Is it appropriate for a surveyor to ...

"This county allows homeowners to "pencil in" their own improvements on an existing survey"

This is considered altering a survey and in my opinion, makes it invalid. The county officials and the people who make the changes should be reported to the BOL.

As for your question, drawing proposed changes is the same as preparing a plot plan for approval when staking buildings. I see no problem with it.

I do this all the time for residential sites , in fact the county requires a surveying seal on all new house lots for approval. I have also done full blown commercial site plans in the county . In NC we are tested on erosion control design and gravity fed pipe systems.

I wouldn't show it on somebody elses survey, that would be crossing lines.

But if you did in fact perform a boundary/topo survey and part of your deliverables is a map of the survey, I see nothing wrong with providing him an additional map with proposed improvement locations so he can get his permits. That is no different than showing a building setback line, side yard ties to existing buildings or fences, a record easement, neighbors encroaching driveway, etc.

Then you go actually stake his improvements and provide an as-built sketch so everybody is happy. Except maybe the client who wonders why he is paying for all this. After all, we are in business to make money while we help our clients get through permitting issues, right? Key words making money and helping clients.

Personally i would just submit 2 copies 1 of the current ascon and one which includes the dashed lines of the proposed locations, although i would refuse for more complicated cases as im sure someone else would be getting payment for this.

In Maryland land surveyors are "design professionals". Preparation of site plans is part of the statutory definition of practicing land surveying.

Personally, I wouldn't worry much over it.

Then again, a bunch [over at the old board] excoriated for me engineering or architecting w/0 a license after a friend (carpenter) came over one afternoon to help figure lengths and angles on a A-frame he was helping build. It was to be a 2-story with a loft each of certain ceiling heights with certain space between floors and the roof was to be pitched at some angle he gave me. They needed to know the angles of all the rafter cuts and length (rake length to you carpenters out there) to give a certain amount of horizontal over-hang distance from the side of the house to account for rainfall. The only question I had before starting my calcs was if they were using rough-cut lumber or milled lumber.

Again, I got raked over the coals about that - even by some very good friends.
Well hellfire, any top-notch trigonometry high-school kid could do that. Yeah, I was one of those - and still am 35 years since HS. He said he would come back later that evening after I was done. I told him to sit down since he was over and on his lunch break. Then I grabbed some graph paper, my calculator, a pencil and ruler and drew up a basic thing of what he was describing. He said that was right and then pointed directly to the angles and lengths they needed. He was impressed and ready to go. Hold on partner, let me draw you one to scale with all the numbering on it. That only took a couple minutes and he said it looked exactly like what they had already built so far.

To me it was just a quicky puzzle to solve. Later that evening a case of cold beer and pack of rib-eye steaks showed up at my house. I wasn't doing anything at the time so it weren't no sweat to me. Shoot, I was just happy to have 30 minutes of some intellectual fun.

Before that I was an expert in processing digital images. What if one of you photogrammeterists (sp?) had given me an image to process some serious interpolated scaling (which pretty much everything does now) and given me SPC coordinates on any 2 opposing corners, then point to a pixel in that picture and my program be able to tell you (depending on decimal places) the lat-lon of that "dot". Could I have been accused of practicing surveying w/o a license being something of a photgrammeterist (sp? again) by proxy? I would think not.

Sorry to ramble.
E.

It's not like you are designing the concrete - "6" concrete pad with reinforcing mesh" would be stepping over the line.

Proposed concrete driveway sited here with setbacks to property line - Go for it all day long. (Like an engineer can certify a setback.)

Showing proposed building sites has always been done here

Some banks require that before they will ok a loan

Most of the time there is a followup when the pour has been made or when it gets at least 80% finished.

We don't let homeowners pencil anything in.

😉

> I agreed to do it (and I've done this in the past for minor improvements), but I've always wondering if I'm crossing the line into design (Engineering or Architecture) when I start showing proposed improvements on a survey.

There is no reason you cannot do this. How can showing proposed locations of potential future improvements be "engineering design"??

> I showed the improvements as the homeowner had designed, still, I wonder if a "design professional" could turn me into the BOR.

Never worry, any moron can turn you into the BOR for anything. Just pray that YOUR BOR (and its staff) has the intelligence and professional integrity to properly investigate and weed out the ridiculous and unfounded charges before it costs you bundle to defend yourself.

I agree. Showing a proposed location seems the same as a plot plan. Showing design specifications would be a different matter.

I do it every day. I think of it as part of my service. If the surveyor won't show proposed locations and setbacks, how can planning departments rely on the maps to issue permits?

But my city is extremely strict on development, they require a boundary survey (detailed) for any permit for anything outside of the home. And an as-built survey to prove they built what they said they were building.

Andy

Thanks for the replies. I think we are on the same page here. Like I said, it's something I do and have done in the past, but I often questioned whether or not showing a proposed improvement could be considered "design" rather that "surveying" by some strict interpretation that a BOR might lay down. I think all the professions can be a little territorial at times. Seems to be a consensus that what I described is not crossing a line.