I try as much as possible to survey outside the limits of Austin, but occasionally I get pulled in by old projects that need more work years later. That work in downtown Austin I posted about a couple of days ago turns out to have an interesting wrinkle.
I was asked to mark one boundary of a parcel and to set new markers at its rear corners to replace those that had been destroyed by the construction of a multi-story building on an adjacent parcel. That's fine. Did it.
But in the course of the work I realized that a whole series of the control points that I'd used to do the work were going to be destroyed within a matter of months. So I suggested to the landowner that what also needed to be done was to establish new control points that ought to be out of harm's way to serve as a basis for perpetuating the boundaries in the block for about the next twenty years.
The reality is that functions that the City of Austin had formerly performed - such as maintaining monumentation for the rights-of-way of public streets in the downtown area - are no longer happening and it has fallen to the private landowners (or, more properly, their surveyors) to do it by some means. The typical private sector survey in downtown Austin typically doesn't.
My particular idea is that setting more brass tablets that are self-identified - i.e. "ROW 5.00 FT OS", that sort of thing - ought to serve the purpose perfectly well. I guess I'll find out. In that ideal world all of us should be able to imagine, but never inhabit for any prolonged period of time, it probably would be a smart idea to do this as an ongoing activity, but I'm not sure what sort of a business model would work best to make it other than speculative investment of time and effort.
Slap some RTK coordinates on those puppies and they will be perpetuated forever.
:stakeout:
Now you would think that if that could be a profitable business that you could have a business model maintaining boundaries. I have thought of this before and believe it to be a possibility. Your service would begin after performing an ALTA survey. Services to include:
1. Visit the site annually and recover or reset monuments.
2. Update onsite improvements
3. Perform updated research.
4. Update the plat as required.
5. Set a fee for future updates needed for refinancing or sells.
This could be done for an annual maintenance subscription, as an up sell from a standard ALTA survey. The annual fee could be something like 10% of the original survey (shooting from the hip here).
Has anyone done anything similar?
> My particular idea is that setting ....5.00 FT OS..
If you are proposing setting offsets rather than the property corners themselves then sure, why not? It has been done in downtown PDX for decades. Until recently a brass screw in a bit of lead was the monument of choice and they survive the elements well. In the last 10 years the Bernsten buttons have been required by the County Surveyor. The limitation is that site redevelopment generally includes replacing the adjacent sidewalk.
> > My particular idea is that setting ....5.00 FT OS..
> If you are proposing setting offsets rather than the property corners themselves then sure, why not? It has been done in downtown PDX for decades. Until recently a brass screw in a bit of lead was the monument of choice and they survive the elements well.
In a non-recording state like Texas, the offset markers would pretty much have to be something large enough to stamp the offsets on them, which means either 2" washer/disc or 2" tablet. The brass tablets are preferable, but more expensive. When the City Engineer's Office was a significant surveying operation, the records of the surveys that perpetuated right-of-way locations were maintained in the City Engineer's records, but that requires a level of funding and activity that is difficult to imagine occurring again.
In Texas, the City Engineers functioned as municipal versions of the County Surveyors. I'm not sure whether any of the City Engineers of the major Texas cities are still performing a surveying role remotely similar to that originally envisioned when the cities were originally chartered and the offices created by those charters. I don't know of any.
> The limitation is that site redevelopment generally includes replacing the adjacent sidewalk.
Yes, that is why maintenance would necessarily be an ongoing activity with a focus on setting new control in sidewalks that have recently been reconstructed and guessing which older sidewalks nearby will be the last to go.
> I was asked to mark one boundary of a parcel and to set new markers at its rear corners to replace those that had been destroyed by the construction of a multi-story building on an adjacent parcel. That's fine. Did it.
What would be wrong with: every demolition and grading permit requires a certificate; that a licensed land surveyor submits; stating that no monuments will be disturbed with this project. Or if there is; steps will be taken to replace them.
I am on the monument preservation committee for the state of Washington; I will be watching this thread closely...
