Tell me what you would do here. I'm just the office guy. I'm trying hard not to make anyone wrong, but this one bugs my sense of what's right.
This started as a "find or re-stake corners" job for a lot in a 2 lot short plat.
I gave the crew a coordinate sheet with every possible mon or corner within a few blocks.
Crew rolled up the driveway, opened the van door and found a capped rebar. Seconds later they find another. They hold one and rotate to the other and bang in line stakes and corners, including an angle point (kind of a flag lot), which lands in the middle of the concrete walk. They find another corner and it fits their rotated coordinates, so it must all be good. They drive on to the next job.
I get the notes and I am a little aghast that they didn't tie any offsite mons to verify the found corners. We put them on the schedule to go back in a couple days.
Crew rolls by with the network RTK rover. Shoots one of the two mons called for on the short plat, 850+ feet west. Shoots their own set point in the sidewalk onsite. Drives on to the next job.
I get the notes and I am a little aghast that they didn't tie a few more things. In particular there is no way to know if the found corners are rotated with respect to the rest of the world.
Boss says see if you can find a way to make it all fit via record using the GPS points. That's less than half the hourly cost of sending the crew back. But the only way to make it fit is to assume that one of the plat mons has been replaced with a 5 or 8 or 10 foot offset, which no one has ever recorded before, and there is still the problem that we can't prove the rotation one way or another, so we put it back on the schedule.
Crew spends a couple of hours with a metal detector and a rag tape, but again does not bother to set up a total station and stake to the calcs. They say they can't find anything. Boss says do more research and calcs and give them something else to look for. I find some older records in the shop that give mon ties from a pumping station vault to the other mon called in in the short plat. Calc it up.
Crew goes out and finds that monument with a rag tape, sets some GPS points, turns angles to that mon, turns angles to the back corner of the site, finds another rebar and cap across the road.
Finally enough data to get a basic survey done. Having no idea how good the single GPS shot is on the far monument (the one that might be offset) I wind up calculating all the way around that block from available records. This proves out the GPS shot as being within 0.20' of the calc corner, so it does not seem to be an offset mon. The total station ties from the other GPS points do manage to show that the single onsite RTK shot is off 0.50' in northings (canopy). And lastly, the whole figure on the ground is rotated 0d25m clockwise, which puts the front corners (the ones the crew found and held/rotated to) 0.63 and 0.93 north of calc. There is a second mon 13' south of the one called for in the short plat. If you shot one instead of the other from the back corner of the site, you would be ... 0d25m clockwise.
Other than the angle point we set in the sidewalk, there is no occupation, no apparent reliance on the set corners. Short plat was in 2004.
Seems to me the client hired a surveyor to find or remark the corners. If corners are found, the client is basically asking the surveyor if they can rely on the found corners. For some reason the client is quite anxious about the whole thing.
The instructions I got on how to draw the record of survey were to put our calc figure right on the found mons, label everything as per the short plat, and then put the bearing swing as a "measured" along the line between the defining short plat mons. In this way nobody but a surveyor will ever know. The explanation is that because the monuments on the ground are the original monuments of the short plat, they hold. This seems wrong because the adjoiner to the north has senior rights (has a lot in the underlying plat, the short plat is a division of one of those lots, but calls monuments not on the original plat). I have to look up about repose in this state.
Raises a lot of questions for me. Seems like by staying quiet about the problem we are not fulfilling our duty to the client. At the same time, why rile up anyone about less than a foot?
What would you do?
I would punt
I would punt that baby right up the lower end of the alimentary canal of your firm's management. The method being used to "survey" is terrible and unprofessional in my opinion. The field crew needs to investigate, not just gather some numbers of relative distances. What you describe is probably a widely applied method, but, it is not "surveying".
Bring on the flames, big boyz.
4 drive bys?
I would be looking for another job. Preferably with adult supervision.
Pablo B-)
I would punt
Holy Cow - No question about it. You are correct.
It sounds like the crew on the ground needs much more time being fully supervised in their field responsibilities. Were I to be put in charge of such an operation, there would need to be a good deal of time available for me to be in the field explaining the why to go along with the what of collecting data.
I won't put it down as a mark against the field crew as I don't know how much training they have had yet. However, management at the office should realize that the wasted time of several repeat trips can be avoided by training the crew as to what will be needed (and that going beyond what is minimally needed is better than a trip back).
Finally, I am not a big fan of a crew making a decision to mark a line based on their analysis in the field - unless they have proven to be up to the task. From this post, it sounds like the crew needs more training before being given the task of field analysis and marking a boundary without much more supervision.
HIJACK for half bubble's eyes only
Are you trying to poke fun at Mr. Cottrell with your avatar resembling his avatar?
HIJACK for half bubble's eyes only
hadn't noticed. wanted a new picture and haven't got the dog to hold still lately.
he and i like similar guitars, maybe we related?
My narrative about the crew may obscure the deeper issue, that of what is the right thing to put on the ROS?
