How NOT TO run a survey office.

Job #1 is to keep the client happy.  Job #2 is to convince the client that a competent consultant is doing the best he can in all facets of getting the job done.

Purely curiosity here: Do you have a consulting gig just reviewing completed surveys? The way you phrase things makes it seem your not involved until final redlines.

@out-of-level 

You understand correctly.  I provide survey review services to numerous firms who are working in Kansas.  There is a Kansas statute that requires all surveys creating new tracts to be recorded with the county/counties affected by the survey to be reviewed by a specific reviewer selected by that county or  by a licensed surveyor in counties that have not selected one specific reviewer.  I have one firm who sends every survey they complete to me whether or not it creates a new tract because they have found I frequently find things they have overlooked.  They actually record all surveys, as did I when I was still providing a full range of survey services.  I currently supply reviews for one Missouri-based survey firm for their projects in Kansas.  My review is to confirm that the survey laws in Kansas have been followed.  My job is not to nitpick their decision-making.  For example, there may be a pin cushion at a certain corner necessary to their survey.  I will not dictate they use a certain one.  That is not within my realm of authority.

We all make mistakes.  Lord knows I have.  The range of things that can be found is amazing when one is getting a first look at someone else's survey plat.  Many things more or less "jump" off the page when two or three others have missed it.  The typical scenario is that they email a PDF of the completed survey to me.  I either respond with o list of items they SHOULD alter or say I find no significant errors.  If they choose to not change something for a good reason, I will sign off on the survey once it is mailed to me for signing and returning.

@holy-cow 

I don't want to hi-jack this post, but... What I find interesting here is how state laws differ. Are you saying that if this was your assigned county, you would have signed and sealed it?

@hoosier_surveyor 

First, I would have studied it over thoroughly.  If I found any significant issues, I would have notified them of such.  Upon receipt of a clean plat, I would have signed it and sent it on for further signatures.  I would not have sealed it.  I only seal my own work products.

A list of examples of significant issues found is never ending.  These are not nitpicking things, but, common errors.  A distance says 50.00 feet, but is actually, 1163.62 feet.  A simple copy and paste circumstance where the number did not get changed.  The drawing shows a distance of one number but a different number is called out in the tract description.  Anything you have ever found as an error in your own work has probably been another example of things I have found in reviewing the work of others.

In my first engineering job out of college I was asked to review and proofread some of the publications created there.  The next thing I knew, they were sending everything to me.  They had a full-time proofreader already.  My skill was knowing the difference between psychometric and psychrometric in a story discussing grain drying, as an example.