Our firm is laying out anchor points for a large solar farm. The super called this morning and claimed that a couple of the points we set yesterday were about 8" out of place (debatable). Our construction project manager starts walking the super through the necessary steps to double check the points in the field. In the middle of this, the super is interrupted by one of his employees who asks us if we have the lat/long for the points in question, because he's got an app on his cell phone and can just use it to replace the points in question. I apply hand to face at this point.
Yabba Dabba Dooo.
Yeah, that's my favourite call from a contractor on the job. "We're looking at these stakes and they're not hitting right."
I had a similar call regarding a 2C tower letter a few years back. 'My Garmin says your last and long is 300 feet off'. Out of reflex I hung up...
If they said 30 feet, I'd laugh and explain it to them. When they said 300 feet, I might have started wondering about a typo. I've never seen my Garmin off 300 feet and giving a stable reading.
> If they said 30 feet, I'd laugh and explain it to them. When they said 300 feet, I might have started wondering about a typo. I've never seen my Garmin off 300 feet and giving a stable reading.
If this was more than a "few" years back, as in before SA was turned off, 300 feet off was very possible.
My personal favorite was the telecom contractor that called to tell me the elevations on my FAA 1-A letters were wrong because he checked some of them on Google Earth and the elevations didn't match. :-S
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.
Norman nailed it. Back then my Eagle Explorer was good to 50 feet most days, 300 plus on others...
When I contractor calls and says something isn't checking correctly, I pay close attention. Even though 99% of the time they are using their eyeball method.
It's a red flag that they are not properly understanding what was set, or are not reading the plans correctly. I happily meet onsite and do some checks and go over the plans.
It's when they don't call that worries me.
+1
If they don't understand your stakes, and build something anyway, guess who they come after when the construction is wrong? Being right is expensive.
> When I contractor calls and says something isn't checking correctly, I pay close attention...
Although I'm not trying to vouch for the average intelligence of some contractors, you are right. Every call should be looked into. What makes perfect sense to a surveyor may not have the same "warm & fuzzy" look to the layout crew. Unfortunately, they are the ones for which it HAS to make sense.
Wise Old Party Chief Quote:
"If it doesn't look right, it probably isn't."
:good:
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.
My favorite (which I suspect will stay that way for a while): the contractor who knocked out the two OFF-SITE benchmarks, then pounded hubs and built out by setting his iPhone (it has this awesome elevation app!) on top of various hubs and check points. I got called out when his pond overflowed the day after he finished it.
I agree. At the end of the day I would rather be the guy who kept things on track than the one who knew about a problem and let construction roll along. In this case the caller had a history...
Yea, I was a young crew chief but had a very old crew member. When he said "something doesn't look right", the crew stopped whatever we were doing and fixed the problem.
He was never wrong! I loved having him on my crew, he taught me a lot.
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Typing class 9th grade!
Many years ago 2 of us went to French Glen Or., to do a sight survey of a remote living base. We took several solars and got on with tying everything in. We picked a random point in our control survey and took more solars, we didn't want to come back. It checked within 20" and closed almost flat. We got back to the office and handed it off to an Engineering Tech to do the engineering. The next day he calls and says he can't get our B and D's to close. We ran up to his desk wondering what was wrong. We asked how he closed our numbers, he pulled out an 8 in. protractor and a scale, we just turned around and walked away.