People who manage to perform surveys

> ALL of their work is loose. 1-5 foot errors. Commonplace.

Ok Nate, I'll bite just to keep your conversation moving. It's a good one that pops up around here from time to time. First question though is are they actual "errors" or are they just working to some kind of tolerance level that is acceptable to the client? GIS mapping comes to mind.

Placing property corners with that tolerance obviously is a bad bad no no. But making a map based on existing records could suffice to "complete a transaction", so to speak.

Yes, I've known some of those kind of low baller types where you just go "huh - WTF are you thinking buddy". I am not really a "mortgage survey" advocate, but sometimes that's all the lender wants. If the buyer wants more - then pay for a survey. Period.

After all we are professionals and one of our ethical codes is to protect the public. Doesn't mean we can't make a few bucks while providing and adequate product to a client to meet their needs. Case in point - there is a push from some here in AZ for a red headed stepchild called a "due diligence" survey. No corners are set, they get a map, end of story. Sounds like your guys in some ways, and definitely sounds like a "mortgage survey" - and presently are illegal here, so far.

When I do research, and find one of "his" plats, I just write down his initials. That lets me know what it was. I often don't bother to copy them. Unless they actually contact my survey. It is iffy if he even bothered to set any mons. I still have to search. But it is just crummy.

N

you can't all be above average.

No, I do not

Maybe I'm just lucky, but, I can't say that I know of any practicing now or who have practiced in the past in this area who did poor survey work.

I've also been at it long enough to recognize what constitutes careful work today is different than what constituted careful work forty and more years ago. Today we tend to focus on the measurement ability instead of focusing on being sure we are measuring between the correct things, in the correct manner, to correctly connect the dots as they were connected many years ago.

Nate, 1 to 5 feet can meet the minimum standards on certain surveys. As a rule of thumb for rural surveys, if it fits under a number 2 washtub, it meets the standards.

No, I do not

"...what constitutes careful work today is different than what constituted careful work forty and more years ago..."

Cow, you just mooed a mouthful of truth (as we've come to expect : )

Don

> ALL of their work is loose. 1-5 foot errors. Commonplace.
> Do you have a fellow surveyor like that?
Story. Had an ALTA job in OKC recently. On day one, crew sets up base, established HERE position, sets other control around site with RTK. Proceeds to do topo and boundary for 2 days. Redundant ties to control and several boundary marks, etc. etc. I get raw data, multiple days OPUS for the base station, LS adjust everything, etc. etc.

Package up adjusted control in one file, stake out coordinates for property corners to be set in another. Dispatch crew. I follow crew to the site to do map in hand checking. I'm an hour behind them.

By the time I get there crew has set up base and checked in. Checks are good, they go to setting corners. They are setting the fifth when I show up. This one is supposed to be on line with a certain curb line. It's not. "What's up wit that?", I ask.

Well, they were using my staking coordinates but the old HERE based control, which they had retained in their dc, along with every other job they had done in the last several months. That's soooo awesome, says I. Do it again.

My point is that the guys were working really hard to do a good job, following procedures, and yet they still f'd up t by 4ft+/- .

Shortly after I arrived in Oklahoma I was dealing with a certain field hand who had more than the requisite amount of intelligence and a great desire to succeed as a surveyor, but not a lot of experience. A little exasperated with me at the end of a long hot day he said, "we worked really hard on that". I said, "I don't really want you to work hard. I can get all the hard workers I need at Home Depot for $7.25 an hr. I need you to work smart."

Along those same lines

A successful cattle rancher I know once pointed out that, "Most people are too busy working to make any money."

That is so incredibly true. We can get so wrapped up in the process of whatever it is we are doing that we totally lose sight of our basic goal of making money.

A prime example from farm country is the guy who sells a commodity (cattle/grain/hay) when he realizes he is in need of a chunk of money for some reason. Instead, he should be following the markets and selling at the best times. On some commodities the actual net income per unit is fairly small, but that net margin figure may fluctuate up and down 200 percent in a years time. You want to sell when its up if at all possible and find a way to hold out when its too low. The time invested in keeping track of the markets is nothing compared to the time put into producing the commodity.

