If I haven't made a certain mistake on a plat it is a guarantee that someone else's work I review will contain that very error.?ÿ I've made plenty of mistakes but 99 out of 100 get caught before the plat reaches the client.?ÿ Too frequently today the inhouse review is the license holder who never was in the field.
Today's booboo from another firm had nine calls in the description and only eight sides on the plat.?ÿ The computer-generated closure data added even more confusion.?ÿ There was a line shown on the plat with a bearing on North 87 degrees and some minutes and seconds West.?ÿ The closure data indicated a different bearing, yet close to the prior number but with a much longer distance.?ÿ The description, with the extra call, was the correct data.?ÿ A call to the signer of plat confirmed that there was a monument left off the drawing putting a small bend in what appeared to be a straight line on the drawing.?ÿ The one bearing and distance on the drawing was correct but for the portion after the missing monument.?ÿ The extra call in the description was correct for the unlabeled portion before the missing monument symbol.?ÿ The closure data sheet was wrong because the input jumped over the missing monument entirely, therefore the area calculation was in error by a few square feet out of over 100 acres in the total tract.
The number one thing I consider when reviewing is if the words in the description agree with everything shown on the drawing.?ÿ This is number one because it is the most common error I have found in a couple decades of reviewing plats other than my own.?ÿ If things don't agree the question then becomes which version is correct or is either correct.?ÿ I'm as guilty as anyone else at making mistakes but seem to be better at catching them before it is too late.?ÿ Finding one error leads one to suspect there may be others that are not quite so obvious.?ÿ Proofing is the difference between solid work and typical work.?ÿ Be atypical. Dedicate more effort to proofing the final product.
as a one man company, I am continually finding out too late that I usually overlook the very easy errors - I concentrate on the hard stuff - and it is truly embarrassing to get notified by others that I had done something really stupid, and really easy to catch.
I've written about 500 descriptions a year for the last 10 years.?ÿ Nobody checks my work but me and hardly even one goes by that I don't catch something before I print it all out.?ÿ I would be foolish to think I catch them all though.?ÿ
Now I have a routine that eliminates almost every chance of a screw-up; at least in the math.?ÿ One sharp county clerk caught one not too long ago.?ÿ I checked and my description closed. I couldn't understand where the error could be.
I was on the west side of section 19 and had read my township & range map on the wall incorrectly.?ÿ My documents all had the wrong range.?ÿ Oops.
I guess I missed the 'dollars' while looking too close at the 'pennies'.?ÿ
Sounds like a great segue for getting younger student and upcoming lsit a chance to learn the nuance and value of writing and proofing.
If I had no one else to proof my work I always (or almost always) ran the calls through a legal description writer.?ÿ That is, I entered the bearing/distance manually rather than use the point numbers/nodes on the drawing.?ÿ I won't say that eliminated ALL the errors (ie. what Paden mentioned) but it caught most.?ÿ If possible I had someone else check behind me.
Andy
I do my computing in my COGO then run the data into AutoCAD and/or Word. The same routine does both with only the output format different, so they always match. What I don't understand when I look at someone else's work is when the bearings and distances, or sometimes the curve data, is whacko, so it is obvious they are hand entering the data on the map, or in Word. Why hand enter the data?
Just got done writing french drain about a million times in the filed notes for what was a trench drain.
Embarrassed. I do know what a french drain really is, though I don't know if we use those, here in Texas.
And I really can't explain that special mental vacation there.
I don't write many descriptions anymore, but I started saving the closure report as a .txt file, then as I type the description in Word I cut the calls out of the report and paste them into the description.?ÿ Cutting them eliminates skipping or repeating a call.
I had a new guy, once, that called it TOW of slope...
Then I had an engineer ask; what does T O E and T O P stand for. (He thought they were acronyms)
A few errors I've caught while reviewing:
Wrong county is the description
Wrong section, township or range or all three
Wrong dimension (copied from another line of that length)
Wrong dimension by 0.01 feet (very common)
Wrong bearing by a few seconds (very common)
Forgotten call in description
Area off by a huge number (copied from somewhere else)
Spelling errors that I ignore normally but sometimes those errors change the meaning so I notify the surveyor directly on the phone as he/she will want to correct that before it gets to the client
What direction is Northweast?
Unsigned/unstamped
Signed and stamped but not the same name shown as the one doing the signing and stamping
Wrong street names or spelling on a plat of subdivision
No monuments indicated as being set
Wrong section corner references listed (copied from some other survey)
Had one I never figured out where the description did not close by about 25 feet (They withdrew the submittal entirely)
Wrong subdivision name
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I plot bearing-distance on drawing from linework and write legals from point-to-point geometry, hoping this corroboration will prevent most errors. Still every week I find errors on what I thought were final documents.?ÿ Gheez.
@rj-schneider The many-decades-old proposed plan for my house and land has a handwritten ??Fringe Drain? label on it. But the proposed drain did run along an edge of the property, so maybe the designer really did mean ??fringe.? ????
@holy-cow I like ??Northweast.? ????
75% probability for Northwest, 25% Northeast.?ÿ In the end, whatever makes it close. Good luck if there is a 2nd mistake.
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Two things that "help" for me. The first is the hardest to do with deadlines but works the best.
1. Write the description and check it. Then wait about a week to forget what you wrote, then re-read/check it.
2. Write the description, check it and send it out. Wait about a week for someone else to read it and inform you of any errors.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was to read (whatever) backwards to check for spelling mistakes. That way you won't be distracted by the reading and skipping over the mistakes by filling them in subconsciously.
And that advice came from this very board.
Another error that I have found only a few times is as follows.?ÿ The description begins with something like:?ÿ A tract in the Southeast Quarter of the Southeast Quarter of Section XX.?ÿ The problem is that the measured dimensions shown on the plat indicate that, mathematically, the tract surveyed extends into the Southwest Quarter of the Southeast Quarter.
Many years ago I was reprimanded by a title worker because my description showed the tract to be in the Southeast Quarter of Section YY.?ÿ Her complaint was that the owner only had title to the West Half of the Southeast Quarter.?ÿ She insisted that my description should have mentioned that it fell within the boundaries of the parent tract specifically.