Just wanted to ask other surveyors about their office.
I am your typical private surveyor with around 5-10 assorted survey crews depending on volume of jobs.
My office location is really out of the way for most of my clients to visit. We do business over the phone & emails or I meet them in their preferred meeting office or preferred coffee bar. Out of a year I would maybe get 1-5 walk-in clients that are living near my office itself.
Now this is what I wanted to know about other surveyors' offices - do you have a lot of staff around during working hours? If I have several work then all my surveyors are not around the office during working hours. They usually leave the office 7 AM & return around 3 PM. Between these hours the office is empty except for me & the office caretaker. I have not gotten a secretary anymore because the work load of answering the phone has gotten less as clients usually inquire via email. Survey data processing & CAD work is being done by myself & some of the surveyors when they get back to the office but mostly I do the final drafting after they initially sketch in the details.
So if a client wants to visit the office they usually ask me - "Where are your staff?"
I then feel that I have to defend myself saying that they are assigned to the field or they are out meeting with clients, etc.
I want to hire more staff but when they are in the office & have nothing to do because work really is light then I feel that it is a waste of overhead.
I own the office building with a size of about 200 sq.m. & this whole office just contains me & the caretaker with the wife sometimes helping out with the tax forms and accounting.
What's your office like?
In my tenure at surveying/engineering firms we (us field monkeys) were already gone out to the field long before any walk-in clients might come along. By the time we were already out for the day the only people left in the office was a few engineers (who didn't deal with surveying much) and a secretary and maybe our resident PLS.
If your client(s) want to meet "the crew", tell them to show up around 0700 hours before they head out or they can meet them in the field. Or maybe show up around 1700 hours when they come back in from the field.
> So if a client wants to visit the office they usually ask me - "Where are your staff?"
>
So he thinks your staff should be busy surveying the office?
For one person to process the workload of 5 plus crews does not fit with the typical model I have encountered here in the US. I have heard tales from the past that tell of such a thing but never since 2001 have I seen it.
The typical ratio seems to be much closer to one office tech, sometimes a surveyor who can generate their own product, sometimes a person who processes product only, for every one to two crews.
I have seen the ratio office to field at 1:1 more often than not, 1:3 being the greatest.
Leaner companies blur the distinction by having personnel who work in both functions, a employee who can do both is sought after but can only be fully utilized in certain business models.
I wonder what the difference in procedures is between what I have seen here and what the picture is like in the Philippines.
Survey data processing is faster today than compared to the 1990s. Today most on-board data collectors or DC record the field data quite efficiently. Once downloaded the OEM software can process them in less than 30 minutes or so. From there it is just a matter of sketching in CAD or data weeding for proper contouring.
I always quote a 7-10 days data processing time frame after the fieldwork is completed. This gives me more than sufficient time to finalized the plans after the lead project surveyor has roughly sketch his survey plat.
As to the office setup, most of my field surveyors do not stay in the office if they have nothing to do after their work. Since they do not have vacation leave if they are assigned to out of the way field locations, they use up their accumulated vacation time after their field work is completed & they are not needed to explain their survey data.
So on lean days, I would have 2-3 surveyors around the office for the sketching & data weeding if I could not understand their survey data.
We have six desks and an equipment storage area all in one big open plan space.
All the desks are busy at the start and end of each day.
If you were to walk in during "Bank Hours" you would probably only find one or two desks occupied. Likewise the carpark would be empty.
Most offices I've worked in have not had desks dedicated to each field crew. The field crew maybe have a large communal table/ area or a single cubicle that they share. PLS's and Survey/CAD tech have cubicles/desks, and occupy them during most days.
All our party chiefs have their own desk/computer; but if they can't bring their fieldwork in, adjust the control, and draft their jobs in C3D or MicroStation, then they aren't party chiefs. 😉
> ... if they can't bring their fieldwork in, adjust the control, and draft their jobs in C3D or MicroStation, then they aren't party chiefs. 😉
Any field hand I've known who figured those things out has very quickly been given a cubicle and largely confined to the office forever after.
A field crew member that will actually do something about advancing their learning enough thru listen and learn, self learn and/or go to class to use office equipment and survey programs is rare.
Most simply wish to throw their notes into the back door and avoid taking time for verbal explanation of their day with anyone that dwells within.
I've heard them quote "I don't want any responsibility" too many times.
My office is setup (two people comfortably, 4 max) in two dedicated rooms with four desks, four computers dedicated to specific tasks and containing some shared software on a wireless network with data stored on a separate storage device and an arsenal of thumb drives.
In 25yrs have yet to find any person that will make use of any of these office facilities for any actual work.
A few associates that help me have worked from their own home office.
0.02