We did all the work for the village market.?ÿ We knew where the 6 foot bust was in the lot the bought for extra parking.?ÿ We had surveys for the sewer connection.?ÿ We were in good shape when we bid on the alta for the remodel for CVS.
One morning I noticed a crew from a Big firm 2 miles from locus at the airport.?ÿ A while later they were spotted a mile from locus.?ÿ Then in front of my office so I asked them what was going on.
They needed to establish an elevation for an alta at the village market and were running a trig level from the airport.
I walked off chuckling.?ÿ They had trig leveled past one NGS BM, were headed towards another that was about 1000 feet from locus and they probably did not make it to the next which was 750 feet beyond locus.
And who the heck trig levels??ÿ GPS would be closer.
To be blunt, most "local" surveyors are not very good at their jobs. Unfortunately the out of town guys may be local somewhere too, but there is a better chance they have traveled because they have a specific skill not available locally. Of course the cheap local guy is usually a better bet then the cheap out of town guy.
Gene's plat in the other thread is a great example. I wouldn't hesitate to bring him in to work on any MS over most locals.
There are a lot of bad boundary surveyors out there. Often it is necessary to import someone to get the job done well. Of course a big part of getting the job done well is gathering local knowledge and records.?ÿ
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Of course a big part of getting the job done well is gathering local knowledge and records.?ÿ
?ÿIF local talent is so lacking, then the chances that far away talent will be able to travel a long ways, if return trips are needed, let's see... Naw, what we lack in survey skills, we will cover with a beautiful font, and a perdy plat. Acad covers a multitude of sins. 🙂
N
It looks to me as though you might actually be agreeing with aliquot, without realizing it:
"What needs to happen in many cases is to budget consultation with a local surveyor to lock down the boundary concerns ... I have found too many bogus monuments set by those who did not budget enough to do the job correctly."
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I am absolutely certain we will not agree using any set of words.?ÿ Learn from the local guys who know what is what in that specific area.?ÿ Sometimes that information is available at no cost.?ÿ Making assumptions that all boundary surveys are the same is about as silly as assuming all wives are the same.
Ignoring the road records is a common mistake.?ÿ An example is the road that was staked along the section line yet the non-local surveyor ignored road information (and related physical evidence) to set a quarter corner three feet over the fence into the landowner's pasture about 15 feet south of where the stone is located.?ÿ So roughly 33 feet off in one direction and 15 feet in another because the Government field notes must be the gospel and they say a straight line and half distance.?ÿ The road was located less than 10 years following the Government survey and based on finding the original monuments.?ÿ ?ÿAnother case I have encountered is a bogus bar for a quarter corner some 70 feet one way and 50 the other from the real world.?ÿ Some people can not be helped.?ÿ Making their bosses rich is too important to waste time with doing it right.
I witnessed work by one major firm on a DOT contract covering about 150 miles in length.?ÿ Their excuse was frequently offered up to many reporting they simply had not put enough into their budget to do the job correctly.?ÿ They had spent half their budget in the first quarter of the project?ÿ They still got paid.?ÿ One thing they did was to attempt to lock down the four corners of a township then proportion in where everything should be.?ÿ That was their "go to" location unless they stumbled onto something different.?ÿ In at least one case, they were forced to accept a specific monument, but then failed to go back and move the next corner that they had set by going straight line and half distance from the wrong spot.?ÿ So, their concept of straightness no longer applied when it was going to take some extra time and money to make a correction.?ÿ Another bogus corner was nearly 80 feet from a long standing and accepted section corner in the center of an existing State Highway intersection.
In areas where fraudulent work was prevalent by the Government contractors one can find huge deviations from the reported information.?ÿ Huge, as in over 200 feet in a half mile.?ÿ Some field notes are junk and so are the surveys assuming they are absolutely believable.
Lot and block surveys in old platted subdivisions can be equally pesky until one figures out the peculiarities involved.?ÿ What was written on the plat may have little to do with the subsequent survey work over the decades.?ÿ Attempting to "fix" things may land you in court.?ÿ For good reason.
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You don't need to be local to know to look for road records when you have section line road. I don't know how to count the times that I've found a local corner set at road intersection when the DOT records, or a diligent search based on the original record led to the original corner.?ÿ
In one county a 1920's county surveyor remounted all the GLO stones. The grandson of that county surveyor still had all the records, in all those years not one single local surveyor ever looked into their existence.?ÿ
Of course a good local surveyor is a great thing, but they are hard to find. Those that come to this board,?ÿ are much more likely to be in the minority of good surveyors, local or not
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Of course a big part of getting the job done well is gathering local knowledge and records.?ÿ
?ÿIF local talent is so lacking, then the chances that far away talent will be able to travel a long ways, if return trips are needed, let's see... Naw, what we lack in survey skills, we will cover with a beautiful font, and a perdy plat. Acad covers a multitude of sins. 🙂
N
Sure, just like the locals there are bad out of towners, but the supply is bigger, so those who demand good work more often need someone from far away. Not every county has someone as capable as you.?ÿ
One time we did a job south of MT. Ida. We were quite proud of our hard work, and pretty plat. The title company said our survey was wrong, and so did our client.
