Private surveyors and gov't interlocal agreements.

> I'm not sure if this is in the right category but will throw it in here.
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> Public works projects can be worth millions of dollars and the surveying costs to build those projects can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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> I've seen the construction of public works projects handled two ways. One, the agency contract specifies that the prime contractor will provide his own surveying. Generally that means the contractor shops his work around and comes up with a private surveyor that can provide the surveying. Or maybe he has his own surveyors and uses those.
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> Two, the gov't agency uses their own surveyors and provides the contractor with staking as he needs it.
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> I've seen it both ways but lately I'm starting to see interlocal agreements between agencies where x agency says to y agency we need the work so lets work out an agreement and you (y) agency won't have to contract for any consultant services.
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> This takes it to a new level.
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> I don't have a dog in this fight but it seems to me if you are a private surveyor and depending on gov't contracts this pretty much slams the door in your face and their isn't a lot you can do about it. This would probably hold true for any engineering services but I know the survey side so that's what I'll stick with.
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> Anyone have any thoughts on this?

as a party chief in a county dot, we provide topography, control and row retracements, primarily. there are some stakeout projects, but mgmt generally sells that with the construction package. no interferences, then. seems to work for us.

i dont understand your x and y, though(who is who, exactly?) clarify also, 'interlocal agreements'

I'm not sure I'm following you at all.

We let contracts for large public works projects based on a qualifications. These are not bid and the design firm that gets the bid is responsible for all surveying work. Most have their own preferred surveyors but sometimes they may actually bid out the work, but we would never know.

And we do in house projects where we do the survey and design then let only a construction project.

We do however help in the first one in any way we can to insure a smooth project.

But we are a small town so I may not see what you are even asking about.

dp

Local gov't x and local gov't y. Totally two different gov't agencies city or county.

Having been on both side of this perpetual motion issue, the way I see it is if the "agency" wants to save money and get things done quickly - they farm out the services. IMVHO, that is a win win for both the public at large, and the agency itself. Not to mention the obvious shift in liability, sorta.

If they want to keep their staff working, have 100% control, and have an unlimited time and money budget - they keep it in house.

I'll add that this more pertains to project specific jobs, and not local control, ie. horizontal & vertical monumentation.

$0.02

Around here they're called inter-governmental agreements, and while they occasionally do happen, the fact is most agencies either don't have the resources to share, or don't trust each others ability to perform free from conflicts of interest.

OK, I'll try again.

You are a small private surveying/engineering company. In the past you have provided engineering and surveying to local gov't x, a city. Local gov't x does not have staff to provide all of the engineering/surveying for their projects so normally they give the work to you the private surveyor. Local gov't x has a development boom. Local gov't y with a large engineering/survey staff approaches local gov't x and says we can help. Don't give your work to the small private company (you) because we have staff that we aren't using. An agreement is reached and engineering services are provided by gov't y. Private surveyor (you) just lost a contract with gov't x to gov't y.

Thanks, that makes it clear as a bell. I have not seen any of that in our area so have no experience with it at all. That would be akin to our county making an agreement with my city to have our crew also provide some surveying for the county.

Where are you seeing this happening and between what agencies? First I've ever heard of such a thing when it comes to land surveying. We have mutual aid agreements with surrounding areas but those are mostly for fire responses and such with wild fires that often take dozens of departments not connected to get the job done.

Good luck with that one. The term 'croonyism' comes foremost to my simple mind. It may help to write a letter to the newspaper, talk to the director, etc... but be carefull where you shyte - it may bite you in the butt.

But is it really any different than law enforcement agencies using their own robotic total stations for accident scene investigations, as opposed to hiring a local guy to shoot it and give them a nice data report. I saw about 10K per year go away in the late 90's when they caught on to that.

Or the entire GIS, Machine Control, Scanning worlds combined. Real big picture. (no hijack intended - just sayin')

Most of the construction projects, the surveying is paid out of the contractors share. It used to be the other way.

With the expectation of keeping up with the details of manpower and site needs, insurance starting and ending dates that coincide with project dates, the as needed with hardly any notice at all and keeping up with normal land surveying projects, you really have to have dedicated personnel and the time to keep up with the job and the paperwork to keep it smooth.

You can go to these people and get on their "list".

It became a great inconvenience to be geared to do construction and change over to land surveying overnight. Having such a diverse crew is luck in the draw and can take long time to develop. Then there are the many times that keeping them busy is not possible.

When I was in the SEABEES we would often do charitable work for Boy Scouts, small towns etc. But the deciding factor was that we could NOT compete against private companies. We only got jobs no one else wanted.

So, I see this as a form of the Government competing for work against private enterprise. That's WRONG.

It hasn't actually happened yet but there is a good chance it might. I just heard about it a few days ago. I'm not at liberty to disclose the gov't agencies involved. I'm sure when some of the private engineers/surveyors find out about it there's going to be a dust up. The private sector should be given an opportunity to do this work also. I think our state laws are written so gov't agencies can do as they please.

Where one agency at a particular level of government is providing services to another agency at the same level of the same government (i.e. County DOT provides surveying for County General Services), it is a good use of that governments resources.

It has been common in the past that Caltrans (our State DOT) has entered into agreements with counties or with regional government organizations to administer freeway construction within the jurisdictional area of the county or RGO. In some cases, the county uses their personnel to perform the services they would normally perform (project engineer, surveying, and inspection), which also seems like a good use of local resources to me. But these arrangements have also been good for private companies too in that the local governments often have greater flexibility in contracting for consultants (issues of state contracting rules and union tantrums).

But what I understand you to be describing is that Govt Y would be sending their people to work completely out of jurisdiction, such as Govt Y being one county and Govt X being a nearby county, and there being no nexus between Govt Y and the work to be performed. That sort of arrangement is no different than a private contract, except that it is protectionist for a certain portion of the market in that it excludes those portions of the market which are not favored. It is completely wrong and could probably be shot down on legal grounds involving jurisdictional and restraint of trade issues.