For most of my career I've done about 90% design phase support and about 10% construction. There is a big apartment building boom going on in Portland right now, and for the last year I've been about 75% construction staking in support of those.
Gregg Gaffney, post: 427090, member: 1111 wrote: The biggest thing we have found is to make checks before and after and be able to show your work when you need to.
Gregg Gaffney, post: 427090, member: 1111 wrote:
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.
over the last few years i'd say the opposite is true around here- so much of what used to be handled internally is now farmed out. not sure if it's so that the GC has somebody to blame and/or sue (which i suspect is the case), or if by some bizarre metric it ends up being cheaper. all i know is i was doing a TON more staking than i ever had- both in the sense of the number of jobs and then also in the amount of stuff being staked on each job. it's almost as if the entire construction industry around here has moved to the home depot model: hire a couple (semi)knowledgeable managers and a bunch of low rent, low brain grunts. both the number of laths/nails/hubs we set on jobs and the number of absurd gaffes we figure out and/or fix are exponentially higher than even a decade ago.
(just remembered about a year ago being on a site where the concrete guy wanted us to lay out every last corner of a slab- like 25+. when i pulled out a tape and showed him 3-4-5 he acted like i'd just alit from a martian chevrolet.)
Years ago in the DOT, construction staking was all we did- you name it, we staked it. Nowadays, we do not have anywhere near as many surveyors as we used to have and so it depends on the local office and the mindset therein. Specifically, we still stake drainage here but not a lot beyond that. And at my age, I'm fine with it. It does give me much more time to resolve R/W boundary issues in the county I'm located in, which plague our agency for numerous reasons.
The only superior evidence is that which you haven't yet found.
Fu3l3r, post: 426854, member: 11864 wrote:
i work for a concrete outfit here in northern california
Note that anything south of Williams is actually Southern California if you ask anyone living north of Williams.
To me, everything south of Williams is Southern Arizona, and generally too hot to work in. Everything north (in Arizona) is Paradise (no- not the one in Nevada...
Love starting a large construction project and seeing it through to as-builts. Enjoy the interfacing with the trades and helping them with the layout and information they and the engineering staff needs. I've always said that a PC on a construction site is the smartest kid in the slow class. Last 3 projects I ran survey on had price tags of 100M, 500M, and 1.2B, then I retired. Only ran into abusive personalities early on in my career, as you get older and more experience they seem to go away.
clearcut, post: 432300, member: 297 wrote: Note that anything south of Williams is actually Southern California if you ask anyone living north of Williams.
I spent most of my childhood in Bakersfield and have been informed that it is not in Southern California by people who grew up south of the grapevine.
Jim in AZ, post: 432308, member: 249 wrote: To me, everything south of Williams is Southern Arizona, and generally too hot to work in. Everything north (in Arizona) is Paradise (no- not the one in Nevada...
Paradise is east of Chico.
Dave Karoly, post: 434621, member: 94 wrote: I spent most of my childhood in Bakersfield and have been informed that it is not in Southern California by people who grew up south of the grapevine.
I've run a thousand miles of boundary
Yes, I've worn blisters on my heels
Trying to survey someplace better
Than the the streets of Bakersfield
I live in chico, but work in Stockton, Tracy area.
Dave Karoly, post: 434622, member: 94 wrote: Paradise is east of Chico.
And there are some interesting boundary conflicts in parts of Paradise. I have a March court date relating to one.
Fu3l3r, post: 434625, member: 11864 wrote: I live in chico, but work in Stockton, Tracy area.
The Forest manager at Mountain Home State Forest (east of Porterville) lives in Pollock Pines.
James Fleming, post: 434624, member: 136 wrote: I've run a thousand miles of boundary
Yes, I've worn blisters on my heels
Trying to survey someplace better
Than the the streets of Bakersfield
I never got a satisfactory answer from my Dad to the question: "Dad, why in the heck would you leave Marin County for Fresno and then Bakersfield?"
Bakersfield sure is affordable though. I could sell my house in Sacramento and buy a house twice as big in a better neighborhood for less dollars. Would have to live in hell during the summertime, though.
My parents lived in Bakersfield without a swimming pool which is just nuts, in my opinion. Everyone else in their social group had a swimming pool, it is a necessity there like electricity, water, and sewer.
Jim Frame, post: 434628, member: 10 wrote: And there are some interesting boundary conflicts in parts of Paradise. I have a March court date relating to one.
Our favorite classic land surveyor did some weird things.
Peter Kozub, post: 426975, member: 375 wrote: 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
That's a little extreme.
We sent in at dawn to layout a mcmansion. We were wrapping up when the form crew came in. The foreman is a big guy, 6.5 feet, 250 plus pounds... before we go, he bellows that all are stakes are wrong. I go over, look at his plans, pull out mine and informed him that his were revised by the architect to mine. He ranted and I called someone to run out a full set. 20 minutes later he asked if I wanted to stick around to make sure my stakes were right. I gave him my cell and told him to call with any other problems. He did not have to call.
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I did it for about ten years (1995-2005) as a contractor. Lucky I never made a big enough mistake to sue me out of business. It's hard highly liable work. I wouldn't do it again other than as a employee of the contractor. Great to see what you did show up on the landscape though. I ruined my neck from driving hubs (steel spike) into very hard compacted ground. After surgery I've not done much layout. It paid good though while it lasted until the medical problems.
If you're a good at it settle in with a big contractor long term and retire with something.
spledeus, post: 434801, member: 3579 wrote: That's a little extreme.
We sent in at dawn to layout a mcmansion. We were wrapping up when the form crew came in. The foreman is a big guy, 6.5 feet, 250 plus pounds... before we go, he bellows that all are stakes are wrong. I go over, look at his plans, pull out mine and informed him that his were revised by the architect to mine. He ranted and I called someone to run out a full set. 20 minutes later he asked if I wanted to stick around to make sure my stakes were right. I gave him my cell and told him to call with any other problems. He did not have to call.
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Extreme i worked at this site and others early stages and got paid the site was pure bully top to bottom
Hell if they did not pay me the suckers after me won't work
This is 200 million site same as a $100 site same talent project cost Don,t matter
http://www.merrittherald.com/merritt-green-energy-project-delayed-legal-disputes/
Extreme talk about 9 million in the red
Tim V. PLS, post: 427409, member: 403 wrote: 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.
Now that is a niche market: "Sorry we're going to have to pass on your 15 story hotel project as our practice is limited to 14 & 17 story hotels." 😉
Yes. 15 and 16 stories have different specs. That's where they put the articulated joint to accommodate wind shear.