I lose my third job in a month to a firm about 30 miles away. This time by $500 on a $12,000 project. The job will take a few days of recon, office calculations then another day setting monuments. I finally had enough and decided to take action. For the last few days I rode around the job site noticing where the field crew set their control points.
Knowing the crew would not be in the area, this morning on my way to work I stopped and removed about 12-15 of their control points. I hope this teaches them a lesson about low balling in my community.
> I lose my third job in a month to a firm about 30 miles away. This time by $500 on a $12,000 project. The job will take a few days of recon, office calculations then another day setting monuments. I finally had enough and decided to take action. For the last few days I rode around the job site noticing where the field crew set their control points.
>
> Knowing the crew would not be in the area, this morning on my way to work I stopped and removed about 12-15 of their control points. I hope this teaches them a lesson about low balling in my community.
I hope this is an April fools joke
Rather than removing their points, I think it might be more amusing to set 4-5 additional identical points randomly and within a 1 foot radius of each of theirs......
> Knowing the crew would not be in the area, this morning on my way to work I stopped and removed about 12-15 of their control points. I hope this teaches them a lesson about low balling in my community.
Temporary fix at best, just come back and re-run the control.
The way I deal with low ballers from out of town has a more, lets say, permanent effect on their ability to perform work.
My hat is off to you, sir. You told that entire story and didn't crack a smile once while telling it. That's really hard to do.;-) 😉
Let's hope the other firm does not visit this forum.
A long time ago I set up a grid topo (20 acres or so) in a heavily wooded area and over the weekend the grid vanished. Turned out the little kid couldn't keep quiet and said him and his dad pulled everything out because they didn't want development in "their" woods. Boss set homeowner a bill for lost time and I believe he eventually collected some, but it took some time.
Being within $500 on a $12,000 project seems to me that your ball was pretty low as well. It takes balls to do what you did and even bigger balls to publically tell the world what you did.
Throw the line out and real them in ! Happy April fools day.
> This time by $500 on a $12,000 project.
Jokes aside, if I come within 15% of my estimate on a project, I figure I'm doing pretty good. It's pretty unusual for me to get inside of 5%.
I never remove them, I just move them a foot or two. And switch the stakes that have the point number written on them.
If I see them using GPS I bury a big mass beneath the site so that the geoid will change.
Yes April fools "yall got me"
I suggest consider using qualifications based selection for your next foray into humor, as opposed to what appears to have been the use of lowest bid procurement.
Had a photogrammetric mapping project some decades ago that needed "panel points." I had a buddy do the field survey control and set the panels. Weather socked in the plane for a couple weeks, but he had his crews continue to patrol the area & maintain the panel points if wind got to them.
His crew found a number that had been moved about 30 feet and neatly re-staked! They moved them back to where they were supposed to be. Project went off without any trouble.
Former boss related a story of his first surveying job in Colorado. He said they had a control traverse done. They had been having a lot of trouble with their control. Small issues they could never quite figure out. Chief sets up the instrument and tries to get backsight, he's jumping up and down yelling because he thinks chain man isn't giving him BS but chain man says I'm over the BS??? So they look and there is a tree online, WTH? It turns out the neighbor knew enough surveying to move their traverse points just a little bit each time but this time he forgot to keep them intervisible.
"If I see them using GPS I bury a big mass beneath the site so that the geoid will change."
That's funny right there.
Dave
I've had this done to me, randomly moving my points a few feet, but never the mass burial. And I didn't low ball anybody!
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.
Not destructive, but nasty.:-P
I had something similar done to me ... but I could tell right away because I had a small cut line "window" that the neighbor had moved my control and the boundary marker out of! Had enough backup control to do a resection and reset the correct boundary...haha Jerk!
Almost like something that happened a long time ago, when I was a little kid.
I lived up a gulch with perhaps 8 other kids. We would have to walk about 1.5 miles to and from the school bus stop every day.
The road was a small, dusty dirt road with chuck holes. We heard that the county was looking into improving the road.
The county put an air hose traffic counter across the road to gauge how much traffic used the road. We all wanted a paved road to ride our bikes on.
We took turns twice a day jumping up and down on that air hose and riding our bikes across it.
Ended up with a nice 2 lane chip sealed road. I always wondered if they figured out the traffic counts were too high for a dead end road.
Pulling them would make it easy for me. Moving them a foot or two would leave me scratching my head.