TXSurveyor, post: 377517, member: 6719 wrote: I would consider doctors to be professionals, do you? I do. Many operate under a company name with many offices such as Regional Dermatology Associates.
You may not realize it, but typically those are doctors who have sold their practices to a corporate entity. They have become cogs in a billing machine with its own needs to generate procedures and referrals. How professional is that?
TXSurveyor, post: 377521, member: 6719 wrote: I haven't met too many surveyors that make good business men, hence the takeover of engineering companies with internal survey departments between the 70's and 90's.
Sorry, but that wasn't what drove the boom in engineering firms offering surveying. It was large-scale land subdivision, land development, and associated infrastructure projects, all of which are mainly engineering projects. I would bet that four or five counties in Texas account for most of that phenomenon as the boom and bust cycles of urban growth drove the rise of big box engineering firms and their subsequent splintering into five or more spin-off versions under different names as the business contracted with the construction cycle.
Mark Mayer, post: 377518, member: 424 wrote: So, in other words, it's not the name that is unprofessional but rather the business model and marketing approach that drives the selection of the name.
I'd agree that the flakey firm names are symptomatic of an unprofessional business model, but would not limit them to the A, AA, and AAA prefix names.
I think I can sum up what Kent has been trying to tell us all. Surveying is a profession, in a pure sense only offered to the general public through an agreement with a licensed practitioner. To make sure the general public isn't fooled into hiring a firm that has a diverse pool of multiple employees, one must stick with sole practitioners that operate only by their name.
Think of the damage that could be done to the general public when a survey actually has been worked on by more than one person. I mean the horror of billing actually being prepared and accounted by someone hired to do only that task; or the errors that can occur if there was merely a receptionist to answer the phone and field messages. Or worse yet, a supervised cad tech preparing drawings to be checked or approved... It makes one sick to think all of these non-professional people fooling the public when they should be selling butterflied shrimp at Popeye's.
Don't you all understand? Only a one-trick-pony lone practitioner can properly drag a job out over a period of weeks when it could be completed by a team in a shorter period. Unlicensed individuals should be banned from working under the supervision of a so-called professional! This is what creates these "quicky-dickey" survey outfits that hide behind names other than that of the principal surveyor. The public NEEDS to be charged the top billing rate for a true professional to run copies, trot down to Office Depot for paper clips and drop off the mail at FedEx. The public is being cheated by sub-standard firms (obvious by their names) that offer services that might get something done quicker...like before next year.
Wake up, America. The only way to get a "real & properly prepared" survey is to hire the sole practitioner that goes to the field "when he feels like it." And there are a number of sub-standard firms that will try and fool you into thinking they could match the quality of one old man in a straw hat, a Garmin and some worn and aged static receivers strapped to a burro...
Any organization with employees that actually operates as a business is obviously but a masked and veiled side-show greedy for the client's money and nothing else. A true survey can only be had from a sole practitioner that has no business sense whatsoever. Any attempt at operating as a business is a sure sign of a poor survey, particularly if the business doesn't bear the name of the individual that answers the phone...
comprendo?
I wanna hear the phone call when RD Mercer calls Kent McMiilan, Land Surveyor... "well how bigga boy are ya?"
paden cash, post: 377547, member: 20 wrote: Surveying is a profession, in a pure sense only offered to the general public through an agreement with a licensed practitioner. To make sure the general public isn't fooled into hiring a firm that has a diverse pool of multiple employees, one must stick with sole practitioners that operate only by their name.
Of course I think you're looking in the wrong end of the telescope, because several folks with storefront corporate-sounding names have explicitly stated that the reason they do so is so that they can SELL their survey plantation to someone else and walk away from it all without having their name attached to it. Hey, weren't you in fact one of those guys, too?
So, a surveyor is responsible for the endless flow of survey widgets that issue from his assembly line operation run by the best MBAs that money can buy, but doesn't want to actually have his or her name associated with it any more than absolutely necessary? The fantasy that is being created is that it is the organization of temps and technicians that are what really matters, not the actual professional at the steering wheel.
The plague of fakey firm names is diagnostic of the underlying conditions which include :
- plausible deniability behind an organizational facade,
- desire to mislead the public, and
- reification of professional practice outside the actual scope of what a professional does, i.e. creating a sort of survey factory environment that becomes a substitute for professional involvement.
Kent McMillan, post: 377657, member: 3 wrote: ...The fantasy that is being created is that it is the organization of temps and technicians that are what really matters, not the actual professional at the steering wheel...
I was agreeing with you. And yes your new statement above pretty much follows along those lines. And it's a travesty. Professional surveyors hiring staff to aid in the completion of a survey is something the Texas board should at least look into, if not abolish all together.
That way a firm like AECCOM TECHNICAL SERVICES, INC. would be required to drop their "plausibly deniable" name and be renamed "JILL JONES, MARIBEL CHAVEZ, SYLVIA LAMB, GABE JOHNSON and ELVIA CARDINAL RIGHT OF WAY SERVICES"...or better yet require a limit of only one surveyor per registered firm with absolutely no staff. That way the State of Texas Department of Transportation would rest assured that contract consultants would not be providing sub-standard quicky-dicky surveys. And large urban projects requiring R/W could take enough time to complete that the automobile and highways might be gone by then...or TxDOT could hire every surveyor within the state to work on the project.