Right now; we're trying to decide how to collect the money and how to distribute it..:-S
We looked at what Wisconsin did; the money they collected got gobbled up by the powers that be; because they weren't spending it fast enough..:excruciating:
> > I was asked to mark one boundary of a parcel and to set new markers at its rear corners to replace those that had been destroyed by the construction of a multi-story building on an adjacent parcel. That's fine. Did it.
>
> What would be wrong with: every demolition and grading permit requires a certificate; that a licensed land surveyor submits; stating that no monuments will be disturbed with this project. Or if there is; steps will be taken to replace them.
The problematic reality is that there aren't enough Jim Frames to go around. What you'd end up with is some stringer with Surveys'n'Stuff doing the work much of the time. Without some supervision and tight licensing standards, expecting that any licensed surveyor will do seems unrealistic to me as long as market forces continue to search out the cheapest.
> We looked at what Wisconsin did; the money they collected got gobbled up by the powers that be; because they weren't spending it fast enough..:excruciating:
Last fall I attended a seminar put on by the Vancouver area chapter of LSAW. The topic was records research and one of the speakers was the person in charge of the DNR records repository. She was howling about lack of funding. Surely if there is a source of funding for statewide survey perpetuation the DNR would be the agency to oversee it.
In Oregon there is a requirement to file pre-construction Records of Survey and, while compliance by the private sector is spotty, public agency projects are pretty good about conforming. So you need buy-in from agency project managers. And if you can point to a statutory requirement you can get them to put it in their budget. After all, it's usually a trivial cost, as a percentage of the whole.
:good:
I would static enough to coordinate the original survey(s).
> In a non-recording state like Texas, the offset markers would pretty much have to be something large enough to stamp the offsets on them, which means either 2" washer/disc or 2" tablet. The brass tablets are preferable, but more expensive.
Let's not make the perfect be the enemy of the good. You could get "5.00' O/S", your LS number, and still have room for other stuff, like point number, on one of those buttons easy.
One day not too long from now the monuments will have an imbedded chip which will be read by a cell phone app. Find a monument and download the Record of Survey map, StarNet Report, and an interactive hologram of the surveyor on the spot.
> > > I was asked to mark one boundary of a parcel and to set new markers at its rear corners to replace those that had been destroyed by the construction of a multi-story building on an adjacent parcel. That's fine. Did it.
> >
> > What would be wrong with: every demolition and grading permit requires a certificate; that a licensed land surveyor submits; stating that no monuments will be disturbed with this project. Or if there is; steps will be taken to replace them.
>
> The problematic reality is that there aren't enough Jim Frames to go around. What you'd end up with is some stringer with Surveys'n'Stuff doing the work much of the time. Without some supervision and tight licensing standards, expecting that any licensed surveyor will do seems unrealistic to me as long as market forces continue to search out the cheapest.
would you take the contract if, hypothetically, the city suddenly saw the wisdom of re-establishing a comprehensive control system downtown? i, for one, would be down there lobbying whomever needs to hear it that you're the guy for the job.
for everybody else, some clarification: i've done a TON of work downtown over the last decade. and what kent describes is accurate and also generous. the city survey department at this point is severely underfunded, understaffed, and serves almost entirely as a redline operation. the record keeping is, literally, maintained these days by one part-time dedicated employee. it's a situation for a town with maybe a tenth of our current population, and a fraction of that percentage in terms of development.
kent's control and offset points are nearly always the most available and reliable monumentation available when doing work in our downtown area. i can maybe count on two hands (might need a third) how many projects i've done in the last 10 years where determining the boundary of a single city lot or a portion of a single block involved chasing out centerlines, block corners, and building corners in a several block radius around the subject tract- because nothing is left, or because what is left consists of reference points from a city field book that is 80+ years old and might be in an entirely different unlocatable place than it was a month ago.
the city actually does have a field crew (maybe two) still. i'm not exactly sure what function they serve. I do know that more and more intersections here have mag nails with city washers multiplying at the corners (like, 2-3 on each corner). which would be nice and helpful if either they were marked with some identifying info, or the purpose they served were then readily available to anyone- as is the flow of information is nearly non-existent from field to finish, so most of the time it is a largely pointless exercise to even tie any of these new nails in as you'll be hard pressed to get any sort of information on them. the two staff surveyors are too busy 7 days a week bleeding on easement and plat submittals (their desks are depressing to even look at), and while i've spoken with them at length regarding the issue(s) here at hand, they usually just meet me with a glass-eyed look of resignation.
i'd love to see this issue addressed. kent, if we could get you a nice, big, fat contract would you relent and spend a little more time downtown for a while?
