Most of my work is urban/suburban and I can give a pretty accurate estimate within about 10 minutes.?ÿ Is it subdivided, do you need topo, do you need utility locates, is there future development planned, is it purely transactional??ÿ Answer the biggies straight out of the gate and I'm pretty confident about putting a number to it.?ÿ For large complicated projects that require a real time investment to cost out, the Client has come to me because of?ÿ a referral or we already have a relationship which means my foot is already way past the door and I have to screw something up to not get the work.?ÿ For those I put the research effort in as required and build the proposal prep time into the fee.?ÿ
The problem is that without doing a few hours if research the price range can be huge. Like $1,000 to $50,000 huge.
Five weeks? I call that quick turnaround.
Oh give me a break. Ms. Betty calls and needs to know what it's gonna cost to survey her 20 acres, you're not gonna have a $49,000 spread.
You can do some very basic research and within 30 minutes know pretty close to what your gonna be faced with. You can give her a range of say $5000 to $7500 and if she wants a proper written proposal then you can prepare one but to infer that you're gonna have a difference of $49k unless you spend hours of research time is BS and you know it.
I have received a ton of calls over the decades from people who assume there is one number and one number only. ?ÿThe standard question being, "How much does a survey cost?" while providing absolutely no information of any kind. ?ÿMy standard answer to them is, "Some have been a few hundred dollars while others have been many thousands of dollars. ?ÿNow, tell me everything I need to know about your property and plans so we can narrow that figure down to an appropriate range for your job."
"How much does it cost to repair a car?"
Got a call last week.?ÿ Guy needed a price on a 7 acre parcel about 20 miles from me he was looking at buying (first red flag).?ÿ Said it was fenced two sides open field other two sides.?ÿ I started down the I need to do some research.?ÿ He said you're the surveyor you should know the price.?ÿ Kept pushing so finally I gave him a minimum and it could double from there but I need to do some research before I could fix a price.?ÿ He told me I was not his guy, end of conversation. Fine with me I don't need these sort of clients.?ÿ On a hunch I called another surveyor I work with a lot.?ÿ Yeah, got the same call,?ÿ Guy got pushy with him so he quoted a number twice what I did.?ÿ He wasn't the guy either.
What this guy is going to get and deserves is a deed stake out, not a boundary survey.?ÿ Take the description, decided about where it starts and lay down the math, pay fixed dollars (cheap).?ÿ Start the fight with the neighbors! Surveyor walks away.
sound like someone paying for dinner and you providing after dinner entertainment ???
I get frequent calls from idiots who just want a price and refuse to even give me the address to the property, size, county. I usually tell them to go away.
Had a call like that years ago and the caller got really pushy----------then he started to chuckle. ?ÿIt was our old buddy, Jim Petty, from Arkiesaw yanking my chain.
I took his reply as hyperbole. Some jobs do have an unknown to them. The thing is... Those are the jobs outside of our geographic area of knowledge or outside of our normal practical knowledge. IE taking a large job three hours from the office or taking a 200 acre boundary survey when you're a construction layout surveyor.
The place where I work does site walks for all surveys; I'm a big fan of that.