During the 70s and 80s it was not uncommon to travel hours to a project as we were surveying Duplex Retirement Centers for one group and those wagon wheel shaped Rest Homes for another across Texas.
We would send one man ahead to get all the record information available and do recon before sending a 3 man crew that hit the ground running.
From my experience and following of most of today's generation of out of town surveyors, they come and go so quickly and never take the time to check with other surveyors and sometimes do not get up to date deed information on adjoining properties and miss existing monuments by referencing painted stripes and not other monuments.
Up to about 5yrs ago, I had emergency calls from dozens of clients a year with the same problem of new monuments in their yards and where they did not belong.
Most of the long range surveyors have found their limits by now and where they were losing and wasting their time.
Keep you eye on the goal of surveying and don't get lost in the "white line fever".
Try working for pipeline companies....
And to the point of speaking with local surveyors, it's been a waste of time. Nearly everyone of them was nice, but none send anything they said they would. On the other hand, I understand how they probably feel.
Jeff S, post: 427089, member: 12344 wrote: Try working for pipeline companies....
And to the point of speaking with local surveyors, it's been a waste of time. Nearly everyone of them was nice, but none send anything they said they would. On the other hand, I understand how they probably feel.
No doubt. Many of then local surveyors don't understand why they aren't getting the work but they don't understand the day in and day out demands of everything needed yesterday, insurance requiements, safety requirements etc.
I, for one, have been as helpful as possible to other surveyors whether they are somewhat local or from that certain town in Egypt. This helpfulness has almost always been reciprocated by someone else back to me.
I'm currently working on a parcel where an ALTA was done 5 years ago by a company from Florida. We're in Ca. I don't know how that is even economically possible. Someone was paying for all of this travel and expenses? and it wasn't even that large of a job, probably a one day survey, two max...I don't get it.
Never found local surveyors to be helpful on private jobs while out of town. Quite the contrary.
But when working out of town government or agency survey jobs , local surveyors would be very helpful if called.
Maybe things have changed, maybe not.
My former employer had 2 clients with work all over the northwest. These were 2 day jobs at most. After years of herding cats and bleeding dollars they settled on us. It gave them one product, one vendor to manage and a huge dose of peace of mind. It gave us cosistent money and great experirence. The work was in recording States with mostly active County Surveyors.
I found the locals to land in one of two categories. The larger group was helpful and professional. They would offer up those tidbits discovered over time and even warn us about crazy owners to avoid. The second group would clam up and get defensive. Usually the reason why would reveal itself when you found unrecorded garbage at newer possession lines. I ended up adding line items to my cost spreadsheet to cover pushing them through the cleanup process.
Fast forward to now. I am running up North a few hundred miles in the morning for a agort stay. Its the model now. Fewer and fewer of us are holding more and more licenses. The world is getting smaller for everybody and we better adapt.
Nate The Surveyor, post: 426936, member: 291 wrote: There is a general etiquette about wandering into unknown areas, and "doin a bit of surveying".
Such as:
This section is about 330' longer than GLO record, N-S, and the whole town is laid out, holding 2640, and 3960, from the south end...
It's just good professional manners, to talk with the local surveyor. Not to mention the liability factor.
N
It also doesn't hurt to pay the local guy a reasonable "Consulting Fee" either. Often makes for better future relationships.
roger_LS, post: 427174, member: 11550 wrote: I'm currently working on a parcel where an ALTA was done 5 years ago by a company from Florida. We're in Ca. I don't know how that is even economically possible. Someone was paying for all of this travel and expenses? and it wasn't even that large of a job, probably a one day survey, two max...I don't get it.
Likely they subbed out the field work to an at least semi-local company. Maybe some more than that.
JPH, post: 426913, member: 6636 wrote: Out of town, means nothing these days. If you have the equipment, are licensed, and you have a client who'll pay you to do it, travel is minor.
The travel may be minor, but the local knowledge is critical...
I had a survey to do last week where I flew in to a town right in the middle of the south portion of the job. Drove 2500 miles in 5 days doing photo control (55 points). Job was about 450 km E-W and 225 km N-S. Very remote, very few highways or towns, almost no cell service I had a lot of 50 mile trips one way down a haul road to set a target, then 50 miles back out to the highway. The only way to do it was using Trimble Centerpoint RTX. I was very surprised that the init times were almost always under 5 minutes, even though it was not really near the "fast init" area in the middle of the US. Used a state DOT VRS for a few points along the southern edge, they agreed with the RTX (transformed) in the several cm range, even though I was outside of (or very near the edge) of the VRS system.
I also did a bunch of centerpoint RTX surveying in Ecuador last month, those init times were more like 20 to 30 minutes, but once initialized I was able to survey RTK(RTX) for hours, hardly any trees at 12,000 feet elevation, even near the equator. I haven't had time to post pictures or my story from down there, I will do so soon when I have time.