Fifteen years ago I surveyed a small commercial lot and prepared a plat for the owner to use to refinance. There was a small convenience store/gas station on the property that we located and depicted on the plat. We simply performed a standard boundary survey with a closed loop survey. No sets turned and no Network Least Squares adjustment. We had a decent closure about three times the minimum required by law. This week I made a return trip to perform an ALTA/ACSM Land Title Survey of the same property. Following proceedures that would allow for Least Squares to test the positional tolerance of our work, I turned sets to my control and to the corners. I even threw in a few cross-ties for good measure. I had a 1 in 53,000 closure and 1" per angle point. The Network Least Squares program crunched the numbers and decided the survey passed the ALTA requirements. I guess I spent triple the time this go around than fifteen years ago because of the extra QC for the ALTA requirements. Back at the office I compared new data to old. After all that, the worst difference I found was 0.03' and about 0°00'25" in one side. Fifteen years ago we didn't do anything special, we just followed proven proceedures to produce quality work. It wasn't hard. I think we would have worked harder to produce sloppy work like we see regularly following certain other surveyors. The ALTA specifications wouldn't be necessary is everyone put forth a little effort to keep from doing shoddy work. Why are there substandard surveys in today's world? I think much of it comes from a lack of proper mentoring. I know there are other causes, but that's the main issue in my opinion. Anyone else care to comment?
I absolutely hate to follow some surveyors. I always dread the post-survey discussion with the client, during which I tap dance around trying not to hammer the previous surveyor too badly. That's a big part of this problem; we try too hard not to get involved. We all know who is doing the shoddy work in our respective markets, but the costs (financial, professional, emotional, etc.) are generally too great. It should be costly and difficult to bring another before the board. It should not be taken lightly. But once done, it should produce a reasonable result. An honest report of the facts and an honest review of the report should either correct the problem or begin the process of pushing the sub-par surveyors out of this profession. Of course, all of this presupposes an honest and vigorous attempt to work it out with the other surveyor. Just because you don't understand how he's right doesn't mean he's wrong.
Mentoring is the silver bullet. Anyone who has ever had or been a mentor knows that. Like you say, if we all just tried to do it the right way for no other reason than that it's the right way, we'd be fine.
> Why are there substandard surveys in today's world?
Most of the crappy surveys that I see are easily explained by the fact that the marketplace for services seeks quick and cheap and invariably is able to find it.
Tools like RTK make it possible to generate things that appear to be surveys even more quickly and cheaply than ever and CAD makes it possible for grossly substandard efforts to be dressed up to resemble actual surveys, so the immediate need of the market, i.e. to have a map that appears to represent something ready on a short schedule for a real estate closing, is satisfied. It's only later that the bill for cleaning up the mess will arrive.
> .... The ALTA specifications wouldn't be necessary is everyone put forth a little effort to keep from doing shoddy work. ...
For most work, including ALTAs, the primary reason for collecting redundant data and performing LS adjustments is to trap blunders rather than to refine precision. That slipshod work you speak of is not because people aren't splitting their doubles to the second and cross tying their networks to the nth degree of freedom.
I have worked for a wide variety of Surveyors over the years. One common thread that shows through is the inability to explain the quality of their data. I don't mean they did bad work, they simply could not communicate in standard terms and annotation why the measurement part of the job was correct.
While I am not privy to the discussions when the standards were written I am certain this played a part...
