I'm thinking about the topic of professional ethics in its effects, i.e. how a specific set of rules dealing with what the provider of a service must and must not do structure a marketplace for services. My guess is that the ideal is simply a marketplace for a particular service that is (a) sustainable and (b) not known to be inefficient (which is what efficiency is as a practical matter in the real world). Sustainable means that the system within which the service is necessary in the first place, such as the land ownership system in the US that needs surveyors, continues to operates in the same identifiable form. Efficient means that the sum of the costs of all transactions necessary to run the system is minimized over some meaningful period of time spanning many transactions.
For example, a system that has a 10% chance of any land transaction ending up in litigation that will cost one of the parties more than $40,000 is unlikely to be efficient. Likewise a system with lots of high hidden or indirect costs probably isn't optimal either.
Suppose that the terms by which land surveyors provide services were dictated entirely by whatever the land surveyor and his/her client agreed to. A land surveyor might agree, for example, to simply mark off the "approximate corners" of some tract using the best information that could be obtained in, say, an hour or two. If you were an adjoining landowner (who happened not to be a land surveyor) in that system and you observed a survey in progress on the adjacent tract, would you not want to immediately hire your own land surveyor to mark the boundary of your tract according to such favorable terms as you might shop around for yourself?
Why would this not have an excellent likelihood of turning into a dispute that ends up in court and does that probability alone suggest that the model is too expensive to be considered efficient or even sustainable?
While the alternative of land surveyors being required to research the boundaries and priority of rights of possession between adjoining landowners isn't cheap, isn't that only when the true costs of slap dash systems aren't fully reckoned?
What I have observed is the people that cause the problems generally don't pay the costs.
For example, a subdivider hires a surveyor who is willing to keep costs down so sets only pine hubs and not very well. 40 years goes by before anyone notices. Then it's a huge expensive mess to sort out but the subdivider and his surveyor are likely dead.
> What I have observed is the people that cause the problems generally don't pay the costs.
>
> For example, a subdivider hires a surveyor who is willing to keep costs down so sets only pine hubs and not very well. 40 years goes by before anyone notices. Then it's a huge expensive mess to sort out but the subdivider and his surveyor are likely dead.
Exactly. The costs of transactions in that ill-surveyed area go through the roof and what in effect happened was that the original subdivider and his surveyor simply shifted them to someone else who wasn't a party to their earlier arrangements.
> For example, a subdivider hires a surveyor who is willing to keep costs down so sets only pine hubs and not very well. 40 years goes by before anyone notices. Then it's a huge expensive mess to sort out but the subdivider and his surveyor are likely dead.
This is the reason I'm a big fan of centerline well monuments in urban/suburban subdivisions. Unlike the naked pipes and rebars that are commonly set at lot corners, well monuments are recognized by street maintenance and construction personnel as something important, even if they don't really know what purpose they serve. The result is that these monuments tend to persist undisturbed for many decades, unlike their disrespected brethren.
> This is the reason I'm a big fan of centerline well monuments in urban/suburban subdivisions. Unlike the naked pipes and rebars that are commonly set at lot corners, well monuments are recognized by street maintenance and construction personnel as something important, even if they don't really know what purpose they serve. The result is that these monuments tend to persist undisturbed for many decades, unlike their disrespected brethren.
Yes, permanence and durability definitely have to be considered in life-cycle cost calculations. Generally, I'd expect any monument that will likely survive undisturbed for more than forty years to be more economical than a series of replacements with lifespan of less than five years.
Some folks would like to think that minimum standards (of practice) might have been created to protect the general public. As in; you need professional services and you can rest assured that you will receive professional services that, at least, meet a prescribed standard.
I like to think that our minimum standards also protect the professional to an extent. And I believe they do. In our work there is a good chance that something contrary to our findings could usually be shown. As long as we operate at a defined level of diligence; finding our work to be negligent is difficult. I use the word negligent because I'm thinking there have been very few surveyors that wound up in a law suit due to a difference in professional opinion with another surveyor....there have plenty that have been sued for being negligent.
Equating minimum standards to a monetary value formulary seems as though it strips us of our professionalism. For example: I'm hired to stake a fence line for a client. The fence hombres are going to smack a rebar in the ground over my nail line and pull a string. Pull a string that they can back up a tractor mounted auger and dig holes.
As a professional I have the ability to decide what precision I'm going to use to establish this line. The precision I decide upon is directly related to the time spent, hence the fees. As a professional we should have this freedom to keep our work affordably accurate. You really don't need an OPUS solution and report on each and every point on the line. If we were encumbered by minimum standards that were too stringent, we would price ourselves out of the market.
> Equating minimum standards to a monetary value formulary seems as though it strips us of our professionalism. For example: I'm hired to stake a fence line for a client. The fence hombres are going to smack a rebar in the ground over my nail line and pull a string. Pull a string that they can back up a tractor mounted auger and dig holes.
