Union rates in downtown L.A. versus finding boundaries on residential tracts worth less than $10,000 in BugTussle.
Meaningless numbers. Why incite those looking to call us names in the first place?
Meaningless numbers.
Yeah. With the number of posts contrasting the difference in fees over the years, from a national (or more importantly international, as Surveyor Connect is) board, how much value can be placed on numbers posted.
Won't be helpful to the OP, but as a solo person now, I don't differentiate between the various functions of research, field, drafting, etc. It is all the same to me.
Yeah, no, I don't answer those types of questions.
Other professions train their people how to run a business. Surveyors hold everything close to the vest. Hence, all the complaints about not charging properly to make a profit and a professional salary.
Hence, problem getting people into the profession.
The economics of surveying needs to be talked about more than anything else. But no one will do it.
Something one guy said recently at a seminar is if you're not making enough to pay for health insurance for your family and your employees families, then you should not consider yourself in business.
I have no problem answering questions as posed in the OP. But it doesn't mean anything.
The question is how to be successful, not any particular number. But if you teach a boilerplate way to be successful, then fees will naturally be more similar than they are and have been.
Other professions train their people how to run a business. Surveyors hold everything close to the vest. Hence, all the complaints about not charging properly to make a profit and a professional salary.
I think the challenge is how to decouple the value of a survey from the number of hours it will take to complete it. Hours per task is a concrete, easily quantified value, but they rarely reflect the actual value of the deliverables that we produce.
It might take 10 hours of fieldwork + 8 hours of office work + 3 hours administrative work to produce a basic boundary survey for a residential homeowner. That survey might very well be worth only the time we put into it.
But the same amount of time might be spent performing an intensive topographic survey on an expensive parcel of land for a lucrative civil design project.
We tend to price both jobs as if they were the same. They're not.
And the value of data already collected is not reduced just because we don't have to survey it all over again. Other data-driven industries don't give a discount on data just because they already have it. We shouldn't either.
I don’t believe this suit was ever decided in court. The AG couldn't prove anything.
There was no collusion or price fixing involved, instead that group had informal meetings to bitch about low ballers and what could done about them. Suggesting “standard prices” is what got them in hot water.
From the Orlando Sentinel
The Florida Attorney General's Office Wednesday sued a dozen land surveyors in Brevard County, accusing them of a price-fixing conspiracy that caused lenders and property owners to pay excessive fees for land surveys.
The suit, filed in federal court in Orlando, seeks more than $10 million in civil penalties from 10 surveying companies and two individual surveyors.
It alleges that the surveyors launched their scheme in November 1991, established minimum fee schedules and "took steps to police and enforce adherence to their agreement."
In some cases, they filed disciplinary complaints with the state Department of Professional Regulation against surveyors who did not comply, the suit alleges.
"As a result of this unlawful conduct, prices paid by purchasers of land or boundary surveys from defendants . . . were in excess of prices that would have prevailed in a competitive market," the suit said.
The suit is the first of its type in Florida's history to target price fixing among land surveyors, said Jerome Hoffman, chief lawyer for the attorney general's antitrust section.
"This is true for any industry when times get tough economically. More than likely you'll find cases of price fixing."
The defendants include: Brevard Surveying Inc. of Palm Bay; Campbell Surveying and Mapping of Brevard Inc. in Merritt Island; Gordon & Deithorn Land Surveyors Inc. in Satellite Beach; Herrera, Williams & Powell Inc. of Melbourne; and Holley & Associates in Titusville.
Other defendants were Island Surveying and Mapping Co. in Merritt Island; Michael J. Kane in Melbourne; William B. Kissinger of Melbourne; William A. Lane Inc. of West Melbourne; William Mott Land Surveying Inc. of Satellite Beach; R.M. Packard & Associates Inc. of Rockledge; and Rothery Surveying Inc. of Melbourne.
Most surveyors listed in the suit could not be reached for comment.
One company, however, denied involvement with the alleged price-fixing activity.
Nora Gordon, office manager of Gordon & Associates in Satellite Beach, said the state's accusations were directed at a former member of the firm, David Deithorn.
Although the suit lists Gordon & Deithorn Land Surveyors Inc. as a defendant, David Deithorn has now started his own firm in Satellite Beach, Gordon said.
She provided the Sentinel with a letter in which a state financial investigator implies that Deithorn is being investigated individually, not "as a corporate officer of Gordon & Deithorn Land Surveyors Inc."
A staff member for David Deithorn & Associates said Wednesday afternoon that the surveyor was working in the field and could not be reached for comment.
And the value of data already collected is not reduced just because we don't have to survey it all over again. Other data-driven industries don't give a discount on data just because they already have it. We shouldn't either.
Amen!
Great example in geophysics for exploration....they have huge datasets for purchase. Or you can go invest in the education that you'll need to do the work, figure out the learning curve on producing valid data, and yeah...
Like plumbers, electricians, lawyers, doctors(not medicare/ medicaid) hair dressers, dentists fashion designers, professional athletes, etc etc etc, we shouldn't have to be constrained by people's opinions on what they feel it's worth, it's supply, demand and yeah....screw the price control clawing away for their own selfish perspective whiners...
You can find most firms rates in the meeting minutes of almost any municipality. It can take some digging, but there is a ton of info out there. It's all publicly available in situations like that. Not a dangerous topic at all IMO.
in most of my working years we had Different Billing Rates for each market sector, client, agency.
history of how fast they pay is significant.
... the Pain In the Tush line item was included
You can find most firms rates in the meeting minutes of almost any municipality. It can take some digging, but there is a ton of info out there. It's all publicly available in situations like that. Not a dangerous topic at all IMO.
You won't find mine, I quit chasing municipal years ago.
It's not profitable.
There is only one public entity I do work with and my rates for them aren't going to tell anyone much.
Even if it's possible to get the audit info.
Another item. Some build all expenses into one or two hourly rates. This or that. Others have an hourly rate plus mileage plus cost for bars/caps, etc. plus a multiplier based on "overhead" to arrive at the final charges. Apples versus kumquats.
These numbers recently went up; I believe it's over 80 bucks Per Hour, in some counties...
Awesome chart Radar.
Are you seeing that work fading away?
Or are they still staking everything in Washington; it's a dying business here.
I've been working in WA 30 years and never once had a prevailing wage project. Too much red tape and headaches and un-wanted interactions. We work for the owner only on all our staking and seem to have a never ending backlog of projects to stake.
I've been working in WA 30 years and never once had a prevailing wage project. Too much red tape and headaches
Yes, some headaches. But also the opportunity to apply a 3x multiplier to those wage rates to get a billing rate. These big wage rates can equal big profits.
We still do a fair amount of prevailing wage staking work in WA. Yes, we have lots of administractive support for drawing up those contracts and cutting that red tape.
It can be pretty lucrative, but in my experience those projects are also most likely to result in bitter disputes over billing amounts, extras/restakes, and scope creep.
But that is the bread & butter for some on our BD team, so if they can get the work, we'll make it happen.
Personally I don't need or want that sort of work. I really hate that I have to document my every single move in anticipation of somebody going ballistic and refusing to pay what usually amounts to less than a tenth of a percent of total project costs.
