All right, I give up!

Don't forget to establish a GIS dept with a geomatics professional who has BIM experience. Yeah, just glazed through my copy too.

I think I'll just stick with surveying.

Maybe if more surveyors had a more open mind about doing something more than just traditional surveying there would be alot less whining going on about not having any work.

We have added a full GIS department plus laser scanning and precision layout over the last 5 years and 2011 was our most profitable year in 40 years of business. This is all during the worst recession we have had since the 80's.

I hear surveyors all the time complain about not being able to charge enough, etc. but if all you do is lot surveys, etc. then I don't see this ever changing. There will always be that idiot out there to perform the survey for a fee that most wont even start our truck for.

You have to build value for your services is all I'm really trying to say. Our biggest clients come to us because we can provide a complete solution. We have some clients that will gladly pay over $5000/day for us to be on their sites providing scanning and precision layout.

P.S. This wasn't meant as a stab at boundary surveyors only. Our firm did exactly that for the prior 35 years before 2005. With the fall off of residential and commercial development, we realized we needed to broaden our services and find other ways to increase revenue. We found ways to supplement our standard work and increase the services we could offer to existing clients. Since August of 2011 we have seen our business expand tremendously not only in Texas but other states and have work on the books already for crews into 2016.

I certainly have nothing against scanners or using them, Matthew.
My point was that the magazine exists only to sell them.

Don

I guess I need to read the article. But reading this thread, I might note that scanners can cost a lot of money and my impression is that the learning curve is large. I appreciate that jumping in to a new technology at the right time and with enough money can be a good thing, but I hope that the small businessman looks long and hard at what his or her payments might be and whether they can get the work to support a new high-end piece of equipment; not to mention get the technician(s) that can run it and bring the data to a manageable state.

It feels to me, like jumping into this today, is like jumping in to GPS was 25 or so years ago. If you got the right equipment back then it might cost > $100,000 and was a lot slower then, than it is now. And you had to get the right clientele to keep the equipment paying for itself. Today, GPS is more affordable and can save you a lot of field-work time on even low-end projects.

> I certainly have nothing against scanners or using them, Matthew.
> My point was that the magazine exists only to sell them.
>
> Don

My sentiments exactly. I don't use scanners in my current employment and am unlikely to. I do have exposure to GIS, utilize several to obtain data, and foresee that my direct use of and participation in contributing to GISs will continue to increase until I retire.

That said, other aspects surveying has not been eliminated from my practice, nor do I foresee that they will be.

However, if one did not actually practice surveying but followed it by reading the three major publications available (POB, TAS, PS), one would think that LiDAR has replaced all other forms of fieldwork and that anyone not performing all of their surveys with a scanner is hopelessly stuck in the dark ages and cannot possibly perform a survey to the high expactations and exacting standards of today's oh so sophisticated clients.

It's just anothoer measurement tool, being the best for certain applications and being wholly inapplicable to others.

Reading an article and learning about the latest, greatest, most productive measurement or map production tool, data management or calculation tool, regularly offered etc. is a good thing. But I get really tired of having it dominate the content month after month after month... going on a couple of years now in the case of scanning, to the near total exclusion of the other types of surveying that the majority of us still do.

That there is always someone to come along to tell those of us who don't have application for the latest whiz-bang, high flash factor tool in our practice, can't make it economically feasible at its current pricing in our practice, or otherwise have not had occasion to so completely embrace these tool as they have that we are myopic dinosaurs. That gets pretty tiresome as well, but it does have its amusing aspect.

And to those who look on us non-scanning or not-yet-scanning folk as relics of a bygone era I gotta say that whether you're 21 or 71, you are displaying the myopia of a kid who's opinion is formed on the limited view that narrow experience allows. Measurement tools come and go but rely on the same basic principles. Learning to use a new measurement tool properly to adequately complete a project may take a few weeks or it might be done in an afternoon of hands on training.

Fully understanding the principles basic to the collection, analysis, use, and management of the data takes months or years of experience and/or study. As you are learing to be your company's expert with this (currently) very expensive measuring device, ask yourself what is it about the use of that tool that separates you, a professional or aspiring professional, from a skilled or semi-skilled technician.

In my neck of the woods, there are a couple of guys who bought a total station & DC, some other field equipment, a couple of computers loaded with CD3 and a plotter. They have no previous surveying experience but make a living doing topos and site plans for clients. I won't go into the whole unlicensed practice thing here and the various points of this example that really tick me off, but for purposes of this discussion, the fact that they haven't gotten in trouble for any major scew ups and can turn out a really pretty map at a price below what most PLSs would do it for has gotten them a fairly solid business.

From a client's perspective, what separates you from an out of work and enterprising ex-construction laborer who manages to buy a scanner, teaches himself to make measurements and produce maps and goes into business providing that service?

