Make sure you take the time to consider other fields too that frequently have out-of-doors work associated with them: geology, environmental health / science, civil engineering, forestry, conservation officer, etc - Land surveying is a great line of work to study and pursue; but I urge caution with any decision to go "all-in" with it in today's environment. With the possible exception of forestry, any of the preceding occupations are presently more lucrative today & in the foreseeable future. If you're willing to work internationally or in untraditional fields of surveying (hydrographic, marine survey, etc) requiring relocation, then you'll have no problem finding employment in surveying. It just might be in a different capacity than you're presently envisioning. Good luck!
Monitor/join in at www.wsls.org.
Learn WI land law! Know what your rights and responsibilities are as an allodial land owner. (See article 1, sec 14 of the WI State Constitution!)
Good luck!
Richard Schaut
I am also considering a degree in civil engineering. The nice thing with this is that I can get an emphasis in surveying so I could go into either civil engineering or surveying when I graduate, thus making my employment prospects better. I know if I choose this path I will be better positioned to be hired by construction surveyors rather than boundary surveyors.
What are the primary differences between doing construction surveying vs boundary surveying?
Also, what is the difference between land surveying and geomatic engineering?
What are the primary differences between doing construction surveying vs boundary surveying?
There's a lot more to it than this, but some of the major differences include:
Construction surveying
You are one of team member working on the project (surveying is one of the tasks)
Your schedule is directly influenced by the project
You must be fast and capable of working under pressure
Construction surveying is not for the fainted heart as the instructor used to say
Surveying is accepted as a cost of doing business
Boundary surveying
You control the pace of the project (surveying is the task)
You control the schedule, more freedom
More wildlife encounter
Often times, quite enjoyable, less pressure, noise, dust, etc
You must be very good at dealing with the Mr. & Mrs Jones out there
Surveying is often considered a mal nécessaire, an expensive ordeal
Also, what is the difference between land surveying and geomatics engineering?
This one, you should be able to figure it out.
- - - - -
If I had to go back to school, I would budget 6 years. 2 years of college in surveying/geomatics to get a good education in surveying (which the civil engineering crowd lacks) and after a few years in the workplace, I would then do the 4 years in civil engineering.
why IS surveying so expensive? I've heard alot of comments here about how boundary survey clients are constantly complaining about how expensive boundary surveys are.
I'm sure you guys have plenty of horror stories about clients while doing boundary surveys 😉
construction v boundary
When you are dealing with building and zoning regulations, boundary considerations are an integral part of your,(the licensed surveyor, not unlicensed field crew), responsibility.
The legal boundary will often not be where the 'deed' says it should be and the licensed surveyor must know when the deed error is large enough that the record must be corrected.
Deed staking and preservation is not the licensed surveyor's professional work product.
At the wsls web site, learn how a WI surveyor deals with ss 70.27 of WI law, Assessor's Plats; this is only one way the legal boundary is preserved and the record corrected.
Accurate measurement making is the least important part of a professional land surveyor's responsibility and the record description is not a controlling element in retracement surveying beyond telling the surveyor where to begin to look for physical evidence.
Richard Schaut
> I am also considering a degree in civil engineering. The nice thing with this is that I can get an emphasis in surveying so I could go into either civil engineering or surveying when I graduate, thus making my employment prospects better. I know if I choose this path I will be better positioned to be hired by construction surveyors rather than boundary surveyors.
>
> What are the primary differences between doing construction surveying vs boundary surveying?
>
> Also, what is the difference between land surveying and geomatic engineering?
You can't do both well. Choose either land surveyor or civil engineer. Civil engineers are detailed oriented who do a lot of math word problems. Land Surveyors need to be literate in relation to reading and interpreting deeds. More people oriented. If you're going to be a boundary surveyor, 4 year degree.
construction v boundary
> Accurate measurement making is the least important part of a professional land surveyor's responsibility and the record description is not a controlling element in retracement surveying beyond telling the surveyor where to begin to look for physical evidence.
