Finding the .04'

Old Timer needs to reply with the same seriousness and intensity, "My monuments are perfect. The error you are seeing is in your measurements, not my monuments. Your crews must be doing something wrong if they don't hit my monuments perfectly."

Absoutely.  Who died and gave only them the ability to play God?

Then they had the age old argument about the C1/4, Old-timer found a monument that's used in a couple of descriptions and a highway. It's almost perfect N-S, but 8' E-W, imagine how that conversation went. 🙂

0.04' is alot in Downtown Los Angeles, but in Downtown LA, (Lower Arkansas) it's a wash.

N

He needs to ask them what their secret is to producing completely error free measurements. 

hell I'm working on a plat from 1924 and all the distances to the 10th and all the directions are only to the minute.

I'd like to see how they handle that deal.

@williwaw that's easy the planning department and the gis

He's retired but can't seem to give it up. So he's doing a remote subdivision in a nearby state that he isn't licensed in.

And people wonder why surveying is in trouble...

Everyone like this person is the reason we are in trouble.

Not Gen Z. Not Gen Y. Not Gen X, etc. "Old-timers".

So, "old-timers"... How does it feel to be the ones ruining the profession you claim to love?

And people are worried about 0.04'...? 

So, "old-timers"... How does it feel to be the ones ruining the profession you claim to love?

*WARNING* possible hijack alert.

This reminds me of a conversation my old man had recently with a local surveyor up in the UP of the Great Lakes State (incidentally one of the towns where both my old man and I got our degrees in surveying...) where said local surveyor bemoaned the idea of more licensed surveyors in the area. There's already enough licensed guys around here- if there's any more we won't have any work!

Textbook definition of '!@#$ you, I got mine' if you ask me. What happens when all those older guys retire or (let's be honest) die off?

In my area, we are all so busy, we don't have time to waste trying to train anyone.  Someday, when things slow down, and we have all the current money setting around waiting to be spent, maybe we can exercise that luxury.  We are not an area one would call a "growth" location.  Thus, no one thinks to join us.

Our county seat town has been home to one or more dentists since the creation of the town.  The current dentist is retiring and making no effort to find someone to purchase the location, equipment, customer base, etc.  A prime opportunity for someone who wants a customer base that will keep them just busy enough to raise a family with little competition.

HINT

Takes me back to my very first job transitioning from framing homes to surveying in the early 90s. Talked one of the local surveyors into hiring me on and he was at the gun and I was setting a corner in a new subdivision. The corner fell in a really swampy area and it was like standing on a water bed. Every time I shifted my weight the ground moved half a foot and the pin was might as well have been set in Jello. Over and over he was trying to dial that pin to within .03’ and it was impossible. He finally explodes screaming expletives and storms over in a rage, and promptly sinks to his knees losing his shoes. I probably shouldn’t have laughed quite so hard because it did nothing to improve his mood, but it certainly improved mine.

In my area, we are all so busy, we don't have time to waste trying to train anyone.  Someday, when things slow down, and we have all the current money setting around waiting to be spent, maybe we can exercise that luxury.

HA  Yeah right.

I guarantee the day things slow down the new excuse is gonna be "We don't have the income to train anyone right now".

Hoping wise minds prevail.

@holy-cow 

You need a buy-out.  

Eh, it's as simple as ensuring rates are high enough to attract top talent and pay them well, as well as train them.

Other professions, and even trades and service sector, train their people.

The plumbing crew that pipe-burst 40 feet of sewer line in our backyard, and the HVAC crew that installed our heat pumps each had an extra crew member-trainee on board, and from what I understood that was SOP. For the same time spent doing each job, a 2-person survey crew would have cost about 50-70% of what I paid.

They figured out how to make it work, surely we can too.

@rover83 

Sure, but how did this thread go this way, LOL.

It's got nothing to do with trainees. 

My 2 oldest kids have both had to hire Plumbing and HVAC companies and have purchased 5 homes between them. They’ve never had a property survey. Plumbing plugs and heat and air stop working even when interest rates rise. Normally real estate sales slow down and so does the demand for surveys.

I wonder how much training those Plumbing and HVAC employees get in the office.

I’m not suggesting we should not provide training, I am suggesting that with many firms being larger today it is unrealistic to expect to receive mentoring in the field and the office.  Before we had cell phones and smart phones field crews made decisions instead of being micro managed by the office. 

hell I'm working on a plat from 1924 and all the distances to the 10th and all the directions are only to the minute.

I'd like to see how they handle that deal.

...they would add the zero to the end of the dimension and two zeros for seconds, then everything not perfect would be a MAJOR error in their book...

My $0.02 about expert measurers (slightly jaded opinion against those that call themselves surveyors and pull s%#t like not honoring a monument that is less than 0.50' from their calculated monument) rant for the morning is over (for now).....

All one has to do is follow one’s own survey to find out one is not repeatable on the 2 or 3 hundredth level.