What about the guy who hired in right out of high school and worked on a scanning crew for a summer, learning to set up and run the scanner in that time? What separates you as a professional? How is running that high priced tool professional work as opposed to the work of a semi-skilled technician?

If you take a careful look around, you will find that measurement technology has come to the point that virtually anyone can now easily make reasonably accurate measurements with very minimal training. There are an increasing number of encroachments on what has historically been viewed as the role of th esurveyor as expert measurer in recent years (machine guidance and use of DTMs/DEMs comes readily to mind).

The professional work is and will increasingly be the thorough planning of data collection, the analysis and management of data, and the consultation on matters that the data informs us of. It will nevermore be in the mere collection of data.

I can make decisions and analyses of data as long as I understand the principles upon which the data was measured, from where it was measured, and under what circumstances it was measured. I do not necessarily need to be fully famililar with how to punch the right buttons in their proper sequence to do the professional work.

As you become or continue to be an expert with your measurement toy, you should contemplate whether you want to just be a technician, perhaps more skilled than other measurement techs, but a technician nevertheless, or a professional with knowledge and skill necessary to transcend past, existing, and future measurement technologies.

I realize that the major publications need to provide stories that showcase the tools sold by their advertisers, but I sure wish they would also print more stories that reflect the broader variety of practice as it actually exists.

Sorry, I didn't mean for this to be so long. I was just going to agree with Don and sorta got carried away.

I don't see it so much as the "magazine exists to sell them" as it is the magazine going where the money is, in both advertisers and subscribers.

As stated above, I can remember when GPS first started, how a certain quarter of the subscribers complained bitterly that the magazine was deserting it's readership. Now, the surveyor who doesn't have at least a passing familiarity with GPS is a rarity.....and of course, the equipment is much less costly, smaller, lighter and easier to use.

I can remember from my childhood how there was a shoemaker on every commercial block, as well as a candy store, local pharmacy/ice cream parlor, small hardware store and butcher shop.

Things change. We have already seen how the land surveyor has been increasing cut out of the housing resale process. Soon, the same will be true for folks who take cross-sections and do topographical surveys with rods, levels and total stations. Can putting pins in the ground sustain all the licensees we have today?

Matthew

Good for you and for your company that they were able to invest and adapt.

Scanning equipment, the computers necessary to process the data and computers and personnel to support or provide GIS services are a huge investment that a great many simply cannot make no matter how much they would like to.

If all the surveyors who would like to get into scanning could afford to do so, I submit that your company might not be experiencing quite the success they currently are. Certainly some is due to the foresight of the owners in seeing the opportunity and being prepared to take advantage of it at the same time. But some is also undoubtedly due to a decided lack of other firms offering those services.

The same thing happened with GPS, and before that, with CADD and with EDMs. Those companies that could afford to invest in the technology while it was still expensive got a jump on the market. Others entered the market as the technology became more affordable. Many of those latecomers were able to quickly catch up.

Most of us use GPS now. Many of us who were around when GPS was first becoming commercially available would have liked to use it sooner, but were not in a position to make it economically feasible. Meanwhile there was a few firms who could afford to spend a quarter million or more on a basic static system (back when a quarter million was real money).

The publications had GPS story after GPS story (POB was around, I think PS appeared just as GPS was beginning to become affordable to average mid-size firms). It wasn't as dominating as scanning is now or GIS was untill scanning took over, but it was enough to make some complain about the amount of coverage given to a technology that was out of reach to most.

Characterizing a desire for a variety that more realistically reflects actual practice with tools priced within the reach of more surveyors as whining is pretty condescending and inaccurate.

Matthew

I agree with you that whining wasn't the best word to use. There is no doubt that there are surveyors that would be using scanning, etc. if costs allowed for it, and I was one of them a few years ago.

With the recent downturn we chose to invest in new technology that would allow our present employees to be more productive while still maintaining a healthy growth rate. I did not mean to come off as arrogant, etc. Believe me, the past 4 years have not been easy, and only through hard work and a dedicated staff were we able to see a big return on investment.

>
> Things change. We have already seen how the land surveyor has been increasing cut out of the housing resale process. Soon, the same will be true for folks who take cross-sections and do topographical surveys with rods, levels and total stations. Can putting pins in the ground sustain all the licensees we have today?

This is exactly our thoughts here at my company. Unless you have a very niche service market (i.e. Kent, et al) I see the traditional role of a surveyor having to evolve to continue to exist. As scanning become more main stream than it is, it will be impossible for a surveyor to conventionally perform a topo, as you can now do in minutes/hours what used to take several days, not to mention what mobile scanning can now accomplish. I also couldnt image trying to do a plant as-built by conventional methods anymore.