HIJACK for half bubble's eyes only
I gotta agree with the others. We go out and find the evidence, and then in the office try and make what we found fit the record, not the other way around.
As far as the actual problem, its really hard for me to picture it in my head. I'd just say a few tenths up to a foot sounds like a lot of error, but in the scheme of things is pretty small.
If you aren't a PLS, let him make the call, if you are the PLS, then the ball is in your court.
HIJACK for half bubble's eyes only
The issue is that the short plat is swung 25 minutes on the ground compared to its own record. I.e. the surveyor who did the short plat in 2004 did not manage to execute on the ground what they intended to stake per the recorded short plat. Our crew eventually located this with an adequate precision.
> The instructions I got on how to draw the record of survey were to put our calc figure right on the found mons, label everything as per the short plat, and then put the bearing swing as a "measured" along the line between the defining short plat mons. In this way nobody but a surveyor will ever know. The explanation is that because the monuments on the ground are the original monuments of the short plat, they hold. This seems wrong because the adjoiner to the north has senior rights (has a lot in the underlying plat, the short plat is a division of one of those lots, but calls monuments not on the original plat). I have to look up about repose in this state.
I would personally not like doing as instructed. If I am reading the instructions you were provided correctly, it seems you are to place on the new survey exactly what is recorded even though you have found substantial difference in what was measured versus what was found.
If it has been determined that the monuments on the ground are original and hold, that is fine. Hold them in the position that they are, but report what you actually found as to their position.
Why not report what you have found as accurately as possible?
If anyone else in the future follows your survey, they will know that there is a difference of a foot here or there. If I start following your current survey and find marks that are a foot off of reported, then I have to figure out why that is the case. If I have two different surveys (original and yours) that show the exact same measurements, I would immediately suspect someone was moving their markers around. Right now, a simple phone call would resolve the matter. 30 years from now, it is possible that no one at your office knows the answer as quickly (if at all).
Some of these young whipersnappers learn a little about the operation of the equipment and data collectors and actually believe that is all there is to do.
They max out early and stop listening and taking instructions until you go out on the job and stay until the job is complete.
Maybe that is one reason there are not any more surveyors than we have now, the job requires a degree of dedication that many are not willing to give.
0.02
HIJACK for half bubble's eyes only
[sarcasm]show just what you did....
show the first day and call it try 1, show the second day and call it try 2, third day try 3, fourth day try 4, then give a copy to the crew chief and tell him to be sure to include it in his packet when he applies for his license....[/sarcasm]
The dedication toward meaningful mentoring and stewardship of our profession is not one that lands solely on those working in the field.
> My narrative about the crew may obscure the deeper issue, that of what is the right thing to put on the ROS?
The right thing to put on your ROS is what you found, what you set and a narrative identifying how you did your survey, what records you used and ANYTHING else that may help future surveyors follow in your footsteps.
As many have already identified...the entire 'survey' procedure used is lacking on almost every level.
Feel free to post a blow-by-blow critique. There are people who need to hear it from sources other than yours truly.
I agree completely. Button pushing is not a new phenomenon in the land surveying profession.
> What would you do?
with that crew?
Put in writing what I wanted the crew to do, and make sure they called me before leaving so that I could review their work...
written instructions...
Seriously, written instructions aren't new. Surveyors around here have been getting them for a long time. They do take extra work.
I am a new PLS, and I have a foot in the office and the other in the field.
There is a guy here who gets what he wants out of field crews. He has a detailed check list of what will make him happy. If he gets an itch, he calls in the middle of the day. He expects the crew to call before leaving the site.
He does this without being a mother hen or smothering, it is just accountability.
He works his behind off in the office, and expects the same from the crew. I hope to be like him someday.
I am not familiar with the term "short plat". Please explain. Is it a form of s subdivision plat?
"I gave the crew a coordinate sheet with every possible mon or corner within a few blocks."
I have found that when you give them a coordinate sheet they think all the work is done and all they need to do is tie a couple of points to "get on the datum". The other thing I have found is that after tying a couple of points, the rest is stakeout and they will miss anything or discount anything that is not within a foot of the comp. You have to look where it's at, not where it supposed to be.
I think what the crew needs to know is that they are retracing a boundary line and before they identify the found monuments as the boundary line (with flagging, stakes, a gallon of spray paint, or whatever) they need to make ties on every side of the line that prove that those indeed are the called for monuments. This needs to be done before leaving the job site. The party chief has to have enough stones to stand up to the survey manager and explain why he took longer on the job than was budgeted and thus point out to the surveyor that he is protecting his reputation and license.
I guess my other question is, what were they given as far as original plats and deeds? Did the chief have all the data at hand, and does he know how to interpret the research? It sounds to me this "short plat" is lacking, and one needs to look at other evidence and original plats to find the lines.
Each time they had the job folder with everything I used to calc it up. Short plat, underlying plat, city engineering department quarter section tile, adjoiner surveys.
A short plat is local-speak for a small subdivision with fewer than a dozen lots, might even be 4 or 5 lots, depending on municipality. Usually without additional right-of-way dedications or infrastructure.