I just want to elaborate on this statement. (I wrote this in a hurry, so don't rip me apart y'all! 😉 )
Having a good understanding of when and how specific measuring tools were used, both historical and modern, will help as it relates to retracement of the prior surveyors. Modern technology allows us to measure more accurately and quicker. When you are dealing with 100+ year old survey notes, the measurement taken between original markers as measured today usually will not match the original surveyors measure precisely since the equipment more than likely was older, less precise, and rudimentary. And it didn't help that Indians and dangerous wildlife hindered the process of surveying Public Land.
Read up on what a Gunter Chain is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunte r's_chain
and Compass Surveying
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumferentor
and PLSS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System
And just read more! Use this link to find free and full copy of older books.
"Also, I promise not to pester with annoying/embarrasing newbie questions"
Apart from the spelling polize around here and the fanatical political scribes there is no question too small or too large!
Surveying these days has so many different career paths. So I suggest you look at a university with a 4 year degree and read their course content to get a feel of the types of surveying as boundary surveying is but one avenue. If you have the academic ability to study then do not waste time doing a two year course as the tech course will have you trained to be a simple hack for the rest of your time in surveying. Remote sensing, geodetic surveying, GIS, Electronic scanning are all additional areas of surveying that the traditional small boundary and engineering surveying firms are not necessarily familiar with, so it is important to check out these specialists fields as well. The state surveying bodies or universities would have contacts to those specialising firms.
I had to move away from home to study at university, no big deal because you have to put yourself if you wish to attain a professional career.
All the best and keep the Qs coming.
RADU
Construction Surveying
Normally a higher hourly billing rate.
If something goes wrong, the surveyor is the first to be blamed, not the foreman who built it wrong
Boundary Surveying
It is considered expensive because everyone wants something for nothing. When houses are sold for $250k, after the realtor gets their cut (5% - $12,500) and the lawyer gets his (usually about $2k) Why in the world would anyone want to pay a surveyor $1000 to figure out exactly what they bought for $250k because the realtor already told them where the property lines are!!!
Why so expensive? Part 1
Take a typical small farm as an example, and a simple project. Farmer Brown and Farmer Green have been arguing about the location of their common line for years. Green has decided that he is just going to build a road along where he thinks the line is and put up a new barn right next to the line as well. Brown has finally had enough arguing and hires a surveyor to figure it out and mark it before Green does something stupid.
Brown's parcel in question is 160 acres. No terribly complicated title issues except maybe a couple of easements for utilities and another for an access road near one edge of his property.
The surveyor has to do some research, pulling not only Brown's deed, but also those of all of Brown's adjoiners (properties abutting Brown's property). In some cases, the surveyor may have to research the chain of title. That is all of the deeds for a property going back to the original patent (grant) from the government. The surveyor also has to get copies of all the record survey maps which may have an affect on the survey of Brown's parcel, and depending upon the local history, may have to check sources for unrecorded surveys. This basic research may take a couple of hours, or it may take a couple of days, depending upon how easy it is to navigate through the sources of information and how many sources the surveyor has to go to.
For purposes of this example, let's say that all the pertinent info can be found at the County Recorder's/Clerk's office and the County Surveyor's office and that they are in the same office building. Let's say 4 hours for research. Remember, this is for a property with no significant issues. Add in issues of confllicting deed descriptions between neighbors, railroad right of way, unrecorded surveys, odd shaped and poorly described parcels, previous litigation affecting boundaries not found in the County's Official Records, but only in the Court records, multiple jurisdictions, etc. and the effort can build up pretty quickly.
Most surveyors still have 2-man field crews. Some have gone to 1-man using more highly automated equipment, and a few still occasionally have 3, where the 3rd man is generally a low paid trainee or someone lacking ambition to move beyond pounding stakes and cutting brush. For Brown's parcel, which for our example is the southeast quarter of Section 10, the field crew must find and measure all four quarter corners ---
A side lesson since I don't know your level of knowledge of land boundaries: Most of the US (except for the original 13 and a couple of other states, and certain areas of the other 35 or so) is divided up into Townships, 6 miles x 6 miles. Each of the square miles within the Township is called a Section. Each Section was originally monumented at the corners (Section Corners) and at the midpoint of each side (quarter corners - the name will make sense shortly). This is an extremely simplified description of our Public Lands survey System (PLSS) that forms the basic framework of most of the boundaries in the central and western US.
