Construction Surveyor

I did the same thing once in my career. The experience I gained has been invaluable. I hope you're prepared to WORK.

I guess the biggest education I gained was in materials, contract administration and management. Remember who you work for and why you're out there. Memorize the pay-items on each job.

Oh, and get used to those little bottles of shampoo and cream rinse...

Nothing I hate more than WORK!....that's why I currently limit myself to about 16 hours of it per day 😉

I'm hoping to learn some stuff about the actual construction process, which will fill in gaps left by having only surveyed before. That should probably make me better at laying things out in a way that is most useful to them.

You need to talk with RFB on this site, he is with a large reputable land development company here in Central Florida. B-)

When something goes wrong, you will be blamed first. Be prepared to find the problem and show who made the mistake. Take good notes. Never leave the site without checking and rechecking your work and they understand your forest of lath.

SD

Check the design to be sure it works as intended - engineers can and will make mistakes on plans and CAD files. You will be expected to catch engineering mistakes, errors, blunders PRIOR to it getting built. Document everything.
As-builts often take a lot longer to get approved than you thought, and may require multiple submittals - each city and utility has different requirements.

My opinion is that it all depends on your objectives. It seems that you are a dual registrant, so I question the need to bite off 60 hr work weeks dealing with a bunch of yahoo contractors (likely your subs). You'll still be on the hook. Start your own gig and become competition instead.

Look up a certain very experienced construction surveyor fellow beerlegger who goes by Roadhand. Pretty sharp guy who has done some pretty heavy lifting on DOT jobs in DFW area, and no doubt this and that here and there. I think he's back in Austin now.

Construction surveying is WAAAYYY different than boundary surveying. I'm too old anymore for it, but years ago it was kind of fun. Nothing better than looking at a 1/4 mile of hubs & markers you set, and they all line up. Better yet, the contractor doesn't have any problems, with grade in particular.

Good luck

Grow a set of eyes on the back of your head and an extra thick skin.

Document important conversations immediately. Be prepared for the 'I never said that' routine when dukey makes contact with fan.

I do have a good deal of construction layout experience, just not working directly for the contractor. The PE, PLS licenses are a plus for finding mistakes, but nobody is perfect and I am certainly more of a PLS than a PE.

As far as starting my own show, having a family of 5 with one income in the high cost-of-living northeast and a need for health insurance kind of precludes me from that for the time being....

Some construction companies want the engineering mistakes caught, some others want to build it wrong so that they can back-charge the design-engineer for:

-Downtime while the problem is figured out and/or redesigned
-Demo'ing what was built wrong
-Rebuilding it correctly

I have seen more and more construction companies going to this approach as a way of charging nice inflated figures on top of the very lean original contract fee.

Don't let anyone push you into doing stuff in a hurry, and learn to sift out the set out that is needed tomorrow from the non urgent that can wait for days or even weeks even although someone is chasing it. Controlled inefficiency is worth cultivating.

Keep an eye on your instruments, if someone bumps or drops them they won't tell you. If you get an office get a lock on the door!

Always over order pegs, laths etc, nothing worse than being six short at the end of the day.

Ditto the thick skin and good CYA notes.

Make the project engineers and inspectors your best friends.

Learn to speak to everyone on the site, be it explaining decimal feet to the concrete guys or explaining, to the cowboy on the pan, the value of the grade stakes he just wiped out. Speak their language. Believe it or not, the occasional "FU very much" or "middle finger salute" can be very effective at getting your point across while earning you cred with many operators/foremen/supers on a project as most of them have "thick skin".

We work on an industrial sites, cement plants, ect. and it's much different than what I understand land surveying to be. With todays software and technology, not much thinking is required, depending on the superintendents you will be working with. You will have to become creative with layout at times. I work as a crew cheif currently. I read prints, calculate the points and send the coordinates to my crews data collector using TBC. simple.

To extend on my previous message..

After reading some of the previous comments, allow me to clarify some OBVIOUS misconceptions that most of the land surveyors have here...

Construction survey is much tougher work. As a rod man or an instrument man, it will be much more physically demanding. A LOT more precision is required. When setting anchor bolts, in most cases, a sixteenth is our tolerance. We have had to set several elevations +/- 1mm, where as land surveyors can be within several inches on every thing.