I totally agree with you and your grand plan to leave surveying projects up to survey firms that have only one employee..with no 'fake' names allowed. It would be the perfect way to make sure that large infrastructure/ transportation/ municipal improvement projects got the professional oversight that is required. That way miles and miles of projects could take years and years to complete, but would be completely devoid of any get-rich-quick non-professional's touch and poison. Every survey point set within the state would actual bear the dimple (and more importantly, the DNA) of the actual surveyor.
Maybe contracts could contain clauses that allow each practitioner to pass his contracts on to an heir or assign..oh no, wait. That would require someone passing ownership of a firm on to someone else...and then the name of the firm would NOT include the principal's name....and therefor be in violation of what will most assuredly be known as the "McMillan Act".
Your wisdom could calm the rough seas of our battered industry and be a light visible to all who transgress against true professionals.
paden cash, post: 377679, member: 20 wrote: That way a firm like AECCOM TECHNICAL SERVICES, INC. would be required to drop their "plausibly deniable" name and be renamed "JILL JONES, MARIBEL CHAVEZ, SYLVIA LAMB, GABE JOHNSON and ELVIA CARDINAL RIGHT OF WAY SERVICES"...or better yet require a limit of only one surveyor per registered firm with absolutely no staff.
No, you've convinced me. Professional services should only be offered under pseudonyms to protect the public from the idea that humans are somehow responsible for the quality of the work, not robots.
In fact, I see no reason why a firm that has the audacity to mention the actual name of the responsible professional should not be required to choose a firm name that could be used to sell oil changes or vinyl siding when business is slow. It should be obvious that the more fingerprints on a survey product the better. So guidelines for MINIMUM firm sizes should probably be adopted and stringently enforced. How could a firm with fewer than 100 warm bodies milling around at company parties possibly ever get anything right?
I mean, the larger firms have a natural advantage. Given their turnover rates among staff, the odds are good that there will be at a minimum three different project "managers" involved - one after the other, of course - in making sure that stuff, uh, happens and, uh, deliverables go out the door. The built-in efficiency is that the replacements will be able to rely upon whatever was done before they started filling out time sheets on the job being absolutely correct and reliable since it was done by lots of people. As we all should know, if you want something done efficiently, plan to hold committee meetings first.
The best thing about the large firms is that when ultimately they break up, the folks who filled out time sheets there will be able to start their own large firms knowing that the fatal mistake their former employer made was (a) not being large enough and (b) not having a sufficiently abstract name and logo that anyone would want to just throw money at the firm thinking they might win an oil change or a complimentary pool cleaning.
To take the idea one step further, probably special licenses should be issued in the name of the firm and a nomme de plume and seal corresponding with the firm name should be required to be the only signature and seal on a map so that members of the public know that what they are looking at is not a product of any actual person who might have made a mistake, but rather an organization of more than 100 gainfully employed people. This would assure the public that while the product of each individual is of course highly imperfect, the sum of their efforts will be perfection itself since the errors will cancel out by the law of space shuttle booster rocket seal design.
I agree with Kent on this one also.There "AAA ACME or ABLE" names sound more like a bail bondsman operation. I have found that clients that get in contact with you through the internet or reddy freddy phone book are not first class clients.
Usually have to take them to small claims court.
John Harmon
((In this post, it's very hard to tell who's (maybe everyone) off their meds or have not taken completely to some new dosage))
Kent McMillan, post: 377683, member: 3 wrote: To take the idea one step further, probably special licenses should be issued in the name of the firm and a nomme de plume and seal corresponding with the firm name should be required to be the only signature and seal on a map so that members of the public know that what they are looking at is not a product of any actual person who might have made a mistake, but rather an organization of more than 100 gainfully employed people. This would assure the public that while the product of each individual is of course highly imperfect, the sum of their efforts will be perfection itself since the errors will cancel out by the law of space shuttle booster rocket seal design.
If we make take our tongues out of our cheeks for a moment...
What you described above actually happened not long ago. A surveyor was asked to "fix" an as-built survey that was reported upon said survey that it was an 'ALTA' survey. The client was wishing the survey to also be utilized as a design base for some improvements, and their agreement with the original surveying company plainly stated these needs. The survey fell woefully short of even being a proper survey, let alone having enough data to even begin planning any improvements upon the site.
The second surveyor took on the project. There were a few questions concerning the prep and location of the actual boundary and the second surveyor called the first surveyor that had actually signed the poorly prepared survey to inquire about these specifics. The first surveyor was a fairly recent registrant. When asked about the boundary, she replied that "she had no idea about the legal description and she had never actually been to the site". She went on to admit she only "signed" the survey, prepared by staff, that was put in front of her. I actually saw the survey and it was apparent she didn't even check the spelling.
While the board was notified about this, nothing came of it. I guess it was deemed there is more important business which to attend.
