One Man Crews

Ok...I'll take a stab at this. First, I'm in MA and don't know what you are referring to when you say PC.

I am experienced, but I'm not licensed. I have, however, been in the industry since the late 1980s.

As far as 1 person crews with robotic equipment, I would suggest that one might be comfortable only with a highly seasoned person under a somewhat specific set of parameters.

Such a person should have demonstrated trustworthiness and integrity as well as the concept of being the caretaker of the process in which the data is collected or applied, not just the data itself. Confirmation bias or "close enough" don't cut it when there's only one set of eyes.

The employee should also be able to assess what hazards (direct or indirect) may present themselves at the site in question; know and have exactly (in proper condition and function) what gear and/or equipment would be recommended to maintain safety if these hazards did present themselves.

The employee should maintain regular contact with their supervisor, or whoever the supervisor delegates to monitor the health of the employee.

Pictures...lots of pictures.

The vehicle should be well stocked with a full health kit, and have an active Triple A or similar account to provide roadside assistance.

The employee should have at least a passing knowledge of trespass laws in the area, project-specific location knowledge to prevent accidentally getting lost or wandering onto hostile property. Should know how to safely negotiate the various critters and varmints and whatnot that they may encounter.

Terrain should be taken into consideration, as well as fitness. If the slopes are steep or have high elevation differences that might cause slipping or falling, you probably ought to consider 2 people. Likewise, if the project is on the coast or any source of moving water deeper than a foot or two or could experience flash flooding, you ought to send 2.

Traffic details along roadways; track certifications and a railroad EIC along railroads are also necessities.

Hopefully this helps, and I'm sure that others will fill in what I've forgotten.

Good luck!!!!!

I've beat this horse more than a few times. You are spot on.

Too easy to get hurt in this line of work. Also heard about a one-man 'crew' that stumbled upon a rattler. No bite, but that was the end of that shift.

True story.

Glad to hear that it's not just me.

To start, a PC is a Party Chief. to follow up, how is an individual supposed to assess a risk that he or she is not aware of? A fully stocked truck and the like, have nothing to do with that, it's common sense to know what your supplies are and what needs to be restocked, but that does not require a trip to the office and interaction with your PLS to accomplish.

When you talk about terrain and the like, I can give you a perfect example from my own personal experience, and it was working in a two man crew. I was hacking through thick brush, out of sight of my instrument man and too one step too far when I fell into an overgrown manhole, with no lid, banged up my leg on the way down and would have died there if my walkie didn't work for me to alert my instrument man, who had to come looking for me, how do you asses a risk like that?

No matter how you dice it or slice it, safety is paramount, people don't assess the unknown, because they can't. That's why it's called the unknown, do you know when a car is going to leave the highway and mow you down without somebody giving you the warning to get the hell out of the way?

I've been managing field crews for over 25 years and explain what needs to be done in the morning, do what I have to do during the day and wait for them to come back to the office at the end of the day to find out if there was any issues that I need to know about and discuss how, and how not, to approach them.

During the other hours of the day, I am answering phone calls from clients and prospective clients, writing proposals, dealing with technical and administrative staff, but, I have time to take phone calls from a hire that does not cone to the office so her or she can show me their work, seek guidance, put a face to their name and build confidence that I can sign a plan that they blindly did the work on? What happens when they are in the same situation as I was in, when they are working as a one man crew, and nobody is there to have their back?

I'm in Australia and over here one-man crews have started to become the norm, at least in the big cities, because money talks. At the same time, there are complaints from all sectors of the industry that there aren't enough people getting into surveying. What do they expect?

When I started, I was lucky enough to work with an experienced surveyor, albeit not top notch, who had came back to surveying after a stint in running construction sites and just wanted to have a relaxing last few years of work. He dropped some nuggets on me like 'we're not building a watch' and 'surveying is the art of hiding your mistakes'. He retired shortly after I left the company.

