The field crew doesn't determine the fee for a project but somehow they get blamed when it's insufficient.
Not that I have a ton of years doing it but I've yet to have a project where I totally 💩 the bed on the estimate. I think this mostly happens to guys who haven't been in the field in a long time and forget what it takes to get things done and/or do almost no research when they're putting together their estimate. Either way they blame the crew via "unbilled field time".
My more than two cents worth: My wife and I ran a very successful survey business and the first thing we did was abolish time cards and ties. Biggest management blunder is for a company to allow the tyranny of time cards. Depending on time cards to measure productivity and profits is beyond stupid, and causes employees to hate (and game) the system. It discourages creativity and prompts everyone to do the bare minimum to complete the task and not one penny of extra effort.
ps I know of one company that required everyone to stop what they were doing and fill out their time card every 15 minutes, in the name of efficiency and controlling costs.
@bruce-small agreed. I never ran big construction stakeout jobs. We always figured a price using time , of course. But most of the jobs were fixed fee. Never worried about time after that, just do the job. Most went well.