I am interested that more folks didn't comment on this topic.
It makes me wonder where are education system is. Many folks posted something along the lines of "I got the reading twice". ITS GOOD.
Have we come to the point that we trust whatever the readout says?
> I am interested that more folks didn't comment on this topic.
>
> It makes me wonder where are education system is. Many folks posted something along the lines of "I got the reading twice". ITS GOOD.
>
> Have we come to the point that we trust whatever the readout says?
It makes me wonder where are OUR education system is. 😉
where was that thread?
I think we established that you need an accurate instrument, rock solid setup and resection, free-station can be a useful way of getting and accurate station position.
I think most know that if your basic TS spec is 3mm accuracy then you won't be running around saying the building's moving until you get say 5mm measured "movement". The EDM errors are just the start after all.
If you have a TM30 or S8 high accuracy on a sturdy concrete pillar, you may be confident that 2mm (or even 1mm?) "movement" is real if you can eliminate environmental factors etc;
The monitoring I do, I won't be flagging up anything under 5mm (nor does the spec require me to). My instrument spec falls inbetween those mentioned above.
Not sure what more there is to add. I know what you mean though, there are plenty that think because the display measures to 1mm then it is accurate to 1mm.
I will never devalue an education, but I will never send anyone out assuming their education has them job ready. Even a four year program would be hard pressed to be very task specific. I would prefer adding boundary law classes over monitoring of structures. Any Surveyor with the capacity to understand geometry and measurement will become capable of the task given enough experience.
There are two reasons you don't see more responses. First is most of us really don't do that much monitoring. I like that as it cuts the competition. Second is even more simple. In our race to the bottom we have made the one man crew our business model. Once a person can push enough buttons to make the file structure look half way correct they are a crew. We are getting what we deserve. Monitoring, column control, etc. are no longer being taught.
My 02
I suspect I'm one of the ones you are talking about, but I never said anything about the same measurement twice is good.
In my example we had 2 different observers (both licensed) from two different companies with two different instruments. We (not me, one from my firm) were making multiple observations from different set ups (never the same twice) 5 days a week for 2 or three months. We were working in 3 dimensional coordinates since we could not duplicate the same set up from day to day. This was in a very confined construction zone with work going on continuously.
Yes, I know what the instrument specs are, but we were getting consistent data from day to day, operator to operator, and instrument to instrument. I am absolutely positive that if movement had been taking place we would have seen it.
My instrument was checked on a base line multiple times over multiple days and distance measurements stayed consistent within a 0.005 range. Yes, it is not a sub-second gun, but since we were working over such short distances a couple of seconds wouldn't make a difference.
As in all survey projects, it is a matter of matching personnel, equipment, and methods to match the constraints of the project site and knowing what the limitations are.
> I am interested that more folks didn't comment on this topic.
I did not learn anything about monitoring until just before I was licensed. And at that time, we pretty much had to figure it out on the fly. It's a specialty that most surveyors do not engage in.
