Engineers preparing subdivision plats

[jules-j]

Sign a new contract with the engineer for a new scope of work.

[flyin-solo]

1. Your client is naive, per your first sentence. If he is somebody with the potential (and potential desire) to become a repeat, long-term client, now would be the perfect time to share your experience, expertise, and wisdom in terms of how the process works and what you can or can’t personally do to help him with specific issues and processes. It certainly sounds- from this very cursory explanation- that the engineer isn’t stepping up to do so. But, you are also admittedly “guessing” as to the intent and expectations of the engineer. So calling him/her straight away wouldn’t be a bad idea.

2. “How common is that?” Enough- to the extent it was a main motivating force for me to sell my share and get out of the company I spent three years building (and might be busier today than anyone in that “how busy are you?” thread). I would have no problem reviewing and stamping a plat drafted by engineers. Hell, that’d save me the headache. But only if it was RIGHT. Which I can say from a fairly extensive amount of experience: has never once happened. At least for me.

[paul-in-pa]

Typical request RPLS. As an engineer I have prepared many a subdivision. Preferred way is to have the surveyor prepare the outbounds survey and an existing conditions topo map that goes into the design set with only the surveyor’s title block and never is usually updated until after approval. The surveyor and/or engineer then prepares the Filed Map which gets signed by both. I have even seen that exact process in an Engineering/Surveying firm as it separates duties. BTW it is important that the engineer reference the survey, surveyor and date on every sheet on which he uses survey information.

I have even worked on projects where surveyor A signs the oubounds survey, Surveyor A, B or C provides the topo and then survey A signs the Final Plat for outbounds and surveyor B signs the Final Plat for the subdivision and monument setting and Engineer D signing for engineering features, while Engineer E may sign for septic system suitability, wetlands and/or geology.

An understanding needs to be in place on construction stakeout and I have worked on projects with the surveyor doing stakeout and the info going to the engineer to provide the cutsheets.

Some clients understand the balancing act, some do not.

Having the engineer contract with the surveyor can sometimes work but too often the engineer blows the whole budget and then squeezes the surveyor on payment.

Paul in PA, PE, PLS

[david-livingstone]

If the engineer knows what he is doing, I woudn’t have a problem with it. I’d probably prefer they give me the layout they want and let me put the bearings and distances on it and the other boundary items.

[Mark Mayer]

The word “plat” means different things to different people. I equate it with “subdivision”, as I believe you do, but to a lot of people in this business it is synonymous with “map”. The request may be for you to certify the “Survey of Topography Map”.

[Jp7191]

David Livingstone, post: 418834, member: 431 wrote: If the engineer knows what he is doing, I woudn’t have a problem with it. I’d probably prefer they give me the layout they want and let me put the bearings and distances on it and the other boundary items.

I think when engineers provide layout you end up with 0.43′ long centerline tangents and common backlines being offset 0.22′. Or my favorite was a centerline pc, centerline intersection and centerline pt all falling within 3′ along a road alignment. Since cad was developed engineers fall in with architects in my opinion. 🙂 Jp

[flyin-solo]

Jp7191, post: 418842, member: 1617 wrote: I think when engineers provide layout you end up with 0.43′ long centerline tangents and common backlines being offset 0.22′. Or my favorite was a centerline pc, centerline intersection and centerline pt all falling within 3′ along a road alignment. Since cad was developed engineers fall in with architects in my opinion. 🙂 Jp

THIS is central to the issue, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve only been surveying long enough to have caught just a few years of experience prior to CAD-driven-COGO. But the reality now is increasingly that CAD drives the math. And I am a pretty damn easy guy to get along with in a work environment, but have always been the world’s biggest tight-ass when it comes to CAD, because I became aware at a very early point in this that if your CAD sucks your math sucks. Problem with that being that I haven’t had engineer one (or architect, like you said) over the past twenty years whose CAD work I could trust to make sense mathematically. And only a few survey techs, to be perfectly honest. And while the OP doesn’t say whether this is a three lot subdivision or a three hundred lot subdivision, my default assumption is always the latter. And at this point in the process the art of surveying is over, it is pretty much all about the numbers. And that’s where I cannot stand to be embarrassed by substandard linework that generates lots that won’t close, lot corners a tenth away from a PC/PI, etc, etc. I’ll give up that i’m wrong in my interpretation of a boundary location or title here or there, but not on the math- an element that is wholly objective and within my reasonable control. I’d LOVE to be able to turn the tedium of plat CAD over to somebody in whom I had the confidence to take it from front to back, without EXTENSIVE nitpicking. Unfortunately I don’t think (based upon everything so far) I’ll likely ever get there. And if it does happen, I’ll about guarantee it won’t be from somebody who doesn’t consider surveying their primary vocation.

