As unfortunate a situation as this is, there are many issues that our profession never confronted, and for this reason, we are facing complete dissolution:
1) As some have stated, when it came to unlicensed activity, the problem was never dealt with. We complained about it for a decade, but that's as far as it went
2) "Mortgage Surveyors" This too was never addressed. This area of our profession is one lowball after the other
3) Contractor Surveying - We lost this battle long ago. When this occurred, we needed to increase our numbers to strengthen our lobby. Instead, we made it more expensive than ever by FORCING us into a collegiate program. Bad idea
4) Technology - we needed to make most of technology's use a Surveyor mandatory situation. But since we didn't increase our numbers, we couldn't lobby to get this enforced
5) "We're over-regulated" We complained, oh, we complained. The Board made some changes the last few years that have relaxed the code, but some of it is still confusing to many, and the code is still outdated. Stripping it and starting over isn't a bad idea
6) Retired "double-dippers" - There are many semi-retired Surveyors collecting a pension from their past Govt job that are signing for some un-registered majority "licensed business owner". They sign Surveys for a pittance. This is manipulation of the industry by non-Surveyors, and forces legitimate small Surveyor businesses into the lowball arena, leaving little funds for political action
7) FSMS & Board arrogance - Let me go ahead and say it. FSMS should be called the "Florida Professional Golfers Surveyors and Mappers Society" (FPGSMS). Every time one goes to their website, their schedule is one golfing event after the other, with a few odd charity events mixed in. The Board? Oh yeah. A bunch of Surveyors beholden to Engineering firms. Nero would've been proud
8) Govt agencies pretending to use "Small business" Surveyors - Cities, Counties & Districts in Florida have all these great sounding SBE programs, but when the rubber hits the road, most of them use Surveyors THEY KNOW, who usually have medium, not small, businesses, under the guise of "small firms not having the experience to handle the scope of services". How does one get experience if not given the opportunity?
9) Surveyors that work for Engineers & Contractors - I hate to bust on you guys, but you've had cushy office jobs for a long time, and forgot how difficult it was to pass the exam. You quietly look down upon "Mortgage Surveyors" and forgot that at one time we were all in the same boat. There is safety in numbers, but that fancy cruise ship you were on got to your heads
Apologies to the offended. We all have to make a living, I realize that. Let's get the truth on the table and move ahead
Macheteman,
The land surveying profession certainly has an image problem. We have failed to get out the message that we alone are authorized and qualified to determine property boundaries and to solve problems associated with them. And this has lent itself in some measure to having ourselves grouped in with the list of trades that is on the chopping block in Florida. That being said, what you have railed against in this post and previous posts of yours, is more to the symptomes and not the foundation of the problem. The problem is that the LS profession is plagued by unprofessionalism and a recalcitrant, non-progressive and contrary mindset pervades the industry. The counter to this is to have in place effective controls to hold a blanket of professionalism over the activitie of the practitioners, such as a degree requirement, CEs, a strong professional society with a lobby and PAC, most of which you seem to argue against. But to be specific:
1) Probably has little to do with the current crisis. See my general comment above.
2) Mortgage surveys? I thought they didn't exist in Florida.
3) You're against the 4-year degree requirement. I'm not surprised and I realize my chance of convincing you otherwise is just about non-existent. I will simply say that Landscape Arch.s and Geologists and GISers all require 4-year degrees, and you think we are going to keep up with them by requiring less?!?!
4) I think that you mean that we should have been required to be involved in GIS by statute. I don't agree with you about the statute part, but I definitely think that we should have been in the midst of it and heavily involved and leading the game.
5) I somewhat agree with you, most Standards of Practice and Min. Tech. Standards go a little bit overboard and leave too little to the surveyors professional judgements. But they are probably the result of seeing too many cartoon survey maps being passed off as a professional, competent product. See my general comment above.
6) I'm sure it happens to some extent. See my general comment above.
7) Are you among the legions of surveyors who do not join the professional societies, do not work to make them better, and yet complain about their poor performance? It sounds like you are. In this item you also reveal a bias against surveyors who derive much of their income from working with engineers. That is an arbitrary bias. It does not mean that they are the servants or lackeys of engineers any more than is a boundary-focused rural LS or PSM the underling of Ma and Pa Kettle.
8) no comment
9) See my comment on item 7
Stephen
> 2) Mortgage surveys? I thought they didn't exist in Florida.
They don't exist by definition in the Florida statutes. They would be categorized as a Boundary Survey. Obviously, "mortgage survey" is one where a refinance or sale is imminent and requires a survey for closing. This is nothing new, but in Florida, any survey for this matter almost always falls into the category of a boundary survey. However, they are still colloquially called "mortgage surveys" even though they aren't defined by the statutes.
Darrell is right about mortgage surveys being boundary surveys, and Machetteman is correct that there are companies that specialize in "mortgage surveys", many of which put out bad surveys. That doesn't mean this didn't have the board's attention, though. I went back and looked through the news letters sent out by the BOR, and was surprised to see how many of the "known offenders" in this area had made the violations section of the news letter. While most of it was just fines and probation, I saw a few "license revoked" for surveyors who were the surveyor of record for some of the bigger mortgage survey mills.
