Please help me to budget

I'll don my flame retartant suit as well...

Have you thought about sub-contracting another firm to do it? You will be the prime consultant. You get an estimate and proposal from another firm. Add a markup to their number, plus money for your review and administration time.

Maybe, if you're busy enough with other (repeat) clients, you don't want to do the work, you just want to make the money.

Yes please. But are we talking $100k, $200k, or $2M?

As always, the devil's in the details. Based only on your description above, any guess might not even hit the right order of magnitude. If you're going to keep the work, then sorting through the details is what keeps you in business. But if you're going to sub it--let your sub get the headache!

Pitch high. I need help with this too. I am working on a 150 acre site that is 80% farmland with low ground cover. It has about 5000 feet of road frontage, 2 lane roads, but there is a High School and Junior High across the road, so moderate traffic. No topo. It is of a lease area which means I dont have to retrace all of the boundaries, which is about 400 acres. It has about 4000' of sewer easement with 2 lines running parallel, lot of manholes to look for. Any way I am curious if I left money on the table too. I have one full time field man. I think it will end up being about 4 weeks of field time for us to do it, plus about the same for me in the office. I originally looked at pricing the entire 400 and I was thinking 100K. The price I gave for the 150ac lease area was 22K. I too am putting on the fire suit. I get told that I am way too high a bunch and I am thinking man I should charge more.

I would crapmybritches if someone contacted me for either of those projects. I would have to go the route of being the prime and subbing out about 90 percent of the field work and drafting if a high percentage of the total area is full of buildings, utilities, roads, etc. Now, if there were a single building and a few roads with a small number of utilities, no problemo, amigo. Most of the ALTA projects I've ever done were jampacked with a kazillion shots per acre.

There's not a single building on mine, farmland and woods. About 15 exceptions and real old deeds.

I am chomping at the bits for a real project, it has been several years since I've had a project that took more than one week to survey. Most are no more than 2days.

The last one was an ALTA on 173 acres that had a fish processing facility with fish and detention ponds and the other half was a pipe yard all to be done on 2ft contours.

:gammon:

Cost of surveys are going up.

No one else will guess.... I'll give it a shot. Not knowing anything more than size, and the sites old use. The big questions is how busy or % of developed is it. I usually break things into parts:

2 Man field crew time (10 acres per week) TOTAL 40 weeks
Drafting (1/2 of the field time) TOTAL 20 weeks
Boundary Calcs / Resolution (you know better than I could guess)
Title report & Document review (20% of Drafting Time) 4 Weeks
Administrative TOTAL 1 week

Defiantly $250k. Probably $300k. Maybe $350k. That is approaching it like I had the staff to do it. It could get done quicker than the total of the weeks, if you had multiple crews and drafters, but that is all assuming that the staff is in place. Add another percent to get enough staff to do it.

Need to know more about Table A. So no item 5 (contours). How about 8 (features)?

I suggest you consider photogrammetry to do the interior of a property that large.

Here is what I'd do to estimate that. I'd get Google Earth up and layout a grid of control that I'd need to topo the whole thing. Control points not more than 500 feet apart, likely less to wiggle between buildings. Allow an hour per point in the field to set them out and run the traverse. Allow a half hour per to adjust the control and report. Topography - Allow 2-4 hours field per point to collect topo data. Adjust depending on density. Allow 1 hour in the office for each hour in the field. Boundary. Same thing. Layout the traverse, allow an hour field, 1/2 hr office. Count corners and allow maybe an hour each for search and tie. Extra time for meetings, addressing issues.

400 acres with a shot on average every 50 feet would be about 7000 shots of topo. At 500 points per day thats 14 days. Does that agree with method 1?

We don't know too much about the density but I think that you are way high. I'm guessing something between $50k & $100k. I'd have a 1 to 1 ratio of field to office time.

Rule of thumb order of magnitude boundary $1 per perimeter foot.

Last 'big' one I did was about 12 years ago, 100 acres of industrial site, probably 15% heavy industry (chemical plant) and I charged $45K for it.....

Inflation and size/complexity makes this one a $250K job easily.

Make yourself not get overwhelmed, just focus on each days work. The real struggle will be the title report!

Dtp

Norman Oklahoma, post: 340567, member: 9981 wrote: Rule of thumb order of magnitude boundary $1 per perimeter foot.

Would photo meet the requirements of 0.07 +/- 50 ppm (or whatever it is)?

From the 2011 ALTA Standard ...

[INDENT=1]v. The maximum allowable Relative Positional Precision for an ALTA/ACSM Land Title Survey is 2 cm (0.07 feet) plus 50 parts per million (based on the direct distance between the two corners being tested). [hl]It is recognized that in certain circumstances, the size or configuration of the surveyed property, or the relief, vegetation or improvements on the surveyed property will result in survey measurements for which the maximum allowable Relative Positional Precision may be exceeded. [/hl]If the maximum allowable Relative Positional Precision is exceeded, t[hl][/hl]he surveyor shall note the reason as explained in Section 6.B.ix below.[/INDENT]
[INDENT=1] [/INDENT]
[INDENT=1] [/INDENT]

J. T. Strickland, post: 340595, member: 246 wrote: Would photo meet the requirements of 0.07 +/- 50 ppm (or whatever it is)?

Measurement Standards - The following measurement standards address Relative Positional Precision for the monuments or witnesses marking the corners of the surveyed property....The maximum allowable Relative Positional Precision for an ALTA/ACSM Land Title Survey is 2 cm (0.07 feet) plus 50 parts per million (based on the direct distance between the two corners being tested).

I believe anyone suggesting photogrammetry is suggesting it for interior parcel improvements

You are correct, sir. If I used photogrammetry for the interior improvements I would tie the building corners nearest the property lines, and all improvements 5' either side of the boundaries, in the conventional manner.

What, you don't use aerial photos to identify and locate monuments? Amateur...:snarky:

Aerial for the improvements, GIS for the boundary...that's how I roll 😀