[andrewm]

In my state a subdivision plat cannot be prepared by an engineer. It must be done by a surveyor. Everything else (topo map, drainage plan, etc) can be prepared by an engineer.

[Rich.]

Sure, but I’m still charging $1500 for plat preparation. So might as well cut it from his scope or your paying me for the work he does anyway.

[RPLS#]

Rich., post: 418861, member: 10450 wrote: Sure, but I’m still charging $1500 for plat preparation. So might as well cut it from his scope or your paying me for the work he does anyway.

That’s basically what I explained to the client. Preparing and submitting a plat in my area goes for a minimum of about $5k in my city though. I guess the engineer and I both just want the largest scopes we can get. I guess I just think if a surveyor is required to sign the plat, not an engineer, the surveyor should prepare it. Unfortunately there are several surveyors in my city that will stamp a subdivision plat prepared by anyone for a few hundred dollars, and they don’t even set monuments, even though the city requires a certification saying monuments are set. I recently followed a surveyor who certified a subdivision plat and did not set monuments, makes me want to turn him into the board. I don’t want to be too quick to do that though. I will wait till the evidence piles up higher.

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[RPLS#]

flyin solo, post: 418845, member: 8089 wrote: … And while the OP doesn’t say whether this is a three lot subdivision or a three hundred lot subdivision, my default assumption is always the latter.

13 lots

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[holy-cow]

Shoot me if you like, but I are both PE and RLS, so I see no problem except that both of you want to charge for some of the same work product.

[RPLS#]

Yeah I guess your right, what’s going on is some old fashioned competition. Who says I’m entitled to all the work I submit a proposal on, ultimately it’s up to the client who he wants to hire to do what.

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[RPLS#]

And I wonder what the engineer would say if I told him I will be preparing the drainage plan and he can review and certify it.

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[Bruce Small]

I like to do the surveying portion of a subdivision plat, but I really have no interest in doing the drafting and I certainly don’t need the aggravation of dealing with the municipal bureaucrats, so I specify $XXXX for surveying the site and giving the engineer all of the boundary data in AutoCAD, plus $XXXX for checking and signing the plat as to boundary surveying only.

There is one engineering firm in town that can be counted on to ignore my redline comments so we go back and forth repeatedly because I won’t sign until correct. If I locate a brass cap in concrete in the street stamped RLS XXXXX I know the drafter will annotate it as brass cap in concrete tagged RLS XXXXX. I’ve tried explaining it is impossible to tag a brass cap set flush in concrete, and I’ve sent over photos, but they just don’t care. Their philosophy seems to be to push it out the door and move on to the next project.

[Rich.]

RPLS#, post: 418870, member: 12280 wrote: That’s basically what I explained to the client. Preparing and submitting a plat in my area goes for a minimum of about $5k in my city though. I guess the engineer and I both just want the largest scopes we can get. I guess I just think if a surveyor is required to sign the plat, not an engineer, the surveyor should prepare it. Unfortunately there are several surveyors in my city that will stamp a subdivision plat prepared by anyone for a few hundred dollars, and they don’t even set monuments, even though the city requires a certification saying monuments are set. I recently followed a surveyor who certified a subdivision plat and did not set monuments, makes me want to turn him into the board. I don’t want to be too quick to do that though. I will wait till the evidence piles up higher.

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I’d say it’s the same around here if you include the topo etc.

[paden-cash]

I prepare a few recorded plats here and there nowadays. Most, if not all, are three or four lots carved out of a rural forty acres. But that wasn’t always the case. In days past I have worked on development plats for engineering firms that had no land surveyor in house. I remember the first few I was adamant about being the central cad-mechanic and made sure I wasn’t just signing something someone else had prepared. I worked with preliminary layouts from the developer and the engineer. I worked on a few forever…

In my case I discovered the engineering consultant was far better geared toward the specific design criteria than myself. I was ignorant of codes that required specific square footages, minimum frontage and even sight distances on curves. And the engineer had specific needs when it came to the easement layouts. I ran back and forth and changed some of those plats a hundred times I bet. If time is truly money, I lost my ass on most of those.

