Here in Alaska it seems to be standard practice to destroy all the monuments / property corners in the path of construction. I have complained to city officials and been told that it is the responsibility of surveyors to retain these monuments – because they are the ones making money from them. I have been told by Alaska DOT that centerline Monumentation is too costly to replace so they are transitioning to single off site GPS control to reference the position of multiple sometimes 10 centerline mons. I have been told by a borough – (our counties) that if I had a problem with property corner destruction because of their projects than I should complain to the state ombudsman. Some major engineering companies have fallen in line with this also. I have done, multiple construction projects where the corners on the ground were purposefully not shown on the plans, I figured out it was purposeful because when they release the cad file for construction it shows the corners in the file. This creates a whole separate problem of proprietary evidence for the design survey surveyor.
My question is - How many surveyors use construction plans as evidence of monument location for boundary surveys when the monuments have been destroyed?
Thanks
Our monuments are almost always on the edge of the ROW so we don't have the problem.
Same here - centerline monuments are mostly gone.
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> My question is - How many surveyors use construction plans as evidence of monument location for boundary surveys when the monuments have been destroyed?
> Thanks
We have occasional reset monuments based on railroad plans and highway plans when that's all there is to work with.
"I have been told by Alaska DOT that centerline Monumentation is too costly to replace so they are transitioning to single off site GPS control to reference the position of multiple sometimes 10 centerline mons."
Is this in conformance with your State Board's policies?
No, but that doesn’t seem to matter. They are part of the same problem.
Our DOT surveyors are comical to watch, if a person looked at them any way but this it would drive them crazy seeing the profession being degraded that much.
OGRA (Ontario Canada)
With a few of my colleagues support I was able to make the point of the importance of survey monumentation with OGRA http://www.ogra.org/home.asp this past year or so.
The OGRA President at that time had long experience with the County Engineer's Office's frustration with missing monumentation it had paid for and it was now
gone !
OGRA set up this Special Provision: http://www.ogra.org/lib/db2file.asp?fileid=33710
Now all we need to 'sell the product' to the local road authorities.
If you wish to copy this SP I'd suggest contacting the OGRA and ask for Fahad Shuja P.Eng. FAHAD SHUJA who has done a terrific job IMVHO.
Cheers,
Derek
Then you need to file a complaint with your Board. ALL professionals are required to adhere to the rules, not just some.
OGRA (Ontario Canada)
Thanks for the feedback
In Florida most of the time the back of the sidewalk is right at the ROW line so the corners are usually knocked out. And no one really cares that they are.
In Oregon destruction of monuments is covered in Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS), Chapter 209.150(1). Briefly, it states “Any person or public agency removing, disturbing or destroying any survey monument of record in the office of the county surveyor … shall cause a registered professional land surveyor to reference and replace the monument within 90 days of the removal, disturbance or destruction… The costs of … replacing the survey monument shall be paid by the person … causing the…destruction.”
By law the surveyor who replaces the monument(s) must then file a survey at the County Surveyor’s Office.
The only problem with this law is that it has no teeth as far as private parties (like land owners, fence builders, landscapers and utility companies) go. If a monument is destroyed by an individual or an entity such as a utility or fence building company, there is no public agency authorized to police this action, make a determination of guilt, and levy a fine if the corner is not properly replaced by a registered professional land surveyor. Destruction of a property corner becomes a matter between private parties which is either resolved by agreement between the two parties, taken to court through a lawsuit by one of the parties, or ignored.
Regarding your question about construction plans, this law is a real eye opener as a preemptive wake up call for folks who come under the scrutiny of the state professional licensing board. If construction plans have a PEs stamp on them, a courtesy letter to the PE with the text of the statute attached really gets them more engaged with the process of preserving monuments.
And I’ve seen landowners have good results with presenting this law to neighbors or utility companies whose actions indicate they are going to destroy a monument.
Alaska has similar laws but no one wants to enforce them. I argued for a few years with all the officials involved and all it did was cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost jobs from the same officials because I wasn’t following their ways. I have resigned myself to just avoiding boundary surveys in my area because of this.
I've learned not to sweat re-setting missing corners until I come back for the final, gives the landscapers fewer targets to take out and frustrates them as far as where to place the sod. If they don't place enough, the developer is up their fanny as to why they shorted him half a pallet, if too much then I just cut into their profit. Win/win either way.
If their guy on the backhoe would not intentionally aim for the flagged stakes, they wouldn't have that problem, hoist upon their own petard.
Destruction of monuments is one of the reasons I always take a careful shot on the offsite benchmark, both horizontal and vertical, with a bipod. After construction it is often the only point left.
There is law. When I was ADOT&PF Regional Surveyor we enforced it in that the construction contract Prime Contractor would not be paid final payment until all monuments were replaced. We ensured that monuments were referenced and Monument Records were recorded prior to construction. Note in the law that it is the responsibly of the "Agency whose activities will disturb or destroy a monument". I would point this out to any Agency (State or political subdivision of the State) and tell them of their liability if monuments are destroyed by their construction activities and not replaced. Inform the landowners how they are harmed (lost their monuments and boundary definitions), and have them place inquires. The "Agencies" leave a smoking gun of their activities causing harm and violation of law with their construction plans and asbuilts.
