Too often I find survey crews and/or firm's are way over their head and taking on work beyond there capabilities.
I work all over the country and see this often.
In just the past few weeks I have seen three instances:
1). Working on a construction site with work being performed in the River and on Land. Two survey company's performed the original topo and bathymteric surveys. They use Two different vertical datums, but clearly stated on contract plans. NAVD88 for the land work, and Mean High Water for bathymetric survey. Later local contractor comes in to dredge river. Third surveyor asked the land contractor for BM without clearly reading plans. They use land BM for hyrdo work. They get done and leave the site. Then I am asked to verify dredge work. Elevations all differ by nearly 3ft.
2). Surveyor A does topo of small 2 acre site on NAD83 horizontal with NAVD88 vertical datum with GNSS. Contractor uses their BM to perform work. I'm asked to verify contractors work with an As-Built. His work is fine. But checks with OPUS and RTN show the site elevations are nearly 100ft below ortho elevations. Appears the surveyor did NOT apply any GEOID, all elevations were at Ellipsoidal Heights.
3). Contractor hires a survey firm to perform Mobile Mapping in a high traffic area. Their survey office several hours away. They show up 2 hours late. Spend another hour trying to setup their GPS, then finally throw in the towel and ask for my help. We had to provide and setup two GPS static bases for them to perform mobile mapping.
There are just too many unqualified crews out their. Apparently that is what happens when you give contract work to the lowest bidder.
I can't complain. more work for me. This is leading to force contractors to pay for a control verification prior to any construction or demolition work.
Lee Green
> Too often I find survey crews and/or firm's are way over their head and taking on work beyond there capabilities.
I think you can make a reasonable argument in the case for at least #1 & #2 that your examples go beyond "taking on work beyond their capabilities" and represent either inadequate responsible charge by the overseeing LS or an LS who's knowledge doesn't approach the "minimally competent" level that is supposed to be the objective of the NCEES PS Exam.
I think I've mentioned before that when I was on the NCEES cut score committee in 2006 evaluating the exam questions there was a lot of good ol' boy "well, that is a hard question and a new feller may not know the answer" going on in the room. A couple of us tried to make the argument that passing the PS (and the state exam) doesn't make you a "new feller" it makes you a licensed professional and cutting slack on the exam doesn't do the profession of the public any good. Chickens meet roost.
> Too often I find survey crews and/or firm's are way over their head and taking on work beyond there capabilities.
>
Welcome to the world of those who have "Topoed, Paved, Geodetic'd and tilted"
You should've known that the numbers were to good to be true. As it gets busier it's going to get worse, you're going to start to watch unqualified field technician being supervised by even less qualified individuals.
Too often, the critical steps of defining, applying and documenting the geodetic parameters of the project are poorly executed. I do not think firms / crews are unqualified. I think they do a loosy job with metadata management. Can't blame the field crew on this one, the problem is in the procedures, hence at the office level.
My State Board's standards state that: "A licensee shall undertake assignments only when qualified by education or experience in the specific technical fields of surveying involved."
There are a number of "technical fields of surveying" in which I lack education and experience, though I have a license. I've had to turn work away at times because of this. About which I have no regrets -- didn't get sued for any of those jobs.
Refer back to the posts of 8th. December, asking if ISO 9001 was needed.
So much of the work today (and in the past) needs proper documentation to record what and how things were done. A decent management system should be be checking out the datum and projection to be used and informing the client of any potential problem prior to carrying out the fieldwork.
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> There are a number of "technical fields of surveying" in which I lack education and experience, though I have a license. I've had to turn work away at times because of this. About which I have no regrets -- didn't get sued for any of those jobs.
The absolute best answer. What I find amazing is the amount of firms that get lured into exploring markets they have no clue about. They'll buy a rail system and assume that with the manufacturer's training they'll know enough about the subject to enter the market or they'll see a Building construction boom and assumed it's just cogo or the answer to everything is a laser scanner.
Moreover, a lot of these guys want to jump in to these markets in an attempt to gain some credibility while at the same time mitigating risks. In essence they'd like the glory with out the risk, so they'll give you some BS deliverable which really doesn't show anything and walk away assuming nobody will notice what's missing, since they themselves don't know what's missing. Then they'll follow it up with some article in the local trade rag describing the rigor and complexity of undertaking these types of projects.
Pretty Scary.
It's the same in all fields. Doctors, lawyers, builders, farmers - all have good ones and ones that should be in another profession.
I agree, it’s in all fields, I regularly see this in association with many projects I deal with. It all boils down to our posy sniffing week kneed approach to things these days, no accountability for inept, greedy or just plain laziness. We may benefit from it in some ways when we are not perfect but is it worth it?
In all fairness to the parties in examples 1,2,3
1. There was a big mistake in example 1 where both orginal companies should have used the same benchmark, probably the land one. Maybe the third surveyor discuss with other parties on his choices and maybe you were not privy to this information. Did they dredge enough, too little or too much?