We rode in the title company's personal 4wd to look at it. When the highway was paved, sometime back in the 50's or 60's, and he showed us where the highway and creek used to be. We started all over. Fixed our mistake, and finished our project. The creek had been re-located, so the Hwy. Dpmt. Didn't have to make 2 creek crossings. We were thankful that we were corrected, no matter who brought us information, that we had a blunder.
We should always be open to reality, when we miss it.
N
The two biggest things on any job is to determine what it is you do not know, then admit you don't know and go in search of help, wherever that help may exist.
Sometimes the client has key information.?ÿ Sometimes the adjoiners have key information.?ÿ Sometimes a certain county or city employee (or retiree) is a valuable aide.?ÿ Sometimes it's a call to a railroad or the DOT to find out what they have and what they don't have but just might know who does have it.?ÿ An example of that is the sad fact that our State DOT had tons and tons of old information that has now effectively been tossed due to budget constraints.?ÿ But, they know which counties already had that information tucked away in the county files somewhere, so when their own surveyor needs to research certain things he ends up at the county office looking at things that used to be available in his own office building.?ÿ As the DOT has gone digital, the days of them sending two or three copies of the final drawings to the county involved have ended.?ÿ The catch is that many very small, rural counties don't have the ability to print full size prints from the digital file provided.?ÿ However, they will gladly email you the entire file as a forward of the email they received with the file attached.
The key element is to ask questions and keep doing so until someone points you to the source.?ÿ Years ago a fellow surveyor was tackling a job in a county about 90 miles distant where he had not worked before.?ÿ He could not find their copy of the Government Field Notes.?ÿ He asked around in several of the county offices before someone asked, "Have you looked in that storage closet at the end of the hall on the second floor?"?ÿ They didn't really know what was in there but had a vague recollection of a surveyor spending several hours in there once several years earlier.?ÿ He was guided to the closet and opened the door to see a pile of a little bit of everything in a pile about two feet deep covering the entire floor of the closet.?ÿ Within one minute he had found the Field Notes book and the township drawings.?ÿ He also found quite a number of other helpful items after more searching, as I recall from his account.?ÿ He took all of those key items to the Register of Deeds and assisted her in finding a secure place to put them in her vault where most surveyors would first go to search.?ÿ He was astounded that no one had made the kind of search he did in order to do the job correctly.?ÿ Sure, he could have tracked down the Field Notes through the State, but it would have taken a trip to Topeka, as this was long before Al Gore invented the internet.?ÿ His suspicion was that a key local guy had made sure to aid in making this information relatively unavailable to others.?ÿ Fortunately, I do not know anyone operating in such a manner today in the area I frequent.?ÿ In fact, a phone call or email usually produces great assistance from other surveyors working in that same area routinely.
Searching for all the answers can sometimes give you more than you ever wanted to know.?ÿ I am familiar with a case where two sections that should have a certain quarter corner in common do not.?ÿ The south quarter corner of the section to the north is roughly 30 feet west of the north quarter corner of the section to the south.?ÿ Lots of work has been done in each section.?ÿ To maintain peace in each section you must use the quarter corner on which all work in that section is based.?ÿ Bizarre.?ÿ Don't remember how this was allowed to occur but these corners are both noted on State highway plans from some time prior to 1945 as they are on the approximate center line of the roadbed.
I spent years as the "out of town" surveyor.?ÿ I can only remember one or two local surveyors that got their bristles standing up just because we rolled into town.?ÿ Almost all of them we friendly and open and ready to share anything they knew.?ÿ As a matter of fact most of the jobs I landed were because they were ugly and the locals didn't want a thing to do with it.?ÿ Who wants to topo three miles of Uncle John's Creek during a wet March given a 14 day turnaround?
Now this was back in the '80s when not everybody had access to fancy EDMs and such.?ÿ You'd be surprised how happy you can make a backwoods county surveyor by giving him a crew for an afternoon to check out some of his "problem" areas that had absolutely nothing to do with my job.?ÿ A cold beer and some camaraderie goes a long ways.?ÿ And they always know the good fishin' holes.
State highway jobs were another story because there was always a stack of new R/W takes that had been condemned.?ÿ Always a good number of citizens that thought of the survey crew as interlopers.?ÿ And yes, I've been shot at.?ÿ I don't know if the reason I'm still here was because of poor aim or maybe it was just a warning volley. The local surveyors were usually sympathetic with us because they already knew who the jerks were.?ÿ
Like I use to tell all the locals, "Gimme a break.?ÿ This is just a job to me.?ÿ If you run me off someone else will be back to take my place."?ÿ
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The core issue is quality. No matter. We have had a "LDS" (Long Distance Surveyor) afflict us for a while. There are major discrepancies, no matter what.