Here is the statutory law pertinent to Alaska:
Sec. 34.65.040. Records of monument.
(a) A land surveyor who in the course of a survey establishes, reestablishes, uses as control, or restores a monument to make it readily identifiable or reasonably durable shall record a monument record, unless the monument and its accessories are substantially as described in a monument record filed or recorded under this chapter or on a survey plat of record.
(b) An agency whose activities will disturb or destroy a monument or its accessories shall have a land surveyor
(1) record a monument record before the monument or its accessories are disturbed or destroyed;
(2) restore or replace the monument and its accessories after the activities have ceased; and
(3) record a new monument record after restoring or replacing the monument or its accessories.
(c) A person who disturbs or destroys a monument shall record a notice of the disturbance or destruction in the office of the district recorder.
(d) A land surveyor may record a monument record for any monument.
(e) A land surveyor who is required to record a monument record under this section shall do so within 90 days of the completion of the survey or of the establishment, reestablishment, or rehabilitation of a monument.
(f) A monument record shall be signed and sealed by the land surveyor responsible for the survey.
> My question is - How many surveyors use construction plans as evidence of monument location for boundary surveys when the monuments have been destroyed?
I would not have any problem using construction plans as evidence to re-set corners, but hopefully it would be only part of the evidence along with some other monuments that are off-site.
But it is unfortunate what is going on there. They are not protecting the public!
To northern surveyor, I don’t know when you were head of DOT surveying but you are correct it is law but you are living in the government employee imaginary world of talk big. In the private world things don’t work like they do in your fancy building.
I am born and raised in Alaska and been surveying statewide here for 25 plus years. I can tell you that I have seen with my own eyes that DOT does not even enforce the replacement of the corners that are on the plans and in the bid to be replaced and record of monument sheets are a joke. I have personally seen this for many years and again this season. DOT does not enforce registered surveyors on projects; DOT does not even follow their own internal standards to have a registered surveyor in the field on design surveys. As a matter of fact, DOT is now specifying in the plans that the construction surveyor will not replace the corners destroyed on a project, and that DOT surveyors will do it. Unfortunately they never do.
I asked DOT about this and they responded that the surveyors employed by the construction companies are not qualified to replace the monuments. It never occurred to them to make the bad surveyors pay for their unprofessionalism and let the good ones go about their business.
If you are still connected to DOT than you will know that even now the engineers working for DOT are so unimpressed with the survey division that they are making survey decisions that the surveyors association has had to scold them about. Why do you think this is? Go ask an engineer what they think of surveyors.
As far as going to the agency responsible, I have done that and nothing happens except getting labeled as a trouble maker.
Mike, you may have time to go to all the landowners and get them informed (riled up) about their corners being destroyed but that is not realistic for a surveyor competing in the real world. It would certainly lead to the end of your commercial clients because you cost them money. That is why it is so important the surveyors employed by government, or large corporations should uphold the standards, they suffer no consequences.
Unfortunately outside of Anchorage that isn’t happening.
>Mike, you may have time to go to all the landowners and get them informed (riled up) about their corners being destroyed but that is not realistic for a surveyor competing in the real world.
Whoa, whoa, whoa AK, I think you misunderstood me. I’ve had landowners contact me about others (neighbors, contractors, landscapers, et cetera) destroying their corners and I have explained to them that the law says the offenders who knock out the corners must pay a PLS to have them reset and file a survey. I don’t think this qualifies as riling up the general population and, to the contrary, the folks who I’ve shared this information with have been happy to find out that the law favors them. And in most cases they’ve gotten the offenders to fix the problem. The corners have been reset, the public protected, local PLSs have gotten work from the letter of the law being followed and it appears to me that the only parties getting riled up are the folks knocking out corners and once they get schooled they hopefully aren’t as likely to be as haphazard a second time.
>That is why it is so important the surveyors employed by government, or large corporations should uphold the standards, they suffer no consequences.
In Oregon if surveyors - Government, private, large corporations,solo acts – don’t uphold standards they have hell to pay with the state board. All the public entities that I’m familiar with have wording in their contract documents that states the contractor is responsible to have a PLS reference and replace any monuments destroyed by construction pursuant to ORS 209.150(1). The Oregon DOT has actually set the bar high. They file “control and recovery” surveys prior to construction with a random control network and all found monuments of record shown to help facilitate the resetting of any monuments destroyed by construction. <a href="" http://lava5.deschutes.org/tiffpilot/tiffpilot.exe?FN=matrixgisimagessurveyFolder1018429.TIF&PD= 1"
">Example
Perhaps a concerted effort by the Alaska Society of Professional Land Surveyors to educate the state licensing board about the importance of enforcing your monument preservation law would help put an end to the wanton destruction of corners in Alaska?
AKPLS
Why are you not filing a complaint about this?
AKPLS
Mike Berry, I am sorry but I wasn’t referring to you with Mike – that is northern surveyor.
Jim in AZ – I already explained that complaints don’t work in Alaska, our world is small and kind of like the wild west in a way. Doers work and complainers don’t. Simple private business rule. Ask any small time surveyor here, and yes it even applies to the association and board.