>
> As a professional I have the ability to decide what precision I'm going to use to establish this line. The precision I decide upon is directly related to the time spent, hence the fees. As a professional we should have this freedom to keep our work affordably accurate.
I think you've just made my argument, though, if you're saying that reasonable economy is an important consideration. In fence construction, it's understood that if the fence has to be torn down and rebuilt because of surveying mistakes, that probably wasn't the most economical solution to the problem.
The professional is the person who can find the solution that is most likely to cost the least in the long run while the client will typically have some ideas that are more apt to just displace costs to future owners or bystanders.
I think that certain minimum standards represent a consensus of opinion about what as a rule will be the least costly solution over some sufficiently long period of time and generally protect clients from themselves.
I think the inherent flaw in your supposition is that a governing body can effectively legislate and enforce ethics.
A perceived need for a law requiring a "professional" level of practice indicates the profession at large may be simply practicing at a technical level.
This is an interesting topic with valid points on both sides of the argument.
I'm not a fan of centerline monuments, too many surveyors killed working in the middle of roads. In addition, requiring these monuments tends to make people believe they have more weight than other original corners, which is simply not true. I would rather see a filing law requiring grid ties. Just my 2 cents.
> I think the inherent flaw in your supposition is that a governing body can effectively legislate and enforce ethics.
If ethics are simply a set of rules or principles that guide the conduct of anyone in their dealings with others and professional ethics are a special set of rules or principles adapted for a particular professional role, why would there not be general applicable rules that a licensing board could state formally and cite as the basis for assessing the conduct of a holder of a professional license?
The critical word is effectively... a licensing board can make all the rules they wish.
Do you feel a licensing board could effectively enforce the rules?
Do you think more rules makes the profession better?
Kent
You just read the new minimum standards for positional tolerance didn't you. 🙂
They suck!
> The critical word is effectively... a licensing board can make all the rules they wish.
>
> Do you feel a licensing board could effectively enforce the rules?
>
> Do you think more rules makes the profession better?
I think that a proper set of rules definitely improve any profession practiced in a marketplace for services where market forces tend to rapidly erode the quality of those same services if unchecked. A rule that represents a professional consensus view of what at a minimum services must consist can provide a balance to the dynamic that actually ends up costing less in sum than in the chaotic scenario of all surveys costing twenty dollars that the market would otherwise eventually insist upon.
As to rules, I think that the real problem isn't with rules, but how they are stated. They tend to be enacted piecemeal to address specific problems, but never get consolidated into simpler general codes. Ethical principles are an essential ingredient of a profession. If a set of principles cannot be stated as formal rules, I'd say that they aren't very well understood.
Kent
If you mean this rule:
§663.15. Precision and Accuracy
Survey measurements shall be made with equipment and methods of practice capable of
attaining the accuracy and tolerances required by the professional land surveying services being performed. Areas, if reported, shall be produced, recited, and/or shown only to the least significant number compatible with the precision of closure.
Yes, that is a giant step backward. I'm not sure why I'd even bother adopting a rule that inconsequential. The idea that the "precision of closure" is any meaningful number governing the uncertainty in area calculation is a strange one that is inconsistent with modern practice and error analysis. It's more of a remnant of the 1970's.
Kent
I find that certain parts of the MTS are formed to ease the liability of surveyors at times in lieu of "protection of the public etc."
should I get the flak jacket out now...:-|
It's for the children
Or, save the whales, or ethics requires it.....
Couching an argument in a context that can't be disagreed without seeming to put the counter argument on lesser moral grounds is a great debate tactic.
But the fact is that MTS's address competencies rather than societal or social norms. Professional licensing boards have regulations that address unprofessional conduct or ethics. MTS's are more like a uniform fire or building code. In most states the practical affect of implementation would be asking for an Engineers stamp of approval on what a Surveyor should do on any particular project. Even if that is not the case in your particular political structure and make up of the BOR, the MTS's are still hardly an ethical construct.
MTS's benefit some consumers but certainly not all. The real benefit is to the market stabilization for the people providing the service, as I think you mentioned.
The questions that should be asked are; what is the likelihood of harm, what type of harm (physical safety or financial), of what degree (life or death, financial ruin, inconvenience, closing costs that prevent compliance with federal mandates, etc..), what does it cost to taxpayers (including those who don't own property).
Versus; what is the benefit to individual consumers, taxpayers (including those who don't own property), the profession.
And then why not make the standards extensive enough to eliminate any other possible disagreement. Theoretically this could be done and eliminate the need for long years of education and experience. Apprentices would merely need to learn the MTS's and comply with them, if as you argue, the MTS's are capable of being developed to remove the judgement based decisions.
