Construction surveying

ALL construction staking is hourly:

nothing goes according to plan

there is always something or somebody on line or stacked in the way

a lot of the stakes will get knocked out and need to be replaced (for some reason?ÿ it will take longer to replace one curb return stake than to stake 300' of tangent curb)

half the workers won't know what you wrote on the lath means

you never get enough time to prepare, they always want it NOW, but the site is never ready

Posted by: Dave Lindell

ALL construction staking is hourly:

nothing goes according to plan

there is always something or somebody on line or stacked in the way

all of the stakes will get knocked out and need to be replaced (for some reason?ÿ it will take longer to replace one curb return stake than to stake 300' of tangent curb)

none of the workers will know what you wrote on the lath means

you never get enough time to prepare, they always want it NOW, but the site is never ready

fixed that for ya, dave.

?ÿ

he's correct, and as an example, i gave a client- after weeks of their incessant carping- an "estimate" of what their const. staking costs would be at the beginning of an apartment complex build WITH THE CAVEAT THAT IT ASSUMED EVERYTHING WENT CORRECTLY AND ADDED 30% TO BE SAFE.?ÿ this was strictly for their budgeting purposes and was understood not to be binding in any way on either parties.

that figure gotten eaten up within 2 months.?ÿ 2 years later they had a finished apartment complex.?ÿ and FOUR former superintendents...?ÿ (the single best example of what dave alludes to above was when they asked me to carry an elevation 30' across the street- from the main site BM- for them to set a water vault- which was flush with aforementioned BM.)

Almost all I do is construction staking and I do almost everything Lump Sum but also put in there any re-staking will be Extra. With all due respect I feel the two other posts on this are really not accurate. Almost all contractors I work with understand the value of the surveyor and makes sure that things are out of the way and the site is ready for whatever needs to be staked. I always request 48 hours notice and on occasion have the "Emergency call" asking for staking ASAP. Generally I make a few phone calls and am able to re-schedule other things and get to the emergency. I provide a scope of services similar to this and Exclusions including re-staking

• Control: Verify existing control. Establish and maintain secondary horizontal & vertical control needed for entire project.
• Monument Preservation: Tie 13 existing survey monuments shown on plans, prior to construction and replace as needed post construction.
• Saw Cuts: Provide actual points for saw-cut lines for asphalt, concrete and curbing. Provide actual or offset points for grubbing limits as shown on plans if needed.
• Asphalt Path, Grade Staking: Provide grade stakes at 25-50ƒ?? station intervasl at each edge of path at sub-grade and top of rock.
• Water: Provide offset staking to waterline at 50-100ƒ?? station intervals.
• Curb: Provide approx 300 offset points with grades for new curbs.
• Grade Staking ƒ?? Roadway Sub-grade: Set grade stakes 5 wide at Typical Roadway Section 1, Sheet CP12 and 4 wide at Typical Roadway Section 2, Sheet CP12 at 25ƒ?? station intervals in horizontal and vertical curves and 50ƒ?? station intervals in straight grade tangents.
• Grade Staking ƒ?? Roadway Top of Rock: Set grade stakes 3 wide at Typical Roadway Section 1, Sheet CP12 and 2 wide at Typical Roadway Section 2, Sheet CP12 at 25ƒ?? station intervals in horizontal and vertical curves and 50ƒ?? station intervals in straight grade tangents.

I am generally a Sub-contractor to the general contractor therefor they give me a contractor and attach my proposal.

Hope this helps. Hit me up if you have any questions!

Posted by: T-Ray

Almost all I do is construction staking and I do almost everything Lump Sum but also put in there any re-staking will be Extra. With all due respect I feel the two other posts on this are really not accurate. Almost all contractors I work with understand the value of the surveyor and makes sure that things are out of the way and the site is ready for whatever needs to be staked. I always request 48 hours notice and on occasion have the "Emergency call" asking for staking ASAP. Generally I make a few phone calls and am able to re-schedule other things and get to the emergency. I provide a scope of services similar to this and Exclusions including re-staking

• Control: Verify existing control. Establish and maintain secondary horizontal & vertical control needed for entire project.
• Monument Preservation: Tie 13 existing survey monuments shown on plans, prior to construction and replace as needed post construction.
• Saw Cuts: Provide actual points for saw-cut lines for asphalt, concrete and curbing. Provide actual or offset points for grubbing limits as shown on plans if needed.
• Asphalt Path, Grade Staking: Provide grade stakes at 25-50ƒ?? station intervasl at each edge of path at sub-grade and top of rock.
• Water: Provide offset staking to waterline at 50-100ƒ?? station intervals.
• Curb: Provide approx 300 offset points with grades for new curbs.
• Grade Staking ƒ?? Roadway Sub-grade: Set grade stakes 5 wide at Typical Roadway Section 1, Sheet CP12 and 4 wide at Typical Roadway Section 2, Sheet CP12 at 25ƒ?? station intervals in horizontal and vertical curves and 50ƒ?? station intervals in straight grade tangents.
• Grade Staking ƒ?? Roadway Top of Rock: Set grade stakes 3 wide at Typical Roadway Section 1, Sheet CP12 and 2 wide at Typical Roadway Section 2, Sheet CP12 at 25ƒ?? station intervals in horizontal and vertical curves and 50ƒ?? station intervals in straight grade tangents.