Now to pay scale. Here in Texas starting off as a land surveyor they range from $12-$15 hourly. We just hired someone fresh into the business at $18.00 as a rod man. Party chiefs can make upwards of $40/hr. All of this is including Per Diem in most cases.

Dan

Having done and still doing this I can say listen to williwaw about being prepared to grow a thick skin, and to document everything. My personal advice it to get a Standard Diary and use it. Take it to every meeting, pull it out anytime you are talking to the engineer, developer, architect, and any sub-contractor who wants something. Then let them see you documenting it all. It will cut way back on the trying to throw you under the bus when some snafu rears it ugly head, and it will at some point. My little red book has saved my bacon many times even down to being asked 6 months later why did you lay this out for a sub? I was always able to open the book and show em my note "staked access ramp for so and so per supers request"

And dont be afraid to tell the equipment operator he is full of it when he says well I cant see those stakes from up here. 😉

> Some construction companies want the engineering mistakes caught, some others want to build it wrong ......

Not a very good business plan.

My advice is to not be paranoid about someone being out to stick it to you. Do what you do best, document, and check, check, check. Its either right or its wrong and it doesnt take very long to figure out which it is. The powers that be understand that joe dirtguy can be replaced, usually by someone on his crew. You cant be replaced so easily. You will be one of the smarter people on the site so act like it and share your knowledge with not only your people but the production crews as well. Show them how to check you, as well as themselves and before you know it nobody is questioning anyone.

Thats my take, but there are several other Construction Surveyors on here that Im not qualified to turn angles for that may have a different view.

Wayne,Austin was more of a visit, I got my marching orders within the first week. We signed a lease today in ElPaso. :woot:

Best of all to ya Roadie. I'm kinda throwing darts at maps nowadays because this zip code sucks. I just liked the terrain in Austin and certainly the political climate in TX, but getting old sucks (only 60). Plus SWMBO has a grandkid, and she won't move too far, especially to MI so I can be with mine.

....hmmmmm

I won't say Go Stars, but best of luck with the realignment. Tough division. Fuggitabout the Cowgirls, another 8-8, maybe even 7-9.

> To extend on my previous message..
>
> After reading some of the previous comments, allow me to clarify some OBVIOUS misconceptions that most of the land surveyors have here...
>
> Construction survey is much tougher work. As a rod man or an instrument man, it will be much more physically demanding. A LOT more precision is required. When setting anchor bolts, in most cases, a sixteenth is our tolerance. We have had to set several elevations +/- 1mm, where as land surveyors can be within several inches on every thing.
>
> Now to pay scale. Here in Texas starting off as a land surveyor they range from $12-$15 hourly. We just hired someone fresh into the business at $18.00 as a rod man. Party chiefs can make upwards of $40/hr. All of this is including Per Diem in most cases.

i have to ask how do you get this 1mm 1/16inch accuracy on a construction site. i am a construction surveyor as well but with the amount of equipment/people and material moving around i have come to accept that sub mm work just isnt possible (realisticly) sure my instrument tells me im doing it that doesnt mean it is. not to mention if you have to return another day try to make that previous layout match to sub mm just isnt happening.

Working directly for the contractor involves a shift in perceived status, construction surveyors often feel appreciated less working directly for the contractor than coming in as a sub.

Being on site all the time can lead to survey requests and planning deficiencies resulting in a tendency to lay things out "by the seat of your pants" more often than it should. I would try to avoid this, but if that is the culture of the company it can be very hard to overcome.

Loosing the division of another company can result in catering to requests that in your previous life you would be able to turn down, staking in inches for example :-O . It is still important to set proper boundaries in what you will and will not do.

The repetition of it all can be hard on the soul, your millage may vary, but as a field guy on the the things I always liked was going different places and doing different things with different people. The grind of going to the same place and doing the same thing with the same people (exaggerated for emphasis) can be a bit draining.

I am surprised about the focus of the comments on preparations for the blame game, I think that one is kind of a constant across the entire industry, and if anything is a little less when working in house.

We were using a Sokkia digital auto level and had to take the shots at 1AM three days in a row to insure accuracy and no thermal expansion.

Most total stations should be able to put you with in a sixteenth (0.0052 ft) all day..