I think MTS's are a good way to force landowners and developers to help pay for an updated cadastre. The costs are then not put so much on taxpayers who don't own property. Of course, costs are recovered or avoided as well. It used to be a consumer would get a decent survey, an abstract, and a title opinion from an attorney. Now they get an cursory survey inspection, an abstract, and title insurance. Where the survey inspection has been MTS'ed the industry has made widespread use of owners affidavits. Title insurance has widely refused to pay when needed and been involved in lawsuits for various reasons. And legislatures have listened to the title industry and enacted these marketable title acts to strengthen the industry even more. All in an effort to avoid thorough survey and modern cadastre costs. So the consumer ends up in a crap game of anothers making, with no real idea they are in the game, and no real opinion on the limits of what they own.
The U.S. has a long history of avoiding survey costs that could build a modern and stable cadastre in favor of speed and economics. So maybe MTS's can eventually force on our society what it doesn't appear to want but which we surveyors know it needs, and maybe that's the essence of ethics. On the other hand they may just enable institutionalized avoidance schemes that take the consumer out of contact with the surveyor and so leave them with no idea of options they may have.
But well trained surveyors who can make wise and appropriate decisions in consultation with client needs, without regulatory interference, seems much less burdensome to the general public. In addition it helps limit institutionalized run arounds built to avoid compliance with a generalized product of a certain cost, and makes it more likely the consumer will actually at least consult with a surveyor and thereby learn about options they may have.
I wholeheartedly agree with the idea that the "rules" should protect both and enhance the overall quality of the profession. I guess the question then has to be asked if our state boards are doing enough to enforce the rules or if they are just rules with a 'maybe' consequence attached at the end of it. I find around here one of the reasons the prices are so cheap is because the surveyors can get away with anything.
Even this: https://surveyorconnect.com/index.php?mode=thread&id=225971#p225982
I like the part where the PE steals the stamp of the surveyor and the board does nothing to the PE. Doesn't happen all the time but if that is possible in a state the rules don't apply. Might as well use the paper as kindling in the fire place.
> The critical word is effectively... a licensing board can make all the rules they wish.
> Do you feel a licensing board could effectively enforce the rules?
> Do you think more rules makes the profession better?
I highly doubt that the licensing boards run around looking for what surveyors cuss or looks crosseyed at a client, etc. However, I imagine enforcement comes along when a harm has been done and, in investigation, the cause is from a surveyor who was not following an ethical standard.
I kind of liken it to not following a traffic rule, such as using a turn signal. I'll never get pulled over for not using a turn signal, but if not using it is found to be the cause (or part of a cause) of an accident, I could imagine that I could get a ticket for the violations that contributed to the accident.
Having the rules in place can help in finding an ethical violation where it would be much to vague to determine if the rules were not in place.
> I think that certain minimum standards represent a consensus of opinion about what as a rule will be the least costly solution over some sufficiently long period of time and generally protect clients from themselves.
That would be well and good IF professional land surveying was merely a technical exercise, which it seems, many licensing boards concur with.
The problem with legislating a "consensus of opinion" is whose opinions are sought and are going to be declared "the consensus"? The engineers that dominate the makeup of the licensing boards? Yea, that has worked out well hasn't it?
Can a laundry list of objective do's and don'ts, shall's and shall not's be adequately developed that will cover every possible senerio and combination of evidence and cirumstances that can be encountered for every boundary situation? Hardly. That is apparently the problem with the many statutes and MTS that have been developed over the decades, someone seems to think that not only can it be done, but they continue to try to do so.
"Least costly solution" is hardly a standard upon which a professional opinion, developed from the best available evidence, in accordance with the correct boundary laws/doctrines, should be based upon. How about the professional land surveyor not only being allowed to use, but be expected to use his/her professional judgment? It seems to work quite well for the other widely recognized and respected "professions".
It would seem that a self-governed profession wouldn't need a lengthy objective "check-list" as a measuring device for what or what is not a professional service.
> "Least costly solution" is hardly a standard upon which a professional opinion, developed from the best available evidence, in accordance with the correct boundary laws/doctrines, should be based upon. How about the professional land surveyor not only being allowed to use, but be expected to use his/her professional judgment? It seems to work quite well for the other widely recognized and respected "professions".
Actually, if you consider the entire land ownership system in the US as a system within which land surveyors function as merely a part or component, then it's pretty much axiomatic that the most efficient system is one that (a) is sustainable and (b) operates at the least cost over some significant period of time. The reason why land surveying exists as a profession is that having third-party objective experts is less expensive in terms of system cost than just about any other alternative one can think of. A system that depends upon litigation to establish all boundaries, for example, would be an obvious fail in terms of cost. A system in which chaos grows is unlikely to be sustainable and would fail.
So it's entirely appropriate for land surveyors to consider what the larger systemic implications of their practices are. Inadequate research has an indirect cost. Inadequate monuments have a cost. Poor reporting of results has a cost. All of those have implications for the professional work of a surveyor.