Yes

I think every area has one. Depending on what particular point you're talking about, heck, it might be me. LOL

I think most surveyors strive to do great work. Not everyone is so great sparks fly out of their ... but we strive to set reliable points that will work reasonably well with the pipes Mr Jones pounded in where the "sirvair put the stick 40 years ago."

I can't solve all the issues in the town or village but I can work on a block. What's the local accuracy of that block. Try to average out all the points in the block and be reasonably certain, as a professional, that my survey fits.

I also agree with the bucket rule. In rural areas, if it's that close, I'm happy to have found and located it. I just finished up a job in a "community" ( 6 or so houses carved into the hillside) that was established 100 odd years ago. It fell to ruin and the only things left are foundations and retaining walls. I was lucky enough to acquire some field notes from the '20s and '40s. My father dug through the city's diminishing store of records and found what we were looking for. The sad part is that there is not one person in city hall that knows anything about the information they have in the building. When the city engineer retired, the whole place started crumbling. They never replaced him. With these notes, I was able to find a giant meridian stone set over 100 years ago by the City of Johnstown at the top of the hill behind the development.

So yea, I know a surveyor or so who does dodgy work. I try to stay above the board and reasonable.

Yes

What drives me nuts is the guy(s) who, from the information on their plans, clearly do fantastic research, but when you attempt to retrace the survey on the ground the distances don't match up, "set" monuments are nowhere to be seen, and the boundary doesn't close. Frustrating.

Short answer is yes.

Longer answer below, feel free to ignore long answer... 😉

Plenty of "rural" surveys were 1:5000 or much worse. It seems when dealing with large rural areas, the time to do extensive measuring and research was never budgeted for. So many old deeds were written by anyone BUT a surveyor, and most of which NEVER set foot on the property. We're lucky if some are as close as 1 to 5 feet in our area.

Not a great set of excuses available to surveyors today that do that level of work though. Not with modern equipment, or current standards of care. Regardless of excuses.

Many of the good surveyors I know, work far more, do more, and worry more about their end product and it's accuracy.

I do feel sorry for surveyors who are in areas that are so depressed that no one is willing to pay for what even an average survey would be worth. Plenty of folks are stuck with not much more than a transit and chain still, and little or only occasional help from less than skilled assistance. ALL market driven? Maybe? Maybe not! Maybe just keepin' those rates low to keep business coming in the door, with speedy and low accuracy service being the only thing that will bring in clients?
Is it a professional "service" to go broke serving their community.

Even today, it's a LOT of money for almost anyone to do a higher accuracy survey than the "original" in most rural areas. There was a trade off between time and expense, much like it is today. The main difference today is we've become much more efficient at measuring long distances with Robotic EDM's, GPS/GNSS gear. Along with
Magnetic location devices compared to dip needles or heaven forbid, using a pocket compass to try to find an old gun barrel or iron rod or pipe.... if a stone or a stake, get ready to bill a LOT of time for recovery of either of those as well.
Yet we still have to rely on those "old" instruments of property transfer, complete with plenty of error.

Is there a compromise between field measurement, record research, and resolution? Sure, same was true 50-60 years ago or more.... remembering that so many areas that are no longer "rural" were once surveyed and deeds written from a staff compass and chain (if lucky) will always cause some head scratching and extra work to resolve.

Perpetuation by pushing those 1-5 foot "errors" around isn't doing a lot of good for anyone. Error reduction through reasonable interpretation of deeds seems more important than ever.

While the rest of the world looks to us as professional "measuring technicians", you might think it would be in our own best interest, and that of the profession to educate the public that it is not our ONLY skill set. As a profession we need to find a way to reach those surveyors doing this level of work, and continue to remind them to focus on boundary resolution based on ALL the evidence, not JUST the "deed", or, field measurements. Our profession still has plenty of interesting times ahead based on lower order accuracy work being resolved to a higher standard.