I've done LDS surveys. But, I did not leave a wreck. I did 2x or 3x the work, to keep shame out of the equation.
I guess my main problem is with some who do low standard work, and wind up traveling, due to price alone, and it goes downhill from there.
N
Years ago we took on a Wal-Mart staking project as a sub to the general contractor.?ÿ Ended up onsite probably three days per week for nearly six months.?ÿ Made a nice chunk of change but nearly destroyed the base business in the process.?ÿ Had to run off too many projects as we had no time to give them when they needed it.?ÿ Some of those nice people have never called again despite having numerous projects.?ÿ Don't really need their business today but there were definitely times when it would have been nice to have.
Some days we were onsite for 10 hours and some days it was only two or three hours.?ÿ The two-hour round trip to the site is what made it danged hard to be productive on other projects at the same time.?ÿ The other negative was that when they called, we jumped.?ÿ That put a real crimp in scheduled meetings with other clients and subcontractors.
There is a need for LDS, as Nate labeled them.?ÿ Especially for staking projects and long term projects.?ÿ But, locking down the boundary side of things is where the local firm can truly be a blessing.?ÿ Information from Hub Tack in PLSSia is just the tip of the iceberg, for example.?ÿ Ignoring everything else is a crime.
It seems to me that complaint about LDS, as Nate calls them, is the shoddy done by some.?ÿ This shoddiness has no relationship to the distance they are from their base of operation, rather they are just shoddy.?ÿ I do quite a bit of LDS for my design clients, in fact I rarely do work in my town (1 job last year).?ÿ My clients do not hire me because my prices are lower that the locals, they hire me because we have established a good professional relationship.?ÿ They know that they could get someone local surveyor to provide a design topo for less but my work is a known commodity.?ÿ It costs a fair amount to get me and my gear from NW Oregon the Bakersfield, CA for 12 hours of work but they are willing to pay the price.?ÿ The key is to be thorough.?ÿ I've worked in plenty of places were the locals work seems to be less than thorough, R/W defined by a couple of monuments on your side of the street with no mention of the ones on the other side.
As for local knowledge, are we really doing our clients a services by keeping our resolutions secret??ÿ I'm blessed to have started my surveying career in a state with stringent recording requirements.?ÿ If I find new or unrecorded evidence then I explain it on my survey and then record it.?ÿ It does not do my client, let alone the public, any good sitting in a box in my office.
...As for local knowledge, are we really doing our clients a services by keeping our resolutions secret??ÿ I'm blessed to have started my surveying career in a state with stringent recording requirements.?ÿ If I find new or unrecorded evidence then I explain it on my survey and then record it.?ÿ It does not do my client, let alone the public, any good sitting in a box in my office.
That's a good attitude.?ÿ?ÿ
When I started my career we still had an elected office of "county surveyor" in Oklahoma.?ÿ The salary was 1$ and you were provided office space in the county courthouse and free access to all the county's records.?ÿ The money came from private surveys and sympathetic judges wanting a quick resolve to boundary disputes.
It was no secret that the county surveyor kept his corner records under lock and key.?ÿ It was truly up to him as to whether he would part with the info.?ÿ Quite a few officials charged for their crew to "reset" the corner without divulging any actual records.?ÿ This wasn't entirely true of all of them, but it was close to the norm.
I remember starting a new subdivision in an adjoining county.?ÿ My boss paid the graft to get the corners reset.?ÿ The county surveyor's crew took two days to set flagged 16d duplex nails for the corners...and some weren't even flush.?ÿ After a few days they mysteriously disappeared and we ran back out there and reset permanent pins with good references.?ÿ It was a racket.
The "Corner Perpetuation Act" was eventually signed into law in 1978, and not without a whole lot of screaming and yelling by about 77 (the number of counties in OK) old men that were really well politically connected. And this was only after the office of county surveyor was abolished.
