Just finished up a north Florida 400 acre swamp job, and confess to having used "RTK". Realizing RTK for boundary surveying is not approved by some on this board, couldn't help but have the following thoughts regarding the "inferiority" of my work.
The following story is not real. It's just an illustration of how I imagine some here would judge my work. If you don't appreciate satire then please do not read it:
Howdy,
Yes, I do command and get the high prices. But, don't doubt me, the precision of my work makes the client's investment (in me) a slam dunk...a no-brainer.
Let me tell you about a recent job:
As I met with adjoining landowners to go over my survey findings, I took them out into the swamp so they could see first hand how bad the other (read "cheap") surveyor had messed up. There, looking down into the dark water you could barely make out my shiny aluminum capped re-bar standing alongside the erroneously set plastic capped re-bar set by the other surveyor. "How bad off is it" drawled one of the adjoiners standing at the edge of the water. With pride, I shout, "It's zero point seventeen feet!" "How far is that?", he drawled. I hold two fingers up to show how much 0.17' is. "You brought us all out here just to show us that?", replied the old-timer, "I'm glad I didn't wade out in there with those snakes just to see that." The others chimed in with the same sentiment, all except my my client. It seems my client was the only one who appreciated precision work. Surely he knows, pay a cheap price, and this kind of slop is what you get. I've seen it before, GPS no doubt. Those sloppy surveyors all need to lose their licenses.
Obviously, none of the others appreciated precision work. Nope, no appreciation. They just didn't care that I tuned 4 sets of direct/reverse angles, many times repeating them in order to increase precision. They had no appreciation that I kept accurate temperature and pressure readings throughout the day; that I always set up an umberalla over my total station; that I regularly take my total station to the range for calibration; that I would take time each morning adjusting all the tribrachs (nope...don't use prism poles...not precise); that I had determined tolerances for all my equipment -- total station/prisms/tribrachs -- and that even the tiniest error had been adjusted through StarNet for the ultimate maximum precision.
As our meeting was ending one of the adjoiners strolled up to me and drawled, "How much you charge for that 40 acre survey?" My client nodded that it was ok for me to answer. So I explained that field time was 33.5 hours at $160 per hour, and office time was 9.5 hours at $95 per hour. "Shoot, mine only costed me $850, and I thought that was robbery", drawled the old-timer. I explained, "Yes, but your surveyor was only using RTK, and you saw how bad his survey was. "Don't make no difference", he replied, "When the swamp dries up I'm just gonna pull up them re-bars and set me a big 'ole cross-tie. Then who's a gonna care about your zero point whatever."
I like!
🙂
Dave
... you say that was satire?
I can measure better than you can . Na na na nana
that story had it all! even a pin cushion!
