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Certified Federal Surveyor (CFedS) Training Program
thebionicman replied 11 months, 3 weeks ago 13 Members · 30 Replies
@olemanriver I’m in Idaho for now. I’ll probably here until retirement, then heading for the Oregon coast. I love it there and my health does better..
@thebionicman not bad at all. I have enjoyed working and site seeing all over. We are planning a long trip a couple years out to take the girls on a trip. See the Grand Canyon and other places. Just make a big road trip I reckon. Right now we are in that running around like chickens with our heads cut off stage. We have been to some activities for school every night these last couple weeks. I have fields that should have been cut for hay but I reckon I will just mow them this year. As I study and the wife has her work stuff. Just to many pots in the fire this year. You have a good weekend and thank you for the info. Either way before or after i plan on going through the cfeds process if for nothing more than the education and knowledge. Right now i am so into preparing for exams and trying to learn all the quirks of civil 3d and TBC. Trying to learn to draft correctly and such. Jack of all trades and master of none is what I feel like right now. Juggling every day.
I hear a lot of folks say they won’t take the course or dropped the cert because it won’t or didn’t bring in money.
Acquiring a new hunting lease doesn’t put meat in the freezer unless you go out and look for the game.
@james-fleming Amen…
While there are some Indian Trust Lands in Colorado those lands are a 14-hour commute from and to my domicile. In my case, I took the course purely for its educational value not because I thought it would help in getting work.
So, have your fun and giggles about others not knowing how to make money with a CFedS certification. I enjoy learning just for the sake of learning. I definitely don’t need to add more alphabet soup after my name for my practice which is restricted to mineral surveys. I’m happy with just “PLS” and occasionally “PG” after my name.
@gene-kooper Gene, I have nothing but respect for you. My comments are not one-size fits all.
There are direct competitors in my local market who complain that ‘CFEDS never brought me any work’. I also hear it from folks in places where I travel to work on jobs I got based on being a CFedS.
When we bought our drone we had to sell the service. When we bought sonar we had to sell that too. Same goes for every tool and credential we have.
There is a big difference between making the decision not to pursue certain work and whining that it doesn’t fall in your lap.
@gene-kooper Heck, when I took it I was only licensed in Maryland. Not spending too much time on the rez here.
Getting ready to take the CEU’s and get it reinstated because it looks good on the company resume and we have a pretty big footprint out west. We just teamed with an engineering firm on a BIA facilities IDIQ where it would have come in handy.
Actually, thinking of sitting for a couple of PLSS state exams just to maybe use the knowledge from it once or twice. (Not that I actually “survey” got a living anymore – I’m more likely to be looking at P&L numbers than traverse closures)
Well, obviously I lost track of my humor bone earlier this morning. This redo of the CFedS website has not been a pleasant one for me. I have been patiently waiting for the website to be fully functional (and by that I mean for old CFedS like me, not current trainees) in the hope that they would add the old live courses back to the CE courses. I was hoping to take Steve Parrish’s course that covered a dependent resurvey of an entire township.
I’m a pragmatist so I don’t particularly enjoy the IBLA continuing education courses. Back when Ron Scherler was involved with CFedS, he would post a new IBLA case each month as supplemental materials. Why pay $50 or $100 bucks for a CE course I read and studied in the past. The only thing I’m paying for is the privilege of taking a quiz to demonstrate that I retained the material….SIGH!
Speaking of the live CE courses that disappeared in CFedS 2.0, one of them is the Advanced Mineral Surveys course that Steve Parrish and I presented. Wendell kindly offered to host the course materials for that course on SurveyorConnect (thanks again, Wendell). With permission from the co-presenter, I will be uploading and adding the quiz questions and answer sheet to those course materials. My reason is to share my 22 years of original research on the topic with others. I’m merely up-cycling the quiz questions to be the objectives of the training materials.
My apology Wendell for allowing the cantankerous old codger Kooper to post this morning (I’ll let folks cobble together the acronym).
My earlier crustiness towards you wasn’t the most tactful. I’m glad that you both see benefits to maintaining your CFedS, but needling other surveyors that they let their certification lapse because they supposedly do not know how to market their skills is a disservice to our professional peers.
I applaud all the surveyors that went through the CFedS training. Each of us spent money and time to get through the training. We all had to demonstrate sufficient competency to pass a comprehensive exam before being certified. I am pretty certain that everyone that completed the training took at least a few CE courses to keep their certification.
Again, I applaud everyone that took the training whether they decided to keep their certification active or not. The fact remains, they made the commitment to become a CFedS. I know several surveyors here in Colorado that would definitely benefit from taking the training.
My problems with CFedS isn’t with the training materials, it’s with the obvious lack of funds to effectively migrate the old web presence beyond what currently exists and to develop new CE courses. It is sad that it almost always boils down to money. I asked one of the CFedS trainers if the BLM would consider developing comparable training for mineral surveys. His immediate response was, “please write me a check for $5 million and we’ll develop the training modules.” The active roster only lists 19 US Mineral Surveyors.
@gene-kooper Gene, again, it wasn’t my intention to pick on people that make that choice. My comments were directed at those who complain about it not bringing work, when we work in the same market. I choose not to pursue certain types of work, but I do not disparage related programs as deficient when projects don’t fall out of the sky for me.
I am unhappy with some of the CFedS changes myself, but it has served me very well. It tied a lot of my background together and brought us some very good work. It will do that for those who decide to work for it.
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