Left a backsight set up on a construction job for a couple weeks because it was a royal pain to get to. When I picked it up, it was absolutely covered with bird $hit.
Dropped a field book down a sewer manhole. Fished it out using 2 shovels like chopsticks.
Opened the lid of the tool box about 5 seconds after the pc put the level there. It fell on a rock. Thank God wild built some solid gear.
Worst one: forgot to put my boots on, or in the truck, one January day. Worked all day in about a foot of snow in tennis shoes. That wasn't fun!?ÿ
Feeling not to well one morning?ÿ and unable to call in sick as there was nobody to sub for me, asked my I-man to get everything together and loaded up while I got my head wrapped around the mission. Two and half hour drive later we arrive on site and get everything set up and I ask 'where's the datacollector?' It was a long silent drive back to the office.?ÿ
A story related to me by one of my early mentors who is now retired, and besides, it's now legal, though not working on the pipeline.
It was the pipeline days, 70's, he was on a survey crew and they'd just wrapped up their days work and someone broke out some reefer. They all imbibed and were enjoying the moment cracking jokes when the radio crackled and they were informed that they were urgently needed some 40 miles away. "GET HERE ASAP!' Everyone scrambles and they high tail it to where they're needed and are getting set up to work when someone dropped the bomb, 'Errr-guys?, where's the gun?'. They'd left it setup when they scrambled. I suppose he told me the story as a cautionary tale.?ÿ
"Surveyed the wrong house."
That's a hell of a lot better than laying out a new house on the wrong lot.?ÿ
https://plsurvey.com/due-diligence-error-results-in-680000-5000-sq-ft-home-built-on-the-wrong-lot/
We did it once but caught it before any work started. ????ÿ
?ÿ
When I first started in surveying it was with a smaller company, one 3 man crew most days. The surveyors, not the owner, came up with a "rule" that seemed reasonable as we didn't have an unlimited budget: If you break it, company buys a new one. If you loose it, you buy the replacement. I only had to replace a 16 oz. hammer as I didn't want to go back 20 minutes to get it. In the 11 years I was there I can only remember people replacing shovels and 16 oz hammers nothing else.
Then I went to work for a larger company and everybody was loosing everything including a total station. Just drove off, forgot it sitting by the road and when they went back the next day it was gone. Our yearly budget to replace equipment was in the tens of thousands, not upgrade but just replace, and they'd blow through it every year. We had one crew chief that left a back site sitting over a point over an hour away. Crew member mentioned that he asked about it 10 minutes into the trip home and was told it'd be there the next week when they went back to set pins. I told the chief that he'd better hope it was there because I wasn't buying a new one when he was made aware of the fact they'd forgot it. He said fine and left in a huff (in the company Suburban) to go back and pick it up and damned if it wasn't there. They were working in an area where they would steal air if they could just because. Then he had the balls to put 3 hours on his time?ÿ sheet for the wasted trip. I didn't say anything but kept it in the back of my mind and lets just say for the next three years he got all the shit jobs and got rid of him as soon as things slowed down. Needless to say I went back to a smaller company as soon as I could.
Haven't lost anything since hanging out my own shingle. Partner did get the GPS base taken by the county when she was working by herself late one night. I'd had a stroke and had taken off a week and she didn't know how to tell me that it was "stolen". I walk in and she told me and I laughed telling he just to report it stolen and contact the insurance when the county engineer called and asked if I was missing a base. At that time I was the only one besides the county using GPS and he knew I used Sokkia. One of the road crews was driving back in and seen it in a yard and figured it must be the county's and someone had forgot it (he didn't know they used Trimble) while at the same time my partner had finished up and the client offered her a beer so they sat around talking for awhile before she went to get the base.
Where ya going?
back to the site.?ÿ
Why?
you forgot the T2
I??m the one that forgot the T2? but you??re volunteering to go get it? Instead of telling me to go get it? Right.?ÿ
to go back and pick it up and damned if it wasn't there.
Does that mean it was there, or was not there?
(Internet destroys conversational inflections of the English language)
N
Today was one of the worst days of my surveying career.
Drove 45mi to survey 14+ acres for a sale and we were looking for 8 key monuments and found two as called inthe deeds and a possible one that was a 60d nail.
When I got on my first setup, I shot between the first two hubs and it went flawless.
Trying to get my sideshots it locked up my data collector and I pulled out m backuup.
Both had been flawless tunti today.
Before leaving I turned each on and downloaded the new job and give them a test run and all was fine.
At the jobsite, neither one would power up on fresh batteries out of the box. Checked them by putting them in a pocket laser and it worked fine on the old batteries.
Had to go back in time to the 70s and collect the data by writing it all into a field book and will now have to manually compute the job using my Carlson Surveyor 1 program. It is a very good program but takes a lot of typing.
Makes me not like computers very much...........
i had to set pins on a property in a canyon. got everthing i needed, rover, extra battery, hammer, rebar, flagging, lath, water...made the 2 hour hike up the dangerous mountain side and realized when i got to the north most corner that i had forgot the cap. i set it anyway, but it still eats at me today.
