Roles and Responsibilites amongst staff

Company policy:
Everybody learns everybody else's job.
That way, everybody learns.

You know Kelly, that's a pretty in depth question. Or at least let me say an exhaustive reply could take hours. But I would like to say (in answering your question) what I have found over the years is that it depends a lot on the employee. I have had some really good employees over the years. What elevated them to that status in my eyes was outside the realm of a list of responsibilities.

For example: I had a PC who worked for me for several years and knew exactly what I wanted. All I had to tell him was "engineering topo: full vertical tied to the City's network" and he would direct the crew to methodically chase down every utility, MH depth, storm sewer run, pavement type and down to the size and type of every tree. I rarely bothered him until he was finished. But don't ask him to contemplate a boundary in the field, he couldn't quite grasp that ethereal concept at times and needed supervising. Did that make him a substandard PC? Not on your life.

I also had a kid that worked for me for a good long time that was literally dumb as a stump. If I told him to go back to the truck and bring back three specific items, he would forget at least one of them. But he was honest and showed up every day and if I told him we needed a shot in a waist deep slough, he grabbed the rod and got out there. He required direction, but I wouldn't trade him for two hot-shots.

I had a young lady CAD tech who worked for me for a couple of years that never could understand the concept of scale. Even though I had developed template drawings to work from, her text sizes were crazy and everything would get crammed up in one corner. But she understood surveying and boundary work. I could give her an ALTA title commitment and leave her alone. I just had to "clean up" her drawings when she was finished.

So to answer your question: In my outfit the PLS (me) is responsible for everything. The real trick is knowing your employees' abilities and shortcomings and working within those parameters. The delegation of work is more a function of the character of the your staff than a hard and fast list of duties or rules. Knowing your employees abilities is far more important than assigning each employee any specific responsibility in my opinion. Once you understand what each employee is good (or bad) at; only then will it become clear whom should be responsible for what.

Padens' examples really says it all.
Though I'm not in such a position, being a sole operator, I'd be assessing each on their merit, seeing where their strengths (flair) are and working with them to fulfil their potential.
Making them not just an employee but feel part of a team, with their respective importance is good for the whole organisation.
It takes skill from the one at the top, and if that doesn't come naturally would be worth pursuing.

Responsibility is for all, none more so than surveying.
Much of my work is only as good as those on other end, or and relies on my offsider.
However those who do stuff up need to have support from the top.

That's my 2 bobs worth.

"How would you sort of outline the various mapping tasks (boundary/topo/ALTA/Parcel Map/plat & legal, others) and the various stages that you feel are appropriate to keep at a PLS level, what you can delegate to junior survey staff and what can be done by Drafters?"

You can outline what could be done by each and every employee, but what will be done is a factor of every employee's individual skills, preferences and attitude. What maters is the size of the team. In a football game there are many specialties, even offense and defense, the quarterback does pretty much what he is told. A soccer team is close in size, but almost every member has every skill, while the goaltender is on his own. Then there is golf or pool or chess.

Paul in PA

Twenty years ago I was convinced I could mentor anyone to become whatever I needed them to be. In actuality my experience parallels Paden's with the names and skills changed to protect the innocent.

All the firms having success with specifically delineating workflow by job title are in larger markets than myself. They simply have more potential employees to choose from and an HR department to find them.

Steve

My job description is do everything that I can not delegate to someone else and have the project meet my standards, the schedule and project specifications. As Paden said, it depends on your specific employees. We can delegate tasks but not responsibility.

sjc1989, post: 403272, member: 6718 wrote: ..All the firms having success with specifically delineating workflow by job title are in larger markets than myself. They simply have more potential employees to choose from and an HR department to find them.

Steve

I understand what you're saying and you're right, larger outfits at least have a larger "gene pool" from which to draw. But sometimes I think outfits (large and small) have been guilty of "throwing a few back in the pond" when it was the position that was flawed and not the folks that attempted the title.

The first time I was elevated to "chief of parties" was with a civil firm. I was in charge of 5 crews. One of my tasks was preparing a job folder with all the available records that pertained to the project included. At first this didn't seem like a problem. Even though this was in the day of no internet and "hard copy only from the courthouse" the older fella, Jack, that I had replaced had apparently been keeping track of it pretty well.

After a few months it became a problem. I had stacks of work orders ready for the crews but all the job folders were in various stages of incomplete because I was having a hard time finding time to hit the courthouses. I finally corralled a meeting between the three engineers and myself to let them know things were falling behind. Much to my amazement it came to light the engineers had not only been helping out with the task (when Jack was still there) but the secretary (recently retired also) had been spending at least two days a week at the courthouses digging up records also. There were five people that had worked together for so long they really weren't aware of how much each did for the other. When I took over Jack's position they all assumed since I was young and healthy I should be able to take care of things.

It wasn't long after that we hired a young lady to replace the secretary that retired. With a legal background she was well familiar with records research. After that things started rolling along well again.

Even though it appeared as though the guy before me had been keeping things straight he had adapted to a system that took years to develop with working relationships. None of the principals were really aware of what a chore it was to gather all the required info. They assumed it just "happened" I guess. A good example of the character of employees actually creating the work flow as opposed to rigidly assigning tasks.

Nate The Surveyor, post: 403231, member: 291 wrote: Company policy:
Everybody learns everybody else's job.
That way, everybody learns.

Good plan, I've been teaching our drafting staff how to do topo baseplans.

One of my senior PLS in another office likes to say "make your stock price go up" when he asks someone to learn something new.

Even in a larger company, hopefully, guys who have the personality, or skill set, to do a certain task or duty, will start to gravitate toward that job. You have guys, for instance that do a terrible job at research, and guys that love digging in to the different sources and take pride in doing a thorough job. Maybe find information that isn't in the Title commitment for instance. Hopefully you can start to sic that guy on the heavy-duty research jobs, and let some expert CAD technician drafting up the drawings. There are those guys who love figuring out everything CAD. It would be their hobby even if they didn't have that great job. It's sad when you got these people working outside their element, and it breeds jealousy and backstabbing to get ahead.

Excellent posts by Paden once again.

paden cash, post: 403282, member: 20 wrote: they all assumed since I was young and healthy I should be able to take care of things.

10-4.

Steve

This reminded me of the time years ago when I was raising my three daughters with no spouse. One evening one of them whined about doing some chore I had assigned to her. She wanted to know why she had to do what ever it was. I explained that I COULD do it. Her big sister COULD do it. But, her little sister COULDN'T do it. I wasn't doing it because I was doing something none of the three could do at that point in time. Big sister wasn't doing it because she was doing something only she and I could do and the younger two could not. Therefore, the middle daughter HAD to do it. She understood and stopped complaining.

Workload in the surveying business is very similar. The PLS probably COULD do everything. The crew chief could probably do most things, but not all, And, it goes down the chain of command in similar fashion to the guy who might be able to tie flagging around nails correctly 7 out of 10 times.