End side lesson.
--- So they have to find and measure all four quarter corners, the southwest, southeast, and northeast Section Corners, and the Center of Section (aka the Center Quarter Corner) and/or any indications of original establishment of the existing boundary lines. That means in addition to finding and measuring all these points a mile this way and that, the surveyor may have to locate existing fences and/or other indications of the limits of use by Brown and his neighbors, and maybe play fenceline detective, looking for evidence of old fences, tree blazes (old marks cut into trees), stakes, stones, or iron pipes/pins, of record or not, set by previous surveyors.
If this is a fairly typical midwest section, there may be roads along each section line and the field crew can drive up to each of the section corners and exterior Quarter Corners. If the crew doesn't have to dig to find the corners, and they are using GPS, they might be able to get all of the exterior Section and Quarter Corners measured in about 4 hours. If they have to bust through asphalt and dig a couple feet down through rocky soil at each point, even with a pretty good idea of where to dig, that effort can add 2 to 6 hours to the effort. If some of these points are missing, the surveyors will have to go further to find points from which to re-establish the missing positions, or look for additional local evidence that can be used to re-establish them. Even with being able to drive to points, that can easily add 1 to 4 hours for each of the primary required points which are missing.
To shortcut the what ifs on the field conditions, let's say that the site is relatively flat and open with some woods here, some brush there, and with some fairly well maintained fence to locate (follow and measure), that this preliminary survey work presented only a few difficulties and took the crew a day and a half, 12 hours to complete.
The surveyor now has to calculate and adjust the fieldwork, and then analyze what was found in the field with respect to what is described in the various deeds. He finds no significant errors in his field work ---
Quick side lesson. All measurements, no matter how carefully made, contain error. It is impossible to make an error free measurement. Errors are either significant, needing correction by remeasurement or by adjustment, depending upon the nature of the error, or they are not significant. If they are not significant, the surveyor conducts a standard adjustment to distribute the effects of the otherwise insignificant errors and then moves on, accepting and the adjusted measurements as reliable. End side lesson.
--- The surveyor then analyzes and decides where the corners and lines of Brown's parcel is. Depending upon what was found in the field, these corners and lines might be based upon mathematical procedures developed and prescribed for breaking down a section (dividing it into smaller parcels), or it might be based upon local evidence of a previous valid establishment of the boundary lines and corners.
The research and fieldwork are detective work of finding the clues left by others to guide us to the boundary location. The analysis is the work of putting all those clues together appropriately using legal principles (I wish someone had given me Brian Allen's advice about 25 or 30 years ago) and math to arrive at a well reasoned opinion of where the boundary exists.
Note that I did not say that he simply calculates their location. A full explanation goes way beyond this discussion, but a boundary survey, while employing mathematical principles and various procedures for calculating positions, is more of a legal exercise supported by math than it is a math problem alone. We act as detectives, and just as a law enforcement detective applies law as defined by statutes and interpreted by courts, surveyors do the same thing to take into account all of the evidence found on the ground and in the legal documents (deeds, etc.) to recognize what the boundary is, and then use the math and measurements to determine precisely where it is located relative to all other parts of the survey.
This analysis and calculation may take as little as 2 hours, or it may find discrepancies between written title lines and what may exist on the ground, which may lead the surveyor to do additional research and/or filedwork, or it may uncover a situation that requires a legal or administrative remedy. Both of those situations are again, way beyond the scope of this discussion, so let's make it simple and say that the surveyor had enough analysis and calculation to take up most of his day to finalize his boundary decisions. 6 hours.
