Is construction staking allowed in your state without the requirement of a license?
(If you answer this question, please note which state you are from - thanx)
Do you believe that a license SHOULD BE a requirement for construction staking?
thanx to all,
geezer
In GA a licensed LS is not required to stake improvements for construction unless they are related to the boundary of the property. I ask how everything on a construction site can be unrelated to the boundary when the boundary is THE controlling factor in where you can build something but it doesn't seem to matter. The GA State Board does not have the man power to enforce the laws we do have governing the practice (or should I say trade?) of land surveying. There is little chance they will ever put construction layout under our umbrella.
If a LS license was required my work load would have been triple back in the boom time. As it were, I would estimate there were 3 'layout guys' for every licensed surveyor in GA during the late 90s into 2008. A lot of those unlicensed guys disappeared when the big construction slowed/stopped. Most are probably roofers, painters or driveway repairmen now.
Geezer-
FYI and he is still doing boundary work I understand !
Cheers
Derek
In Ga., not as rule, no. I don't know if maybe the Ga.DOT doesn't require a person in the firm bidding on their work to have a surveyor's ticket. But, if you think about it, does a brick layer have to have a license? If the end results of a person's labor doesn't affect anything but a bottom line on a budget if they screw something up, then that's just a market at work. When the results of a person's labor can affect the general public's 'health and well being', then there probably should be some sort of regulation, i.e. license requirement, in place.
But, that's just my opinion.
Alaska......nope!
-JD-
In Alabama you do not have to have to be a licensed land surveyor to do construction staking.
However, the company I work for has several clients that build at least 3-4 big apartment complexes each year. The big grading companies that always to the site work all normally have their own layout guys that to all the staking on site. However, our clients always ( or typically in our contract) to stake the buildings. Needless to say I always get a phone call from the lay out guys saying that my buildings are slightly off or my FFEs are bad. 99.9% of the time everything on my end is exact (after having to make another trip to the site and check all my staked points) and the lay out guys are just needing a finger to point at someone after they made a mistake on something. So yes I wish the state board would require construction staking to be done by a Licensed Surveyor. It would bring in more work to surveying businesses, espically in today terms where majority of companies are hurting right now.
Utah - not required.
Where would the limit be? Plan takeoff's? Stake jumping? String lines? Rough-in by the plumber? We license boundary surveyors, not construction crews.
JBS
Not required in Washington.
-KJ
Not required in Texas. In response to Snoop I can see if a construction surveyor was given enough control on a job that he would not need to be tied to the boundary.
New Zealand only requires licencing for boundary work
> Not required in Texas. In response to Snoop I can see if a construction surveyor was given enough control on a job that he would not need to be tied to the boundary.
where does the control come from and what is it related to? it ALL ties back to a boundary.
Control is established from the boundary, of course. As long as the boundary has been identified and marked appropriately, then I'm off. (that's why I hate the red/yellow plastic caps)
-JD-
In AZ any reference to a property line must be determined by a RLS, but on site anything goes. So yes, the control work needs to be. I know a few PE's who push the envelope about what constitutes control with the rationale of "necessary and incidental to the project", especially if they have a survey in their hand perhaps 10 plus yrs old, and then they do their own topo.
Fortuantely most agencies also require that their projects are staked under the supervision of a RLS, and most decent contractors are smart enough to want to shift the liability to a RLS.
Consider the construction staking jobs contracted by licensed surveyors and engineers. What percentage of the actual workers on the site actually have a license? Very few in my experience. There is some guy in an office hundreds of miles away stamping anything that might need stamped, but, he has never been on the site and never intends to. How does this make the work any better than totally non-licensed crews?
CA: licensure as a land surveyor or civil engineer is required for construction staking.
> There is some guy in an office hundreds of miles away stamping anything that might need stamped, but, he has never been on the site and never intends to. How does this make the work any better than totally non-licensed crews?
Totally agree. But that can also be said for 90% of all boundary surveys done these days. But the key element is "under the supervision" of a RLS, the envelope of which also gets greatly pushed. There is a genuine disconnect somewhere along the line.
Many RLS's don't want anything to do with construction staking, it's just more of a necessary evil to pay bills. That's where I fit in. Once the control is established, I'd just as soon turn it over to the contractor.
Wait until the topic drifts towards machine control...
Jim,
Do you have a citation for that? I would (I AM)be curious as to how it is worded in the statutes, law, or whatever.
tjanx,
Geezer
Nope, CT
Oklahoma decided a few years ago to keep construction layout out of the 'professional' category.
There are, however, plenty of contract documents I have seen dealing with pre-construction conditions of dirt quantities that do require a licensed individual (but it's not a State law) .
Mainly requiring the contractor to formally accept the "original surface" by retaining a licensed surveyor to verify those conditions. A report from the surveyor stating that he found corroborating measurements are, at times, required by contract before the contractor is issued a notice to proceed.
> Do you have a citation for that? I would (I AM)be curious as to how it is worded in the statutes, law, or whatever.
Here you go:
Business and Professions Code
§8726. A person, including any person employed by the state or by a city, county, or city and county within the state, practices land surveying within the meaning of this chapter who, either in a public or private capacity, does or offers to do any one or more of the following:
(a) Locates, relocates, establishes, reestablishes, or retraces the alignment or elevation for any of the fixed works embraced within the practice of civil engineering, as described in Section 6731.
(b) through (n) A whole bunch of other stuff.
Engineers have an identical subsection at §6731.1(a), with the only other survey authority for engineers listed under 6731.1(b), being topo surveying.
