@holy-cow And it happens.?ÿ I value my office, its location, my equipment, I work with a partner, am insured, have close to 40 years of records and a solid client base.?ÿ One can only imagine that Brand X doesn't share these same values and I expect that they won't to be in business very long because they "bid" jobs based on time and materials rather on value to the customer.
We charge $300 / hour for a survey crew with a 4 hour minimum per site visit.?ÿ?ÿ
Often the people that are lowballing, are not doing the work necessary to defend their boundary locations in this area.?ÿ I'm glad that I do not have to compete with them, but I do frequently find their boundaries way off the original corners.?ÿ?ÿ
Value pricing has a lot to be said for it, but it can cause problems in customer relations. That's what Big Pharma and Big Health Care does. You want to stay alive? How much $$ do you have??ÿ How much is your life worth to you? Big Data (Google) helps business figure how much they can charge. I expect they are responsible for airline ticket price craziness.?ÿ Soon I expect them to offer me a service where I tell them who a potential customer is and they tell me the customer's ability to pay and how anxious they are to get the survey and so what I can charge.?ÿ Give them a percentage or go broke.?ÿ
?ÿI try to keep a balance among different methods.?ÿ It aint easy.?ÿ
Every profession has some lowballers, but I think we all know that we have more systemic problems.
The increasing productivity/wage gap has been well documented since the 80s. I've never been able to find any hard data on surveyors alone, but it stands to reason that our productivity outpaced that of the overall average. The amount of education, knowledge, and training required to work with complex technology AND apply the professional analysis needed to properly utilize it have increased, not decreased, as well.
Employees cost more than gear. Straight economics says that businesses should have responded by investing in tech, and substantially increasing pay (and training) for a more skilled workforce that could easily be reduced by 30-40%, while increasing prices to account for both the decline in number of licenses over the last several decades, and the value added by the tech. Win-win for both employees and employers.
But an awful lot of firms never changed their business model and still employ a license, an LSIT, an office tech or two, and 2-3 field techs for a project, all of whom can only do a single task or two. More people, more handoffs, more time spent by everyone getting up to speed, more cost, more opportunities to screw it up. (They also resisted the tech and the additional data/products it could deliver.)
That same project could easily be handled by a license plus a technician from start to finish, with the technician being mentored every step of the way. Add a third member to train them up or to help out on a big job...
@rover83?ÿ Seems like a number of guys get frustrated by stalling out at the field crew level or office tech level and then go out and open their own shop.?ÿ And then by the time they get good at it it's time to retire.
I've performed surveys that I would almost be willing to pay to work on because of the thrill of searching for and finding buried treasure.?ÿ ?ÿ
The high number of lowballers is partly a reflection of how enjoyable surveying is compared to many other jobs.
I do about 200-300 "mom & pop" estimates a year covering everything from finding corners previously set, boundary surveys, and FEMA work. I find almost everyone shops but we will not go below the bottom line of what it takes to get the work done in a professional manner. I've had potential clients tell me " Surveyor XXX said it should only cost $300 or so" and I ask what surveyor XXX will do for that money to make sure we are discussing the same scope of work, and if we are,?ÿ tell them to use that surveyor. I've had instances where Surveyor XXX has caused more problems for that client and then called me to "fix it" and I refer them back to their choice. If they do need their project "fixed" they pay the original amount I quoted them. "Can't you just come off of Surveyor XXX work"? Absolutely NOT!
I had a discussion a number of years ago with a friend who was a cost estimator for a construction company and he wanted to know why we never responded to his request for construction staking on projects. I told him it takes time to do those estimates and their company would always use Surveyor YYY no matter who gave them a quote because they always look at the bottom line, not the services provided. He told me that wasn't true, so I told him to save those quotes and on the next project, see how Surveyor YYYs end result for the staking compared to another surveyor. It turned out their choice would charge restaking by the stake, not by the hour. Seems fair to me, but their price was $150 per stake. By the time the project was done, the cost for choosing Surveyor YYY was more than the other quotes. Something to think about.?ÿ
The high number of lowballers is partly a reflection of how enjoyable surveying is compared to many other jobs.
While I'll agree that some projects are very enjoyable and rewarding, there's equal enjoyment in getting paid what the job is worth, or more
I think one of the biggest business mistakes a surveyor can make is underestimating the value of their data and experience. One of my mentors was a very savvy businessman as well as surveyor and while setting control points in a subdivision he would tell me to bury those traverse points deep so they'd still be around in another decade or two. Asking him why that was so important to him he simply said the next time he has a job in the area he could use those traverse points to do additional work in the area, and he already had the control in the area dialed in. Was he going to give that next client a break? Oh heck no. That, he explained, is where his business made a decent profit. You can believe me, I took that lesson to heart and over the years, has evolved into an asset of most considerable value.
I think that the problem, and the point of the original poster, is that there seem to be a lot of surveyors out there who are underestimating the value of what we do, and are constantly keeping the cost down, whether we understand the true value or not.
It's a never-ending battle to convince crews to go the extra mile to set control points where they will be protected, take pictures, and sketch swing ties...it's their work that is easier the next time around...
And that's the strange thing - that those are the jobs where surveyors tend to make a decent profit. We should be making a good profit by default, and an excellent profit when we already have control or monumentation locked down in the project area.
The value of a survey doesn't drop when we have control in, and knowledge of, the area. If anything that makes our services more valuable.
@jph I'm not disagreeing. I will only suggest that the problem the OP faces isn't new and isn't going away. That means that as a business model, we shouldn't be trying to compete toe to toe with competition willing to give away their services. That is a losing proposition. In my experience the type of clients one will attract by being the cheapest surveyor on the block, are often the type of clients that you would wish on your competition so they are bogged down and losing money and are in no position to compete with you for the real money.
I try not to lowball myself.?ÿ
The value of a survey doesn't drop when we have control in, and knowledge of, the area. If anything that makes our services more valuable.
So true.?ÿ Especially when someone else out-bids (low-balls), and then calls you up to ask if you've done anything in the area, and can you send them your control, CAD, or anything else that helps them break even on it
