Commercial Development Surveyor

Find out his history with surveyors in the past, his gripes with field crews, how he thinks it should be done. Is he looking to cut corners and save a buck? The good contractors I have worked with in the past knew what we did and why we were there. Mutual respect is key. The ones that call last minute, "I need you now.", then have you stake something completely different are the guys to avoid.
Does he understand the process? You can't be building a surface and replacing a single lost light pole stake across town at the same time. It's gonna take personnel.

Mark Indzeris, post: 407143, member: 1019 wrote: The ones that call last minute, "I need you now.", then have you stake something completely different are the guys to avoid.

An ability to avoid calls like that by anticipating needs and staying in contact with the supers will be important.

Bump TTT

Supers such as that was a concern and something I want to address with him. The company I'm at now dealt with his last company quite often early in my career. I can't picture him hiring one like that but I've been wrong before.

In my experience as of late it will be up to you to understand and know the sequence of construction and attempt to explain the process to an inept super. Just remember email is your best friend!

PA PLS, post: 407138, member: 9658 wrote: I will soon be meeting with the owner of a new company dealing in commercial construction. The compnay he was with before did not have a surveyor or survey crew on staff and he is looking to have one to do stakeout. I worked for a small engineering firm the past 21 years and have done plenty of stakeout on these types of projects. Before the meeting even gets to salary and benefits I want a good understanding of my role and offer my input on what I think would work best. I get the impression I would pretty much have the final say on equipment and software. Does anyone have any experience with this type of position and any advice to offer? Thanks in advance.

Carlson SurvCE is amazingly powerful for staking. It handles in-field calcs for just about any situation you'll run into plus the ability to load a DXF and have it Auto calculate points on line vertexes is a real time saver. We run 3 Sokkia robots and a Spectra robot with it, most of us prefer the Sokkia for its RC5 (Dog whistle) when it comes to re-locking around a busy site.

I've never used Carlson. It's been SurveyPro since we upgraded from the old FC-4 data collector 15-20 years ago. Equipment has always been Topcon but I more inclined to go with something else. Leaning toward Trimble right now. This is of course it all works out and I have to make these decisions.

PA PLS, post: 407926, member: 9658 wrote: I've never used Carlson. It's been SurveyPro since we upgraded from the old FC-4 data collector 15-20 years ago. Equipment has always been Topcon but I more inclined to go with something else. Leaning toward Trimble right now. This is of course it all works out and I have to make these decisions.

Once you use Carlson you'll never want to work SurveyPro again. I used SPro for 10years, loved it because I didn't know better, lol. Carlson does everything SPro does but smoother, easier and in a much more sensible manner. Data editing, offsets, station & offset calcs, all much easier. We do have 3 SPro collectors that now hold papers in place.