Just my nickels worth of bad spelling and wacky ideas, this and another 45cents MIGHT get you a phone call...

Rant Off...

Gonna take up a collection..............

to buy that unfortunate fellow in the photo some decent headgear to wear while surveying.:-P 😀 😛 😀

> Plenty of "rural" surveys were 1:5000 or much worse. It seems when dealing with large rural areas, the time to do extensive measuring and research was never budgeted for. So many old deeds were written by anyone BUT a surveyor, and most of which NEVER set foot on the property. We're lucky if some are as close as 1 to 5 feet in our area.
>

In many areas, not only were the descriptions written by non-surveyors, many of the surveys were performed by non-surveyors. Does this make the process of boundary establishment illegal or non-binding? Not hardly.

> Many of the good surveyors I know, work far more, do more, and worry more about their end product and it's accuracy.
>

That is encouraging. I can only hope this spreads to other areas.

> I do feel sorry for surveyors who are in areas that are so depressed that no one is willing to pay for what even an average survey would be worth. Plenty of folks are stuck with not much more than a transit and chain still, and little or only occasional help from less than skilled assistance. ALL market driven? Maybe? Maybe not! Maybe just keepin' those rates low to keep business coming in the door, with speedy and low accuracy service being the only thing that will bring in clients?
> Is it a professional "service" to go broke serving their community.
>

This isn't new, and is in nearly every industry. That, however, doesn't mean it should be encouraged or even tolerated in one of the supposed respected professions.

> Even today, it's a LOT of money for almost anyone to do a higher accuracy survey than the "original" in most rural areas. There was a trade off between time and expense, much like it is today. The main difference today is we've become much more efficient at measuring long distances with Robotic EDM's, GPS/GNSS gear. Along with Magnetic location devices compared to dip needles or heaven forbid, using a pocket compass to try to find an old gun barrel or iron rod or pipe.... if a stone or a stake, get ready to bill a LOT of time for recovery of either of those as well. Yet we still have to rely on those "old" instruments of property transfer, complete with plenty of error.
>

While surveying years ago was plagued with the challenges of having to use antique equipment, today, surveying is plagued with a lack of skill in properly gathering pertinent evidence and the lack of knowledge of boundary law. It is an every day occurrence where measurement evidence is held superior to physical and parol evidence.

> Perpetuation by pushing those 1-5 foot "errors" around isn't doing a lot of good for anyone. Error reduction through reasonable interpretation of deeds seems more important than ever.
>

The problem is that most of these "errors" are not errors at all, only a difference in measurement precision. Yes, the proper interpretation of the descriptions, proper evidence gathering and the proper application of the law is as important now as it ever was, and usually if a proper survey is done, the "errors" will disappear.

> While the rest of the world looks to us as professional "measuring technicians", you might think it would be in our own best interest, and that of the profession to educate the public that it is not our ONLY skill set.

The main reason the "rest of the world" looks at us as measuring technicians is that WE have looked at ourselves as mere measurement technicians. Look at many of the licensing boards dominated by engineers, and the college surveying programs - they focus nearly exclusively on measuring, few focus even 10% of their content on boundary law.

>As a profession we need to find a way to reach those surveyors doing this level of work, and continue to remind them to focus on boundary resolution based on ALL the evidence, not JUST the "deed", or, field measurements. Our profession still has plenty of interesting times ahead based on lower order accuracy precision work being resolved to a higher standard.
>

Amen. Good post Surveyor NW

Yeah,

My favorite is not setting irons and instead setting lath labeled "approximate property corner"

No recorded survey, of course.

If the homeowner is with it, he could then pound in his own irons, saving himself considerable money and thinking he would be getting a real survey anyway.

Is that fraud?

I know one of those firms. The first generation drew horrible maps that rarely close, but there is always a SERIOUS monument in the ground... if you find it! His son draws beautiful maps, but they usually are missing something critical. e.g. the curve table. The son didn't set much steel either. I believe they are transitioning to a third generation... hopefully this kid will turn things around. (I forgot to mention they are engineers, too)