The field crew now has to go back to set corner markers. Browns parcel is described as the Southeast 1/4 of Section 10, and to make it simple, the crew found the Southeast Section Corner, which is Brown's SE courner, they found the South Quarter Corner, which is Brown's southwest corner, they found the East Quarter Corner, which is Brown's NE corner (see where this is going with the designation of Quarter Corner?), and although they did not initially find a monument set for the center quarter corner, they did find the necessary points to follow the prescribed procedure to calculate the position of the Center Quarter Corner. So the crew first goes to the Center Quarter, but not initially to set the point. They use the calculated position as a starting point to conduct a second search for a previous establishment of that point. (again to make it simple) Just a few inches from the calculated point and about 3" below the ground surface, they find an old stone monument set by the County Surveyor in 1871 for the Center Quarter (it almost never happens that an old monument fits modern measurements so well, but I'm trying for a fairly easy example).
The existing fences fit this old monument pretty well, so the surveyor doesn't have to worry about considering the effect of unwritten rights and advising his client about what that might mean. He just does some quick calculations to adjust the line points he had calculated in the office so that they now line up with the old stone monument they just found and then sets a couple of points down each line and at the road rights of way for Brown. This is completed in about 4 hours, including travel time.
Back at the office, the surveyor draws up a map in CAD, and ends up filing it with the county. This is about 6 hours for the CAD draftsman, and 2 hours for the surveyor to review and comment. I don't know what review and filing fees are in WI, but I'll take a stab and say that they are a lot more reasonable than CA, totaling about $100.
Why So Expensive? Part 2
Now for the bill to Brown.
The surveyor charges out at $140/hr
The field crew charges out at $200/hr
The draftsman, who is also a LSIT (certification on the way to becoming a licensed surveyor) charges out at $90/hr
Why do they charge out at so much?, you ask. Well, again, I wish someone had given me Brian Allen's advice 25 or 30 years ago. There are a lot of costs to doing business from taxes and insurances, to rent and equipment costs. There are employees required to run a business who participate in the production tasks of the business that can be directly charged to the clients, and those who do general business activities ranging from marketing and accounting to mopping the floors and cleaning the toilets. You can't charge the client directly for having your toilets cleaned or for activities involved in finding more work, so those costs also have to be built into the billing rates of the production employees as business support costs. and of course, the business has to have some amount built in as a target profit margin. Depending on the type of projects or clients, that marging might be anywhere from about 6% up to about 35%.
The factor between what the employee actually makes as an hourly rate and what they are charged out at is called a multiplier. A common multiplier is about 3.0. so in our example, the surveyor's wage rate is about $47/hr, the LSIT's is $30, and the field assistant's is about $20 (assuming the surveyor is also the field crew chief).
On Brown's survey, we had the following charges:
Research
LSIT: 4 hrs * $90 = $360
Prelim field Survey
field Crew: 12 hrs * $200 = $2400
Calculations and Analysis
LSIT: 4 hrs * $90 = $360
Surveyor: 2 hrs * $140 = $280
Complete Field Survey
Field Crew: 4 hrs * $200 = $800
Complete and File Map
LSIT: 6 hrs * $90 = $540
Surveyor: 2 hrs * $140 = $280
County Fee: $100
Total bill to Brown: $5120
Now is that really so expensive? How much did Brown's family car cost, maybe $30,000? How much will Brown pay in registration, insurance, and maintenance on that car in just one year? total it all up and it's probably not far behind $5000. Add a couple of teenagers in the house who drive, and it's easily over $5000.
How much is Brown's land worth? Half million? 1 million? More? If Brown doesn't have his survey and let's Green keep on arguing until he talks himself into maybe suing Brown over some portion of the boundary and some disputed part of the property, how much will Brown have to spend on attorney's fees to protect his property. It would be several times the amount of the surveyor's fee, and in addition, a good attorney will tell Brown to have his property surveyed so they know what they have to argue with.
It was a legitimate question. I hope this explanation helps. Adding my opinion to the overall discussion, I agree with the majority, look into a 4 year degree, possibly going for a dual major of surveying and civil, or planning on adding a pre-law or law degree to the survey degree. Other useful combinations with a survey degree might be urban planning, GIS/geography, mineral engineering. There are a few avenues where a surveyor can do very well financially, but most manage to live comfortably and little more. When looking to a career, unless one is looking to areas where they can make a fortune over just a few years and get out, one should look into what they can enjoy doing for 30 years or more. Surveying has worked out well for me.
