How many of you here do strictly construction survey or settingout.

Used to do it. Walked away and let anyone else do it who wanted to do it. Different strokes for different folks. Not my cup of tea, no matter how well it pays.

I'm more than happy to give referrals.

Holy Cow, post: 426856, member: 50 wrote: Used to do it. Walked away and let anyone else do it who wanted to do it. Different strokes for different folks. Not my cup of tea, no matter how well it pays.

I'm more than happy to give referrals.

if you dont mind me asking what do you do now? and why did you stop doing it?

The vast majority of my land surveying work now is boundary work. A few ALTA's here and there, some topo work and a bit of road and bridge preliminary data. Worked my last Wal-Mart in 1991.

I don't tolerate ignorant bullies at all. Too many superintendents that I encountered thought being a bully was going to motivate me in some fashion. Only if you measure motivation in negative numbers. It may work well on certain categories of workers but it won't work at all on me. I have too many alternatives available to help me maintain a pleasant attitude.

My last serious construction job was nearly 30rys ago after a few coal turbines, shopping malls, rail systems, bridges, modernized woodyards, paper machines, rail and truck car dumpers, conveyor tunnels and too many miles of water, sewer, concrete streets, highways and electric transmission lines.
I was very happy to have left all the asphalt, concrete and no shade project sites to enter into the wonderful world of strictly boundary surveying.
One thing they all have in common is measuring accurately and consistently and the love of the job.

I have an arrangement with the local large earthwork/paving contractor and do 99% construction with an occasional boundary survey if the guy that owns the company wants one. Agreement with him is he pays me enough not to work for somebody else, and I take care of whatever needs to be done. There are a couple of other guys that are employees that help out and are taking over some of the file building because of the volume of contracts right now, but I'm the only one with a license, which is a requirement on state and Corps projects. Mostly heavy highway, some site work. Not as many opinions to deal with as there are in boundary work.

I have been a salary employee of a Construction Company for 18 years now. I still do a little boundary work but most of it is for the family that owns the Company.

James

98% Construction Staking here! I love it, most people in my area don't! More for me!

That's the spirit! Life is much better when we do what we enjoy instead of what grates on us every day.

Holy Cow, post: 426860, member: 50 wrote: I don't tolerate ignorant bullies at all. Too many superintendents that I encountered thought being a bully was going to motivate me in some fashion. Only if you measure motivation in negative numbers. It may work well on certain categories of workers but it won't work at all on me. I have too many alternatives available to help me maintain a pleasant attitude.

amen. actually had a PC working for me for a while who'd spent the previous 25 years doing nothing but layout. came to find out over a bit that he couldn't function unless somebody was screaming at him all the time. and, of course, in turn he was making his helpers' lives miserable. got to the point where he'd start yelling at me in what i believe was an attempt to elicit an in-kind response.

finally had to let him go. the work he did was... ok... but my god did he make it a tense working environment.

he immediately went back to building parking garages or something.

Sometimes you end up doing both, boundary morphs into construction.

I'm starting one of those next week.

I'd say we do 5-10% construction at the most, laying curb and gutter blue tops yesterday, that is really a subdivision and ALTA survey and since we did all the topo and lot layout,,,,,,,,,,,,

20% construction. Mostly urban, like @38.9979518,-77.1041207,221m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en'">this water tank site...not much curb & gutter, house stake out.

Just sent out a proposal for 320 +/- miles of gas pipeline stakeout/as-built this morning

Yes on every construction site there is a toxic personality

1st day on site talk to everyone and locate the toxic ignorant bully
document there behavior.

Send a email to the management team that the toxic A hole has to go
be sure to send back up notes.

Hire HA bikers to work bully over

Peter

I have been on the same construction site for the past three years, twin TBM mined tunnels and station boxes for light rail. I have worked on a wide variety of survey projects and they all have their pros and cons, I do feel that as an Industry/Profession we should focus on unity rather than division in terms of true blue boundary surveyors and construction folks.

I have two jobs.
1 - Employed by a general contractor with good salary and benefits doing nothing but in-house construction layout. (No license required in NJ for that)
2 - Own my own private consulting firm doing professional land surveying, mapping, subdivisions, and occasional layout for small jobs.

So I guess my answer is yes and no.

I did quite a bit of construction related surveying back in the early 70s, and still do some construction related Control work, but I pretty much walked away from (and have avoided) construction work for the last 40 years. There IS a certain satisfaction in seeing your project go from a "flag line" to a Road that you can drive on, that is different than just knowing that there is a Monument over there in the trees that you set.

I certainly DON'T miss slope staking, red/blue heads, or dodging bulldozers. The stress level on construction projects, (and not being able to take a pee, or shoot your rifle, any time or place), is also something that I don't miss either.

Loyal

Loyal, post: 426986, member: 228 wrote: (and not being able to take a pee,

Beware of all the game cameras in the woods! You might find yourself and little willy the newest hit on the internet and face book. 🙂 Nice weekend to all, JP

About 5% of my work is construction stakeout. I never look for stakeout work but if it comes my way through projects I have done topo or boundary on I will take it on. I probably charge way more than others in my area as it is not my preferred line of work.

funny, I have a love / hate relationship with construction. Our company does a decent amount of layout for various firms and we have worked hard to stay away from the contractors that want to just puff out their chest.

Many moons ago I remember me and another guy going to a site where the site super came across very arrogantly and was loud and obnoxious. Back then we were young enough that we just laughed at him and it took the power away from him. I would definitely not suggest this approach now but I must say that we became pretty friendly with him after that. Some guys will bully you if you allow them to - some are just arrogant and will not change.

The key also is being able to make the checks to back yourself up. We had a storm sewer guy claim that our stakes were wrong and the inlets were not matching the curb we were staking. Had a meeting with the owners of the site and the owner of the construction site. Turns out they left our original storm sewer offset stakes in along with the curb stakes. We pulled the offsets from our old storm stakes and they matched the new curb perfectly. The construction owner was dumbfounded and very apologetic - turns out that his guys simply built the box in the wrong place.

As I'm sure many could, I could tell many, many stories of the things that go on at these sites. We now work with people that we have great relationships with and that has been a huge benefit to this type of work. The biggest thing we have found is to make checks before and after and be able to show your work when you need to.

After all this it looks like the construction layout is going more to the firms that employ their owns guys for this work. I would not be surprised to see that this falls away from the private survey firms in the next ten years or so.

98.7% Construction Layout.

Power Plant, 14 and 17 story hotels, 17 story apartment building, substation, 6 & 5 story office buildings... from a recent review of the last 2 years.