> Let's not make the perfect be the enemy of the good. You could get "5.00' O/S", your LS number, and still have room for other stuff, like point number, on one of those buttons easy.
The top surface of those Berntsen buttons is only 1-5/32", right? That's just too small. 2" is as small as I'd want to try.
Kent-
The Ontario Good Roads Association has a Special Provision for Surveying Monumentation:
http://www.ogra.org/files/Resources/Special%20Provision%20Survey%20Monumentation.pdf
that you may try to have the Republic bring in as law.
Cheers,
Derek
I find it unfathomable that there isn't a Texas State code about destroying survey monuments. Here in ID and WA there is. Granted, up until the last 5-10 years the codes haven't been followed much but now it is very prevalent in the areas which I work. Once the local agencies get educated on the repercussions of monument destruction and the applicable state codes they tend to follow them. It's far from perfect, but it's a start.
Having a code is only a portion of the solution. All the laws in the world are not enough to do anything without the want to or the power to do it.
Enforcing the code and empowering an agency to do something is where everything fails.
The general public has a lack of sponsorship to backbone such an effort. They know that it will cost the in the end and mostly they are against it. They believe that surveyors will fix it themselves if they want it done.
Utilities and other public and private agencies that are in the construction end of things that wipe out boundaries and monuments base their costs on what it takes to operate.
Like others, they avoid hiring surveyors whenever possible and I have known many an old timer that would throw a pin back where it looked like it should go and most just ignore it hoping it doesn't get noticed until they are long gone.
Proving that any particular person or agency is responsible takes a witness. The fact that they are the only one that dug there is not enough to interest any DA or attorney to get on your side of the fence.
In general, even the state usually do not worry about the monuments after a project is finished or mostly not until they go looking for them again.
Bottom line, it is not in their budget.
0.02
> Having a code is only a portion of the solution. All the laws in the world are not enough to do anything without the want to or the power to do it.
>
> Enforcing the code and empowering an agency to do something is where everything fails.
>
> The general public has a lack of sponsorship to backbone such an effort. They know that it will cost the in the end and mostly they are against it. They believe that surveyors will fix it themselves if they want it done.
>
> Utilities and other public and private agencies that are in the construction end of things that wipe out boundaries and monuments base their costs on what it takes to operate.
>
> Like others, they avoid hiring surveyors whenever possible and I have known many an old timer that would throw a pin back where it looked like it should go and most just ignore it hoping it doesn't get noticed until they are long gone.
>
> Proving that any particular person or agency is responsible takes a witness. The fact that they are the only one that dug there is not enough to interest any DA or attorney to get on your side of the fence.
>
> In general, even the state usually do not worry about the monuments after a project is finished or mostly not until they go looking for them again.
>
> Bottom line, it is not in their budget.
>
> 0.02
First, you need the code. Secondly the code has to have some teeth and there has to be consequences for violating the code. In Idaho, this responsibility falls on the engineer that prepared the plans. It's really quite slick. If they prepare plans that fail to show accurately surveyed monuments(not just a symbol on a line intx) and monuments are destroyed, they are responsible. It's not too hard to pull up a few records of survey that show monuments prior to the construction.
Third, educate your clients, especially those at the DOTs and your local public/works road director.
There have been several large municipal construction projects stopped dead in their tracks in this area because monumentation was not accounted for and the state engineer would have been held in violation of code and ultimately responsible for re-establishing all the monuments This would have been huge since it involved hundreds of handicapped ramps at street intersections around the area.
Amazingly, after those few boondoggles.....monuments are now 'in the budget', every budget.