Oh, and BTW, the name of the outfit was ONE person's name...deceased since 2002.
paden cash, post: 377694, member: 20 wrote: While the board was notified about this, nothing came of it. I guess it was deemed there is more important business which to attend.
Oh, and BTW, the name of the outfit was ONE person's name...deceased since 2002.
So, the principal who signed the work had bought a firm that someone else had wired together and hadn't seen fit to add his or her name to the letterhead? Diagnostic, I'd think.
But you said "new registrant", right? That suggests that a principal of the firm either knew enough about its modus operandi not to apply his or her own signature and seal to work or wasn't licensed at all. Doubly diagnostic.
The general principle that those features of a professional firm that tend to conceal what it really consists of should be avoided would apply to the case you described.
Note that had the firm name been FOUNTAINHEAD SURVEYING or some other storefront name, the idea that the registrant who signed the maps wasn't a principal of the firm (as I assume was the case) would have been hidden under one more layer of scrim.
Nate The Surveyor, post: 377371, member: 291 wrote: Maybe we could discuss what kind of name fits McMillimeter, and Associates the best?
That's easy Nate.
Fine Red Kent Hair Deed Staking
It passes the top 3 tests of KentÛªs "50 Essential Criteria for Naming a Survey Business That I WonÛªt Look Down My Nose At And Go "Harrumph" At"
1. It does not state a ÛÏfalse claim or work to leave a false impression in the minds of members of the publicÛ. Kent has espoused his superiority of surveying within a RKH for 20 years on the world wide web.
2. It essentially represents Û?Ûthe firm's professional credentials or qualificationsÛ ÛÒ Staking deeds without being bothered by the location of annoying ÛÏpastureÛ or ÛÏconvenienceÛ fences or monuments set by lesser surveyors.
3. His name is in it. Even Texans, on the third or fourth pass, should be able to figure out that someone named ÛÏKentÛ will answer the phone.
Mike Berry, post: 377705, member: 123 wrote: That's easy Nate.
Fine Red Kent Hair Deed Staking
It passes the top 3 tests of KentÛªs "50 Essential Criteria for Naming a Survey Business That I WonÛªt Look Down My Nose At And Go "Harrumph" At"
1. It does not state a ÛÏfalse claim or work to leave a false impression in the minds of members of the publicÛ. Kent has espoused his superiority of surveying within a RKH for 20 years on the world wide web.
2. It essentially represents Û?Ûthe firm's professional credentials or qualificationsÛ ÛÒ Staking deeds without being bothered by the location of annoying ÛÏpastureÛ or ÛÏconvenienceÛ fences or monuments set by lesser surveyors.
3. His name is in it. Even Texans, on the third or fourth pass, should be able to figure out that someone named ÛÏKentÛ will answer the phone.
you win.
Mike Berry, post: 377705, member: 123 wrote:
Fine Red Kent Hair Deed Staking
It passes the top 3 tests of KentÛªs "50 Essential Criteria for Naming a Survey Business That I WonÛªt Look Down My Nose At And Go "Harrumph" At"
Sorry, but you're too late. Paden has convinced me that the more people a firm employs, the more professional the product, and that it gets better yet if the firm name is one that isn't even specifically associated with land surveying but just reminds potential victims clients of something they like. That way, the whole operation can be sold off lock stock and barrel without even raising an eyebrow.
The DOT model is a proven one where the quality goes through the roof as a function of the total number of hours devoted to meetings, "team building" exercises, and memos. It simply is not feasible to expect that a small staff will be able to attend as many meetings or write as many memos as are necessary to raise quality though the roof.
Kent McMillan, post: 377538, member: 3 wrote: You may not realize it, but typically those are doctors who have sold their practices to a corporate entity. They have become cogs in a billing machine with its own needs to generate procedures and referrals. How professional is that?
And how Kent McMillian and Assoc ANY different?
Rankin_File, post: 377712, member: 101 wrote: And how Kent McMillian and Assoc ANY different?
How is my surveying practice different than that of a doctor who has sold his medical practice to a medical corporation? Well, I can guarantee that I won't be referring you for imaging at a laboratory owned by the same medical corporation or for surgery at a hospital owned by same. I can also guarantee that I won't be sending you to an out-of-network associate of the same corporation.
No, if I think you don't need a hernia operation, I won't advise you to have one.
It is not the name of the firm. It is the Surveyor Certifying the Survey. Some small firms do shoddy work and some large firms do shoddy work. If you let the person that signs your check make you do inferior work, you are the equivalent of the person on the street corner selling themselves. When an organization becomes a Business Centered Business, in today's world, rarely does the product not get compromised. It is up to the Surveyor to deliver Professional Services. I have no respect for gutless surveyors that sign whatever is put in front of them. It is not your name that make the survey; it is the survey that makes the name. Shame on the rubber stamp. The size of the organization does not assure the quality of the product.
lmbrls, post: 377738, member: 6823 wrote: When an organization becomes a Business Centered Business, in today's world, rarely does the product not get compromised.
Haven't we established already, though, that the business-centered businesses tend to have names that aren't associated with those of the principal(s) for business-centered reasons?
