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That is surprising because when I came out there to Boise and Coeur D’aLene back in 2006 everyone offered me a job and at first glance it seemed like a decent salary but I soon learned you could not buy anything with it because all the people from California had decided to relocate to Idaho and had caused the housing prices to spike tremendously.
And I just let my Idaho license lapse.
Exactly, take this as an example of extreme stupidity. There is a surveyor near here who has been in business for nearly 50 years. Several years ago he lost his house to foreclosure. Now you would think that he would have had everything paid off but that would have been wrong.
He is still one of the Low Price Leaders but that is not the frustrating part. He is the only surveyor in that county and he is still offering up cut rate prices. And his office is on a different plot of land than his former house and he comes to work everyday and has to see other people living in the house where he lived for decades all because he was a cheap ignorant fool.
And he still refuses to go up.
This thread has long legs.
I originally began this thread as a question on what would it take to go back to a 3 man crew in order to provide some mentoring and training to the entry level candidate but it quickly devolved into what it currently is which is a complaint on low prices, bottom feeders, stagnant wages, surveyors who are stuck in the 80’s or 90’s with their prices and never charging enough money to upgrade their equipment, software, computers, trucks, office spaces or pay their employees good wages with benefits.
And now it is finally at the point that I was actually hoping it would go and that is the real fact that most of these bottom feeders are in their mid to late 70’s or 80’s and they never charged enough to retire and yet they cling on like a bad rash dragging the profession down. They cannot retire because they never charged enough and they have run their company into the ground and it is a pitiful existence but they still drive the local markets.
So as unpleasant as it is things will not change until the seasoned citizens who are clinging on way past their expiration date hangs up their spurs and moves on. They all should have sold 15 years ago when things were better before the crash but ignorance prevented it.
Until they retire or die it will not get better.
Oh and before I forget there is another common problem of surveyors who have a full time job with a city, county, state or utility company where they have all their benefits and insurance paid for by taxpayers and and on weekends they survey for pennies on the dollar. That is enough to pi$$ off the Pope.
That should cause some wailing and gnashing of teeth.
- Posted by: @just-a-surveyor
Oh and before I forget there is another common problem of surveyors who have a full time job with a city, county, state or utility company where they have all their benefits and insurance paid for by taxpayers and and on weekends they survey for pennies on the dollar.
A common problem? Really? Is that really relevant to your case against surveyors who survey for pennies on the dollar?
MH The reason housing prices and availability wre that way in 06 had nothing to do with Californians. Back then a cabbage patch doll could get a 110% loan on a cardboard shack. You could also find a ‘generous’ appraiser on every corner. We had a minor correction in the years that followed.
We are in another bubble right now, but professional salaries are strong. With just over 250 resident surveyors (average age 59) it will only get better. A good portion of the PNW and mountain regions are the same. You just have to look.
- Posted by: @thebionicman
It is also undoubtedly illegal at the County and State level.
I work for Orange County Public Works in Florida. Working a second job was addressed within our section earlier this year. As long as your second job doesn’t affect your job performance with the county, management doesn’t have a problem with it. If I remember correctly, nothing was discussed specifically about surveying as a second job. If I ever decide to do so, I will certainly check with management first.
MH Providing a professional service on the side using government resources was probably not part of that discussion.
It is a problem in the part of Florida my business is located in. We are near a Florida DOT division office (there are 7 division offices located throughout Florida). Each FDOT division office is staffed with a number of licensed surveyors. Over the years I have lost a lot of work to FDOT employees. And, they do help to drive down prices. Not every area of Florida is a Miami or an Orlando, Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale or Jacksonville, and there are lots of forest lands, fields and rural areas. My business, along with this FDOT office is in a low density mostly rural part of the state. Most of North Florida is rural. It is no secrete that the closer you are located to the FDOT division office (my business is in an adjoining county) the lower the survey prices are.
No need to criticize me for making the choice of locating my business near a FDOT division office. This is home, and I made the choice long ago to leave Ft. Lauderdale and come back. My business is doing fine, but I have benefited from having clients in mining and public utilities. I can survive here in spite of the FDOT employee low ballers. However, the fact is these people do factor into the devaluing of professional survey products.
Having those kind of practices from the D.O.T. is a situation that exists everywhere. I find it amusing as some folks here are fond of saying to just “relocate” and go somewhere else where there are greener pastures and I can’t help but think those folks are living a charmed life if they think they can just pick up their life and move on.
I often wonder if the situation where reversed of they would move?
No…..I’m afraid the Die has been cast and we are gonna have to soldier through this until the seasoned citizens hang up their spurs and maybe all the others who are the low price leaders offering up blue light specials and double coupons for professional services will change their ways.
It’s been a whole bunch of posts since anyone’s talked about the original question:
Posted by: @just-a-surveyorWhat would it take for your company to make standard 3 man crews the norm?
Just sayin. Maybe it’s time for some new threads if you want to talk about lowballing and salaried gov’t employees driving down private sector fees and …
That is being done almost everywhere and nobody is listening on the government’s end.