Yes, there will always be the need for boundary surveys, and I am definately not turning away that work, however I can't see it ever returning to pre-recession work for a very long time.

Come to think of it.....

I haven't received any kind of surveying magazine for several months now. Probably missed the "RENEW NOW" notices because I had started just reading the story titles and if there was nothing but more scanning/GIS stuff, I'd toss them in the magazine rack. Read some of it when they first started talking about it, but too much of a good thing is still too much.

Send 'em a nasty letter, maybe they'll cut you a check to refund your subscription.;-)

Seriously I know of a least one magazine that would love to publish feature articles on "land surveying"; however someone has to write them first. During my year long reign as editor I only had two feature articles submitted by authors who weren't on an instrument manufacturers payroll; one was semi-literate (at best) and the other (penned by a certain surveyor from Belgium) was in the pipeline when I left and apparently then consigned to the dustbin of history.

Hey, Fleming, care to elaborate?

> >... Seriously I know of a least one magazine that would love to publish feature articles on "land surveying"; however someone has to write them first. During my year long reign as editor I only had two feature articles submitted by authors who weren't on an instrument manufacturers payroll; one was semi-literate (at best)...

You probably won't, but it's just no damned wonder that the general public holds surveyors and surveying in such low regard when statements like this are made on public forums such as this. To read here much one would assume that surveyors, in general, are either semi-literate, low ballers, not well enough educated, blah blah blah, yada. In my book, Fleming, you're little more than "semi-literate" for even posting that. Now, don't you take that personally, or anything. I just hope the poor semi-literate puke that you're talking about didn't read it.

(dang, Don, how do you attract such controversy over and over? 😉 )

Hey, Fleming, care to elaborate?

> ....it's just no damned wonder that the general public holds surveyors and surveying in such low regard when statements like this are made on public forums such as this. To read here much one would assume that surveyors, in general, are either semi-literate, low ballers, not well enough educated, blah blah blah, yada.

I didn't see anything that could be taken as a blanket condemnation of the writing skills of all surveyors, just a statement of his experience as an editor. Who better to be in a position to judge than the editor of a surveying profession publication?

> In my book, Fleming, you're little more than "semi-literate" for even posting that. Now, don't you take that personally, or anything. I just hope the poor semi-literate puke that you're talking about didn't read it.

If you consider Mr. Fleming to be "semi-literate", it seems to me you haven't been reading his posts here. But, let's hope he doesn't get a chance to edit "your book".......;-)

Hey, Fleming, care to elaborate?

> >>
> ...I didn't see anything that could be taken as a blanket condemnation of the writing skills of all surveyors, just a statement of his experience as an editor. Who better to be in a position to judge than the editor of a surveying profession publication?
>
>
>
>
> > ... But, let's hope he doesn't get a chance to edit "your book"......

I'm not writing a book. "My book" is a well known analogy of one's opinion about any given subject. But since you bring up the subject, "Who better to be in a position to judge than the editor of a surveying profession publication?" Are you suggesting that no one else is? The key word here being "judge". Are you? That's the problem, in 'my book", here. There's too much 'judging' going on. You've never heard the the old saying that if you can't say anything good then it's better not to say anything, have you? You don't get it either. And I don't care. We have nothing on each other. The difference is that I can accept the differences for what they are, and the likes of you and Mr.Fleming seem to be saying you are in some unique position to judge. BS.

Hey, Fleming, care to elaborate?

You're sounding pretty judgmental yourself, there, Ed.

The fact that there are a lot of surveyors with poor writing skills and that the magazines get few submissions by working surveyors seems, to me, to be more factual than judgmental. I certainly have met a lot of good, intelligent surveyors, and even most of the semi-illerate ones have a lot of integrity in my opinion; I just wouldn't want them writing an article.

It sounds like you got up on the wrong side of the bed today (but who am I to judge?).;-)

Hey, Fleming, care to elaborate?

> You're sounding pretty judgmental yourself, there, Ed.
>
> The fact that there are a lot of surveyors with poor writing skills and that the magazines get few submissions by working surveyors seems, to me, to be more factual than judgmental. I certainly have met a lot of good, intelligent surveyors, and even most of the semi-illerate ones have a lot of integrity in my opinion; I just wouldn't want them writing an article.
>
> It sounds like you got up on the wrong side of the bed today (but who am I to judge?).;-)

Got it, Adam. You're one of the literate, good, intelligent surveyors. And you're right, getting up on the wrong side of the bed can be the only possible explanation for my replies to this thread. You are just too wise for our own good, Adam. I so apologise for my uncaring belligerent and thoughtless comments. May the surveying spirits have mercy on my surveying soul.

Hey, Fleming, care to elaborate?

WOW,,LOL, now children play nice

Hey, Fleming, care to elaborate?

Sorry Ed. I'll shut up.