Quite honestly the engineering staff had a much better grasp on specific requirements than I. I eventually sat back and allowed them to perform their necessary design. I provided them with the boundary and topo initially and then reviewed their preliminary plat. I tweaked a lot of their submittals from my point of view and my changes were respected. Thankfully there were no tangents or curves less than a foot or any other similar horrors. I worked with their cad staff as if they were my own. There is a lot to be said for competent staff.

I spent far less time (hence made mo’ money) by letting the engineer’s people prepare the platting documents and I concentrated on reviewing the documents for the final approval.

[flyin-solo]

paden cash, post: 418949, member: 20 wrote:

In my case I discovered the engineering consultant was far better geared toward the specific design criteria than myself. I was ignorant of codes that required specific square footages, minimum frontage and even sight distances on curves. And the engineer had specific needs when it came to the easement layouts. I ran back and forth and changed some of those plats a hundred times I bet. If time is truly money, I lost my ass on most of those.

Quite honestly the engineering staff had a much better grasp on specific requirements than I. I eventually sat back and allowed them to perform their necessary design. I provided them with the boundary and topo initially and then reviewed their preliminary plat. I tweaked a lot of their submittals from my point of view and my changes were respected. Thankfully there were no tangents or curves less than a foot or any other similar horrors. I worked with their cad staff as if they were my own. There is a lot to be said for competent staff.

agreed, and makes me want to rephrase what i stated earlier. a good bit of the last decade i was the survey monkey in charge on a humongous local development (that just happens to be right across the street from my house, and which has been both a nightmare [property taxes] and a dream [equity] for me as a resident, but anyways…). platted over 1000 single family lots over 5-6 years time, and probably a few dozen more mixed use/mf/commercial lots, as well as all the interior r.o.w. to serve it all.

clearly i neither had- nor wanted- any involvement in the design or configuration of that mess. so the process was land planners drew a CAD cartoon, the engineer techs made it kinda sorta make sense and comply, and then i and/or my tech(s) got a CAD file that was, in most cases, 85-90% of where it needed to be in terms of linework. i’d take that file and clean up as necessary- which usually meant a BUNCH of trimming/extending (like on the order of <0.1'), offsetting (to correct for r.o.w. lines that weren't parallel- this is always the biggest head scratcher for me), and also a bunch of back and forth with the engineers regarding "can we move this side lot line over two tenths on one end so we don't have two/three/four rods within a foot of each other?" or "do you REALLY mean for this curve to be non-tangent?"

the first plat i did over there went exactly like stated above. it was a 370 lot subdivsion, about 365 of which are sardine-can house lots. the start-to-finish on my end for CAD, in context of above, was over a month. probably 5 days of that consisted of copying and pasting linework and cleaning it up. another two weeks was spent on annotating and labeling (line and curve tables each with +/- 200 entires), and the rest of the time was spent simply finding and plugging all the little mathematical leaks in it.

i can’t imagine how long that would have taken had i just drafted it straight out of the gate. so i certainly am guilty of misrepresenting my position to some extent in the posts above.

on a side note, in this new gig i’m using my daily free time to compile record subdivisions and titles that pass my way for review. in CAD. so a couple weeks back i went and rebuilt the plat above. only took 4-5 hours this time, having all the info established already. and it was a bit of a relief to fail to find a bust anywhere. i hadn’t wanted to think about that plat for a loooooong time, it was so tedious (none of the subsequent phases of that development have been nearly so big), but it was nice to revisit it for a couple days and see that diligence (or psychosis) can pay off.

[paden-cash]

flyin solo, post: 418955, member: 8089 wrote: ..i can’t imagine how long that would have taken had i just drafted it straight out of the gate..

Not only my screen time involved was usurped by allowing the engineer’s staff to produce the drawing, but their cad standards and mine were light-years apart. Allowing them the production freedom actually resulted in a superior product.

If I were to complain any at all it would be about the difference between a surveyor’s cad file and an engineer’s final product. While all of the bearings and distances were correct within the drawing produced, some of their linework didn’t reflect the math. This had to do with miniscule line junctions and small circles placed at corners. Sometimes the lines were trimmed improperly or a circle wasn’t placed exactly at the intersection. A resultant bearing difference of a second or two or a hundredth or two on distances made me pull my hair out a couple of times. The simple fact was that while I was going to rely upon the cad data to create points for corner placement; the engineering firm was more interested in displaying the correct bearing and distant, which they did. Just something I noticed and probably just a “survey-centric” kind of thing. 😉