Most small companies cannot afford to run two man crews unless they are very established. Some companies will have an assistant or two floating around between different surveyors, depending on the job of the day. When I was with a bigger company I had one of those assistants for a few days and it made me realize just how many ways there are to screw up in surveying because he seemed to be finding every possible thing he could do wrong and do it.

With the company I'm with now, it's strictly one man crews and it's the type of job where you don't really go into the office. Of the three field crews there, I'm the only one that goes to the office to reduce the data. It's a bit strange sometimes because there is not enough mentorship and it doesn't create any kind of company culture. In some ways, I might as well be working for myself, I would do much of the same things, I just need to get licenced before I branch out on my own.

What I can say is that if someone is willing to work on their own, give them the benefit of the doubt, they might be able to do it. In some ways, the gear that is coming out now is designed just for that and who knows how long until we go to no-man crews because drones will be good enough for 95% of the field work.

Agreed on the safety discussion alone.

I started on a 2 man crew and have only been a single person except when needing to run levels, and SUE was chasing us around for the dip info until they started doing that too at one Bigger company.

Without 2 person crews we're doomed to never train anyone to be able to do the work.

Another deficit that was engineered into our process by the development of faster better with single user devices, but it's not 3 times as fast as probably promised, and still held against the one person team as not moving fast enough.

The "not making a watch " or not developing a nuclear power plant has been mentioned to me a few times, and if I hadn't been able to topo for 1000 points or more in a winter day, I'd think I was going to slow. It's a loss of perspective and needs to change. Survey needs to demand the same budget for time and money that planning and engineering seems to have capitalized upon without truly understanding what it takes to get the work done both in the field and office.

It's been one man crews mostly since 1996. Even when sending two out it's still often 2 one man crews, one going north, one going south, on a job. Avoiding construction is a money maker so I don't see real 2 man crews in the future, however, finding a person that's trained sufficiently is like finding a unicorn.

It's a real problem.

One-man crew isn't for everyone, to be sure. I think it works best for solo operations like mine, where I don't have to take on a job that's too iffy from a safety standpoint, and when I do take risks (and I do at times) I understand and accept the risk/reward ratio.

It takes a very special person, in terms of intelligence, experience, self-confidence, reliability and personality, to be a one-man crew as an employee. I personally know only one guy who fits that description, and I've had the good fortune to collaborate with him several times in the last decade or two. Most employees I've dealt with -- either mine or someone else's -- don't make the cut.

The lack of mentorship attendant upon the proliferation of one-man crews is having a big impact on the profession, but I'm late enough in my career that I'm not going to go back to having employees just because I think it'd be better for the future of surveying.

I had one guy who worked for me (part-time) for almost 20 years. He was smart and reliable and a super nice guy, but had no interest in becoming a career land surveyor. He just wanted a paycheck, and while the arrangement worked well for both of us, it did nothing to advance the profession. Effective mentorship takes more than a two-man crew.

Jim everything you said is spot on and mirrors my career to a T.

Walking on crusty snow one minute. One leg and part of the torso wedged into where a power pole had been the next. That hurt. I was surprised my butt cheeks ever got in touch with each other ever again.

Most of the fieldwork I've done has been as a 1-man crew. I didn't mind it for the most part because I was never really in the middle of nowhere by myself, I always took my time because I wanted it done right, and kept my head on a swivel because I had no interest in dying for something as silly as a map.

I don't disagree that it's a good idea for the safety factor, but I think just as important is it reduces the wear and tear on the guys. I haven't dragged a shovel, locator, lath bag, and rod/bipod around a site as much as some guys probably have, but even the amount that I have has been exhausting sometimes. So just spreading out that workload I think makes a second man worth it.

I'm equipped for one-man crews; what I tend to do is send a two-man crew to a site and have them split apart (i.e. for an ALTA, one guy locating curb and striping, the other utilities and hardscape). I get increased production from a two-man crew while still having the safety benefits of having two guys on site.

I'm getting ready to start a long-term one-man crew project. But they will be supplementing a general contractors layout crew on a large civil construction (airport) project. So, there will be 50+ people on site every day (technically every night) including the contractor's safety staff.