We were in a courthouse yesterday and heard a bunch of words the surveying profession hates to hear. Employees in both the Register of Deeds Office and the Road and Bridge Office were badmouthing surveyors. And, with good reason.
A very significant project has been in some stage of startup for a couple of years. I have probably carried out 20 small rural surveys for the primary company involved. The area involved in that county alone blankets an area of probably 12 miles by 12 miles. I had noticed a large number of section corners and quarter corners had been dug up recently. This told me the company, or one of their subsidiaries, had hired some large firm to come in and locate/re-establish all of the corners for that entire area and tie them all together. No big deal to me. I'm overloaded as it is. If they had asked me to do it, I would have recommended a team project of a couple semi-local firms who work that area routinely. Just hoped that whoever this was would do the job correctly, without short cuts and easy assumptions.
The county employees were disgusted with the company from (reportedly) 150 miles away who thought the county employees should perform all of the research for them. Apparently they had no interest in going through all the record surveys, county road and bridge plans, railroad plans, etc. that the county has in their two vaults. The explanation given to the county employees was, "We don't have enough hours in the budget to sort through all of your information."
Now I fear there will be all sorts of bad surveying occurring in the name of profit. The time in the courthouse is minimal compared to the field work it will take to locate and re-establish corners, including center corners, across that large area. I predict that I will be rejecting quite a few goat stakes in the future. Chaos is almost guaranteed.
Holy Cow, post: 428534, member: 50 wrote: without short cuts and easy assumptions.
Dang. You have mosquitoes there too?
Holy Cow, post: 428534, member: 50 wrote: We were in a courthouse yesterday and heard a bunch of words the surveying profession hates to hear. Employees in both the Register of Deeds Office and the Road and Bridge Office were badmouthing surveyors. And, with good reason.
A very significant project has been in some stage of startup for a couple of years. I have probably carried out 20 small rural surveys for the primary company involved. The area involved in that county alone blankets an area of probably 12 miles by 12 miles. I had noticed a large number of section corners and quarter corners had been dug up recently. This told me the company, or one of their subsidiaries, had hired some large firm to come in and locate/re-establish all of the corners for that entire area and tie them all together. No big deal to me. I'm overloaded as it is. If they had asked me to do it, I would have recommended a team project of a couple semi-local firms who work that area routinely. Just hoped that whoever this was would do the job correctly, without short cuts and easy assumptions.
The county employees were disgusted with the company from (reportedly) 150 miles away who thought the county employees should perform all of the research for them. Apparently they had no interest in going through all the record surveys, county road and bridge plans, railroad plans, etc. that the county has in their two vaults. The explanation given to the county employees was, "We don't have enough hours in the budget to sort through all of your information."
Now I fear there will be all sorts of bad surveying occurring in the name of profit. The time in the courthouse is minimal compared to the field work it will take to locate and re-establish corners, including center corners, across that large area. I predict that I will be rejecting quite a few goat stakes in the future. Chaos is almost guaranteed.
To play devil's advocate a bit, isn't this either a scoping or contract enforcement issue?
If the scope is unclear, shame on the County and fix the scope with a contract amendment.
If the scope is clear, shame on the surveying firm and remedy the issue with non-payment/contact enforcement. Shame on the county if they're unwilling to do this.
Working for a public organization, most of these issues I see can be remedied by either clarifying the scope or actually enforcing the contract.
No, it is IN the scope of the contract, when you get your LS.
Whoever signs off on this garbage, should get:
Slow baked, in an oven, with the missing data.
N
I agree with [USER=10219]@FrozenNorth[/USER] . Not having it as part of the Scope gets lowballers, and people saying "I didn't bid for that". It has to be clear so that you don't have big price differentials. Arguing that a surveyor isn't fulfilling his contract based on "that is the adequate amount of research because he has a license" doesn't cut it. Also, qualified surveyors may have missed out on this job because they did include the adequate research in their estimate.
[USER=291]@Nate The Surveyor[/USER] I agree with your punishment, but I don't know that it ever gets carried out by the State Boards
Probably a "fixed fee" quote 🙂
foggyidea, post: 428567, member: 155 wrote: Probably a "fixed fee" quote 🙂
Dang it...you beat me to it!
What I really hate is that it gives people an excuse to badmouth all surveyors because some have their heads up their hineys. There may be as many as 625 corners involved. That is a huge amount of money no matter how you cut in this part of the universe. Many are still stones set a century to a century and a half ago that are waiting to be found. Others are metallic but so close to fence lines and other noisemakers that lazy workers jump at the conclusion that everything that makes a noise is junk, so ignore it and set something that matches the easy math. A very high percentage will be near the middle of a road bed and somewhere between a half inch and six feet deep. Highly accessible, especially with heavy duty equipment to make the recovery possible. The county heavy equipment operators will help with the recovery but the courthouse office personnel are not trained in the art of interpreting the records they maintain.
Bottom line is that if you can't do proper diligence with the research end of the job you need to stay out of the bidding pool.