Then it sounds like the system was working as intended.
Stephen
All of this a result of the land surveying community being entirely too quiet, fragmented, and without a unified front.
The Truth is in the eye of those served by the Profession.
This de-regulation is not surprising really. Consider the following:
1) Could you show real harm to the public by unlicensed practice, or was it merely a violation of statute? Much surveying is performed by unlicensed surveyors that is of excellent quality, especially in the construction industry.
2) Mortgagee's decide what services are valuable for their purposes. There has been a shift in the way the mortgage industry works (Title Insurance). If inspections are what they want, they will find someone to perform them. A Professional Surveyor is not needed for this service any more than a degree and years of experience are needed for an appraisal inspection. But if a Professional surveyor has no other work and wants to perform these, why not? Lenders will merely find someone else to do it. They will not go back to having surveys performed.
3) See number one above. If the work is being widely and consistently performed satisfactorily without Professional oversight, then it probably should not be included in regulated tasks. Successful businesses are not run by stupid people. They will use the most cost effective personel, equipment and procedures. Professional service requires some special knowledge unobtainable by the average worker, and that adds value.
In todays society you will never convince any sophisticated parties that a true Profession exists without at least a bachelor degree requirement, specific to the Profession, that has a standard and accepted base curriculum, across the Country. This curriculum would have to include advanced study of some topics that not only add value to some sector of business and society, but are also unique to the Profession, and knowledge of which is not easily obtainable through other means.
4) Regulation of the use of technology is never going to happen. Anyone can accurately measure and use GIS and CAD in todays world. There are some small segments of service within all that requiring advanced knowledge not easily obtainable by repetitive use of the equipment or software on real life projects. Some of these small areas might fall under professional regulation, but the majority of the work is not professional in nature. Surveyors did not miss the boat on GIS. It's an Ark that welcomes all. Get on it and grow your business, or get over it.
5) True. If MTS are needed; actually if MTS are even possible, that's a clear sign it's not a true Profession.
6) Again, if it's possible to consistently turn out quality service without real professional involvment, then the stamp truly is rubber and not really required. How much is it worth? If one can't show real harm to the public by this practice then the problem is it shouldn't be regulated. If real harm can be shown then these folks would have their licenses pulled or they would be sued out of business.
7) I agree. The leadership of the past 30 years has not helped the profession. It has been wrongheaded and short-sighted in my view. It still clings to ideas such as GIS should be a surveyors function. And, we should somehow force people to get mortgage surveys. And, surveyors should not get involved in field engineering, wetlands identification, legal research, or anything else that relates to working with the land outdoors but requires college education. And we're all experts on land boundaries because we successfully answered 5-10 questions about them on an exam once.
8) True. Qualification based selection has some cronyism to it, or sometimes seems that way. But that's business all over, not limited to any particular service or commodity sector. One of the ways to break into this type of work is through partnering with other small firms. But it's not easy and will take persistance and more than one attempt.
9) Multi-discipline firms have the advantage of spreading their overhead costs around with more people working to pay for them. They can charge less for surveying projects when they have the engineering work to go with it. When times are slow it makes more economic sense to low bid other types of survey work in order to avoid layoffs. Again, this is not limited to surveying. It's always tough to compete with larger companies. Not many mom and pop grocers or hardware or farmers anymore either. If you can't find a way to distinguish yourself then you probably will not succeed and will probably be looked down on. It's the way of the world today. Small businesses that survive today have found a way to stand out for some particular service or commodity. Usually a combination of quality in some special area with pricing and timeliness. Definitely a tough row to hoe though.
Fact is, the days of performing many mathmatical deed stakings per year for mortgage purposes are over. The days of driving many stakes for construction purposes are over. The surveying profession has not prepared itself for the future and now the future is here. The time to move on was 30 years ago and the last ditch efforts of the past 15 years have not addressed the realities the profession has and will face.
It's not too late, but surveyors have got to figure out what special knowledge they should have and what role they play in todays world. It is of the type that benefits the public by regulating it, then by all means work for regulation, and requiring the currently recognized professional path. If it is not, then work for some lesser certification of particular task areas. Everything else is putting the cart before the horse, or just attempting to limit access to a meaningless rubber stamp.
I'm not against the college requirement, I'm against the exclusivity of it. As for membership, suffice it to say that I have multiple in the industry.
Also, I'm fully aware there are no "Mortgage Surveys", that's the reason I put it in quotes
Thank you. We can move forward when we start to realize what's putting us on the chopping block
The system hasn't been working. That's why there's no need to keep us around.
And it was an article that appeared in the Oct '10 issue of Professional Surveyor entitled "You won't like this" that got so many collective panties in a wad on this board. Yup, and it was written by a Florida 'GISP', who with much foresite (pardon the pun), stated "the surveying profession no longer exists." For Florida anyways, guess he was pretty accurate in that statement.
You mean this article?
http://www.profsurv.com/magazine/article.aspx?i=70814
Who is going to read legal descriptions and interpret them correctly then?
Heh, does it really matter? In the public eye, GIS'er or surveyor, won't matter in Florida, they'll both be unregulated practices, and I'm pretty sure the GISers will charge a bit less. Sad but f'n true...
Excellent observations Duane.