I am generally a Sub-contractor to the general contractor therefor they give me a contractor and attach my proposal.

Hope this helps. Hit me up if you have any questions!

What T-Ray said. Ask them specifically what they want, then tell them specifically what it will cost them to do those things. ?ÿOnce. ?ÿEverything else is by the hour with 2 days notice. ?ÿIf they can't work with that, you don't want to work with them.?ÿ

I'd be a bit cautious of taking on a job outside of your typical practice area.?ÿ Although the work is more technical in nature and has less abstract complexity than many boundaries, there are a lot of procedural aspects and business aspects that you need to be aware of with construction staking than there are typically with boundary or topo.

The first and most important thing is if you have an error in your field data with boundary or topo, you will usually have several days or weeks and a good deal of flexibility to schedule a return trip to correct errors or omissions.?ÿ Also, at least with boundary, any errors that do get through are likely to not be found for many years, if ever.

With construction, the contractor might be working from your stakes even before you leave the site.?ÿ In almost all cases, they will be used within a day or two.?ÿ If you make a mistake and don't catch and correct it in very short order, you could be paying for the demolition and reconstruction of whatever feature was staked as well as eating the cost of having to restake it (might also get back-charged for downtime and delays).?ÿ In short, your liability is immediate in construction as compared to the mapping projects you are accustomed to.

Because of the short time between you setting stakes and the contractor using them, and also to avoid the need for return trips, you need to be aware of and habitually employ methods and procedures that not only minimize the likelihood of mistakes, but allow you to catch and correct them while you are doing the work.?ÿ Note checking after the fact is an important part of the process (and that has to be done within 24 hours), but you should have procedures in place that make note checking more of a backup safeguard rather than a first line of defense.

You need to include a clause in your contract that should the contractor suspect errors in the staking, he must notify you so that you may respond to verify or correct the staking as necessary before the contractor proceeds.?ÿ This isn't a strong defense if there is an error and once you start arguing about extras and backcharges, but it's something.?ÿ If the error is something that should have reasonably become obvious when construction from the stakes begins and they don't stop, then there's an element of contributory negligence.?ÿ As to your part on that, you need to be ready and willing to get a crew on site immediately when called to check or fix a suspected error.

Some contractors seem to work on a business model of getting the job as the low bidder with the intent of making their profit in the form of extras and backcharges.?ÿ If you have the misfortune of working with one like that, they will be hoping that you make mistakes, will pretend that they didn't notice and shouldn't have been expected to until 500' of curb had been poured and then noticed that one bad grade mismarked by a foot.?ÿ They then charge the developer to rip it all out, for their down time, and then for some reason, the cost to rebuild the same curb is at least 50% higher than the cost in their original bid.?ÿ Of course, it will all come down to being the surveyor's fault.?ÿ You should be able to see how not having good protective contract language and reliable QA/QC procedures in place can get very costly very quickly.

If your party chief doesn't have a lot of experience in construction, the contractor's foreman and site superintendent will sniff that out like sharks to blood really quickly.?ÿ They will ask for a couple extra stakes here, a few check shots there, transfer a grade to a temporary BM down the hill, etc. and so on.?ÿ Each one of those "just a few minutes" requests will add up to turn a project with a comfortable profit figured into a money loser if you don't keep a handle on these types of requests from the start.

Your crew has to be cognizant of what is and what is not in the scope of services.?ÿ They also have to have a procedure that you specify for them to handle these requests.?ÿ That might be Extra Services contract addendum sheets (a much less complicated form than it might sound like - but specified in the contract) that the chief and foreman or super fill in the specifically requested work and then foreman or super (whoever is specified as being authorized in the contract) signs off on the cost responsibility at T&M rates.

The other option if you expect your field scheduling among your various projects to be tight is that any requests for extra work, no matter how small have to go through the office, and your chief's standard answer for anything not in the original scope (which includes replacing stakes already set per original scope) is to say something like "Yeah, I'd be happy to do that for you as soon as you call ______ at the office and he gives me the OK."

You need to know what the contractor should reasonably expect in the way of staking.?ÿ Be cognizant of locally used stake markings and staking configurations.?ÿ Write those into the specific staking feature categories as T-Ray suggested above.?ÿ If you expect to be staking curb & gutter at 50' intervals and the concrete contractor insists he needs 25s, if you don't have the interval specified in your contract, you're in for an argument that you may lose or have to compromise on, increasing your costs for that staking item significantly.?ÿ If you did specify the interval, the argument will be really short if it occurs at all.

If you have lots of undeveloped RW and little existing or proposed underground, this might be a good job for your company to get its feet wet on in construction.?ÿ If there isn't a lot of room between roadway improvements and private improvements just outside of the RW, if there is a lot of underground, if there are any bridges of any kind, if there are any other factors that might make the job complicated as a technical staking exercise or logistically, consider bringing someone on board with considerable construction experience either as a new hire or as a consultant just for this project.?ÿ Existing experience is a very good investment.