2. The guy did make a mistake if he stated that work was done in '88 datum but used ellipsoidal heights. However, this mistake is easily catched (with something as simple as Google Earth). You are saying is heights are not ortho, fair enough. But does it matter in this particular case? As long as people know that the heights are indeed ellipsoidal? Where you hired to check that the relative construction was correct, as opposed to absolute.
3. Every crew will experience problem with gear eventually. You are knowledgeable, you have a duty to help out brothers in trouble, just like someone else would help you too. I have helped out competitors, competitors helped me, surveying 101.
I guess what I am saying instead there are myriads of possibilities why these things happen. Is it always incompetence? Not really if we don't have the full story. See it like the 5 o'clock news, is the information complete...
The good news is there's money in chaos and poor communication.
:gammon: well stated.
"The good news is there's money in chaos and poor communication"
I suppose that really depends on who is paying as to whether it is good news or not.
Low baller wins job. Goes out and does bare bones minimum deed staking survey without fully evaluating or even seriously attempting to recover all the evidence. Low baller's budget doesn't allow for the time it would take, but client doesn't know that, or even care. He's getting a deal. Time rolls on and another surveyor does a thorough boundary retracement and now has to weed through the conflicting garbage set by low baller and has to justify to his client this added expense. So, who exactly is the bearer and recipient of this good news?
I agree there is always two sides to a story and without knowing all details, it's not really fair to draw conclusions or pass judgment.
"...However, this mistake is easily catched..."
Oh, the irony!
"...The good news is there's money in chaos and poor communication..."
Another irony? As a "Professional" how should we make our money?
> The good news is there's money in chaos and poor communication.
True, but I'd rather not profit from bellum omnium contra omnes
> ..... This is leading to force contractors to pay for a control verification prior to any construction or demolition work.
Nobody should be "forced" to do the prudent thing. That is common practice around here and usually it is included in the technical provisions on our projects, then again we are very rarely the low bidder on the projects that we perform.
James,
1) They did NOT dredge enough and now the permits have run out to come back and dredge more.
2) Even a navigation GPS in a vehicle will identify this difference in elevation. I was NOT hired to check the datum. But this was for a public Utility Company. I feel it is my due diligence to check the datum, especially since it so easy to do in this day and age.
3) Agree.
Did you find out why the two datums, one to land, one to hydro? I find it bizarre. Wouldn't there be risks associated with requiring dredging to be controlled by OHWM? It can vary a bit from one surveyor to another, there's a bit of judgment / interpretation.
I can see the idea of wanting a certain depth below a water mark, i just don't understand why the controlling elevation wasn't more defined by a fixed monument such as a benchmark or a solid reference datum which was the choice of surveyor #3.
I wonder how was the controlling sentence worded in the contract documents? Usually, specs for dredging are clear. Even the dredging contractor probably should have picked up on this. Bizarre.
James,
No real reason for the two datums. On both of these surveys there was NO hard benchmark left on the site. I had to contact the surveyors for control points, then check datums and set the two different BM's. The MHW datum is a joke. No BM to check into, they are using tide tables and gauge stations 20 miles away. Mariners love the internet tide tables on the their iphones. Once had a contractor setting the turbidity curtain with his iphone GPS. He couldn't understand why the SPC coordinates, the PE gave him, would not work with his iphone. Iphone only used Lat/Lon geographic coordinates.
I can see a lot more trouble ahead for this project. But I can't explain that here. I've already mentioned it several times to the super, he understands but can't get it through to the top dogs. Projects like these, all we can do is plant the seed and let it grow. They will NOT understand until after the "short comings" then they will be calling me again to fix it.
Lee Green
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> I've already mentioned it several times to the super, he understands but can't get it through to the top dogs. Projects like these, all we can do is plant the seed and let it grow. They will NOT understand until after the "short comings" then they will be calling me again to fix it.
>
> Lee Green
Argh, that is so very frustrating. It is usually these same top dogs that are quick to hang the lowly surveyors with their own PL insurance. I mean that this seems to be an actual business model for profit by some contractors.
Oh well, I am glad that you are on the money making side of this particular problem. I mean this sincerely. Sometimes it is difficult for me to convey a genuinely positive comment in black and white.
Brad
Lee, I once worked on a rail hub, this was when GPS was just getting some serious steam. This was a large project where my company was just a small part of. The original topo was done by flying the site. The site engineer did some kind of strange static work and must have held some bench marks that didn't agree. My boss on the project is old school and sent his crew out with a level and checked the benchmarks. They didn't agree by several tenths of a foot.
There was about 3 companys that had held the control and localized to it with their GPS. The resisduals were bad, but not that bad. They wanted us to localize and hold the bad control. It would be easier if we all just agreed. We managed to convince them that would be a bad idea, this was a very large and flat site. I'd like to say things have improved and people are more GPS savy, but that's not the case.