Yeah, like I mentioned in another thread.. this place (Boise) is on fire but somehow I can’t seem to live any better. In fact, the housing situation is so ridiculous I’ve already stopped looking. Yeah, maybe I could live 15-20 miles away for a reasonable price and commute everyday but I’ve done that most of my life and it’s stupid and I’m not doing it anymore. It’s one thing to try to make money in a slow economy but when people are moving around, buying houses, buying/selling land, developing land… SOMEONE is making a bunch money here, how the hell is survey not getting a piece of that pie?
At the risk of reviving this thread I feel I have to respond to you since you asked an important question; “how the hell is survey not getting a piece of the pie”. While it may not be grammatically correct it is very salient and is the thrust of my frustration and that is most surveyors are good technicians but terrible businessmen. They generally go into business without any clue on the costs to perform a job and learn on the fly if at all. I would wager that most just wing it and throw out a number that “sounds good” and it is not till much later if at all they realize they have been giving work away for decades.
And back to the original topic of the post, many say there is no need for a 3 person crew except for rare occasions and or it jacks the price way up. I say that the prices are pathetically low and you can put on a 3 man crew and begin to train people if you would just charge more. Sure, I know it is easier said than done, but you have to start somewhere.
We have been conditioned to believe our services are only worth X and I say hooey.
Maybe we should rename this thread “The Bogus Method of Valuing Surveys” in memory of a former poster who generated long threads.
.John makes an excellent point. My apologies for the hijack.
We have discussed other things that contribute to declining numbers, but even that is a bit off the mark.
There is no guarantee returning to two or three man crews will solve all our woes. It is a reasonable assumption it will improve the career path of the crew members and the quality of our work.
For all the talk of our faults, one has not been mentioned. We never talk about the ability to manage people and resources. That means not only putting things in place to maximize profit, but creating a sustainable business model. I see no path forward that does not involve putting at least two people on a crew most or all of the time. The question was (and is) what would it take. Charging what the end product is worth and passing on jobs where you can’t make money seems like a logical answer.
Great topic for discussion,
I started with a four year training program back in 1977 here in the U.K, 2-3 years before I was allowed out to lead a team. Working in 3 man teams using Wild T2’s and among others. I’ll never forget the first day we used a DI3 to read a distance to a prism. With that and on board data recording we went down to 2 man. I’ve been working 1 man robotic for 20 years now. What I’m finding here is the general quality of survey work has fallen drastically, I regularly see surveys delivered to clients that I wouldn’t have dared show my boss in my first year. I was shown a survey a while ago undertaken by a big company, the survey had been fully coded on site and included such delights as trees and lamp post in the middle of roads (offset the wrong way I guess), contour patterns through buildings and over roof tops, so much over written text that it was impossible to read, levels at building corners that were all wrong, obviously shots taken with red dot at random heights but still coded as levels, and this was delivered as finals to the client.
This is down to two things, lack of training, for the reasons Steven has said, I know of many companies sending guys out on their own with less than 6 months on the job, truly scary. This is because no one can afford to train people. Secondly, in general, many clients these days wouldn’t know a quality product from a sketch on a cigarette packet, they just accept what they get, that includes a lot of newly graduated architects (lord knows what they teach them) so they always just go for ‘cheapest price’, I guess they have to do what their client instructs.
5 year until retirement for me, I’d love to have passed on a little of the 45 plus years of hard won knowledge and experience but the world has changed. I’ve made a good living, never been out of work but I agree with Steven, the profession over here in th U.K has changed beyond all recognition and not entirely for the better and it’s never going to go back, Price, price, price…a race to the bottom, that’s all anyone cares about today, just a fact of life.
- Posted by: @stratman59
Secondly, in general, many clients these days wouldn’t know a quality product from a sketch on a cigarette packet, they just accept what they get…
When I got out of school one of my first tasks was doing calc points for property corners. I’d look up surveys in the area of the project and find stuff that looked like garbage (even to a newbie like myself). I’d keep looking and find different surveys from the same guy but recorded 5 or 10 years later and they’d be less terrible. So sometimes I think it’s just a guy who doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing but kinda figures it out over time.
This reminds me of one of my favorite “urban tales” about surveying:
A newbie who insisted he knew how to run a robotic instrument was sent out to as-built a parking lot of an industrial subdivision.
When he got back to the office and downloaded the data he had 987 shots to his backsight.
There’s my point, back in the day you weren’t afforded the luxury to figure things out over time, you just weren’t allowed to produce work for client delivery until you were deemed competent by other very experienced and competent seniors.
So interesting reading all these posts, the work is probably very different in the U.K but the challenges of running a survey business are no doubt the same the world over. I’ve been running a Leica 1205 for 10 years now, IMO still the best total station made, not perfect by any measure but what is? Sure, the new models may have faster motors but my 1205 is as fast as me and that’s what counts. My RX1250 controller went down a month ago, no spares anymore, had to buy a used CS15 eating up all of that months profit. Like I said before, 5 years to retirement, just hoping by 1205 keeps going or a big chunk of my pension will have to go on another total station. My brother lives in the States and he tells me the economy is booming, ours, i fear, is about to fall of a cliff with Brexit.
At least we don’t have to contend with bears, mountain lions and snakes!
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