We sadly still are not a "recording" state though.?ÿ :(?ÿ?ÿ
We (meaning most every surveyor in this corner of the state) do a heck of a job attempting to keep the information available. What becomes quite aggravating is when those who take advantage of that information do not make their own work product available or only do so a couple of years later.?ÿ A nearby county that now has about 60 windmills (industrial electrical generation devices over 600 feet tall) had a survey crew take the job seriously.?ÿ They spent a couple of weeks in the courthouse doing proper research beyond what Hub Tack had available.?ÿ I commended them for this.?ÿ Their field work was completed nearly three years ago.?ÿ The corner reports were finally filed a month or two ago.?ÿ So, all sorts of monuments were set but how and why has been lacking for three years.?ÿ Have encountered a few that are clearly in the wrong place but can agree with most we have found so far.?ÿ Hub Tack now has multiple locations for the same corner in their files.?ÿ Never ever simply ask for the latest filing.?ÿ DOT project surveys are even slower about finding it's way into the public files.?ÿ The DOT surveyors who are employed by DOT are pretty good but the contractors they use are notoriously slow.?ÿ Had one situation where a railroad overpass had been removed and replaced along a significant highway.?ÿ This also obliterated the quarter corner monument that was near one end of the bridge.?ÿ Nearly four years later we were attempting to do a simple survey for an adjacent land owner.?ÿ The County Engineer at the time called that contractor and demanded they get that corner, and the remainder of the ones they should have reset and documented four years earlier, reset pronto.?ÿ Magic happened.?ÿ Long overdue magic.
Although the requirement to file a Record of Survey occurred in the late 1800's in California, very few were filed in the SF Bay Area, until the mid 1980's.?ÿ However, if you ask the County Surveyor who the surveyors are that rely on unfiled records, you should get some names to talk too.?ÿ
I have a 400 SF storage area filled with records and maps from historic title companies (2) and surveyors(13) who practiced from the the early 1900's through early 1980's.?ÿ I've only been asked about historical survey records a few times by out of town surveyors in the 20 years I have had the records.?ÿ Out of the 20 surveyors practicing in the County, only a few surveyors have us research are records.?ÿ?ÿ
Also if you review the early filed subdivision maps in the area, they did not show finding any evidence for their boundary resolution, nor did they document what they established for their boundaries they were creating.?ÿ Normally, they did set redwood hubs that you can find evidence of occasionally.?ÿ However, if you research the unfiled records, you can usually find the evidentiary chain to determine where the original monuments were.?ÿ It can be very time consuming.
I usually charge to do research and am presently reviewing old historical records.?ÿ It happens that one of surveyors I recently obtained the records for was the original surveyor for a bunch of deed described lots from the 1960's.?ÿ I noticed that the old surveyor ran the centerline of one of the streets my client borders and checked in to a old property monument a few doors away.?ÿ A review of my records from 1998 showed that I located the monument the old surveyor checked in to as well as some other monuments that had recently been set at that time.?ÿ I was doing the field work for a pre82 civil engineer that also was the surveyor on the project to locate the perc holes.?ÿ Apparently the other surveyor who set monuments in 1998 filed a Record of Survey, but did not find the historical monuments.?ÿ I think the monuments he established are about 20 feet off.?ÿ
The property I am researching for has had a survey over it about 4 years ago and used the bad 1998 monuments to establish the boundary without finding other significant evidence.?ÿ This could get ugly.?ÿ?ÿ
What really surprises me is that I reference old unfiled historical surveys all of the time on my Record of Surveys and seldom do I ever get a call from surveyors to see the archives I have referenced.
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@bradl In the past 3 years I've done nearly 100 sites for the same chain, from the waters of the Ohio to the gulf coast. The same engineer has designed them all. Originally, they didn't hire me to do anything off from home. However, the engineer showed me the crap they were getting for surveys. Not only that, but they would get this crap weeks behind schedule. You cannot underestimate the value of the engineer getting the exact same product every single time, on time.
Did a project similar to that years ago. The client provided a 35-page document stating the exact appearance of the drawing. As long as it looked like every other drawing received they were happy. Apparently didn't care if the boundary was located correctly, however. There were something like 70 different firms across 40 states working on the same "tradename location" at the same time. I can see where running the drafting through a single source would be wonderful for the client.
The boundary portion should still be worked out in coordination with someone(s) who really know their stuff about that specific area in the general case. There are exceptions, obviously. There are crappy, unethical surveyors working everywhere, in both big firms and little ones alike.
Your 100 sites for the same chain reminded me of a fellow who retired and moved in close to my parents many years ago. He had spent many years spending every working day overseeing construction of several thousand restaurants that were effectively identical. Can't remember if it was KFC or Burger King or Taco Bell or.................... He knew absolutely everything there was to know about that one thing. That would indeed be a great asset to that company.
It's a bit of a regional thing, I've worked often far from home, but then I've been in areas where there really isn't a local surveyor. I have turned down a couple of jobs recently, one a lot survey in a town 8 hours from the office. I flatly refused to do it, another is a survey for a lot in a tiny hamlet 2.5 hours from my office, it also looked to be an interesting survey but the client didn't wish to pay the travel time and I can't blame them. Most of my far flung work is larger boundary, oil and gas, mapping, I stay out of small acreage surveys outside of my immediate area. However, for western surveyors the immediate area is a circle 100 miles in diameter,,,,,,, roughly.?ÿ
