Surveyor growth

I learned that there's a good portion of young men who become quite anxious when put in a position requiring low to mid level decision making. Whether I like it or not, I'm going to need to spend more time building their confidence in the coming year.

By studying the comments here, I have learned that too many of us are dead set that we are doing things correctly while most everyone else is doing them incorrectly. Thus, they will see no need to change their procedures.

We need even more direct communication between surveyors. Not less.

My changes are small items that I have learned here, one at a time, over the years of participation.

My hope is that those who follow us will learn to understand the problems we discovered and how we chose to deal with them.

I learned from this past year a lot of assumptions are made from the top down to the field crews. So I will be doing a lot more calling to talk to the different crews and discuss more with them. Train explain. It also goes in with the anxious issue. Trying to teach the new crew chiefs the tortoise wins the race not the hare. I think some times they are so eager to get the project done they don’t completely know what all is actually needed.

These last few months being exposed to many other crews from different states has opened my eyes to this and now to turn this train a bit before it runs off the track.

I learned, or rather was forced to reluctantly acknowledge, that decisions made at the higher levels with respect to technical matters, workflows, equipment, and procedures are more often based upon gut instinct or biased by experiences that are 20+ years old, and frequently impervious to arguments made with facts backed up by white papers, case studies, etc.

So I am going to have to work on my marketing skills for internal use.

I learned from this past year a lot of assumptions are made from the top down to the field crews. So I will be doing a lot more calling to talk to the different crews and discuss more with them. Train explain.

This is a good one for sure. So, so many people in a particular role have little or zero concept of what other folks are doing or why. I make a point of explaining why I want a particular procedure done or a particular result. This is why I want office staff to go into the field regularly, and field staff to at least check, if not process, their data in the office from time to time.

Yeah it’s not a matter of the higher ups not knowing what they are doing it’s like you said they set standards or think everything is as it was 20 years ago and assume it’s being done the exact same way. Now that could be a number of things but a lot was based on a totally different field software platform than what’s deployed today. So had one looking at the raw data and said just use that distance and the other crews angles etc. Not the same beast at all. I just role with it and try and shield the field crews and such the best I can. Because if I process and qa/qc it’s fine but someone else and it hits the fan.

The other is Some of these crew chiefs have and know the correct buttons to push but simply do not understand the discipline and understanding of things like traversing and mean angles. They can traverse but the concept of geometry and balancing the legs or checking the mean angle residuals is not something they pay attention to. Not there fault no one has ever explained it. Last month I showed a crew chief of 8 years in how to run through all the adjustments for the S5. Never had anyone showed him ever. And he was getting some bad traverse closures.

I relish the answers. Keep them coming.

Training field level employees is paramount to their success. If they aren't doing something right, oftentimes it's us as the experienced, registered professional that isn't giving them the necessary intellectual tools to do so.

I am sorta an odd ball. I was away for many years from daily Land Surveying. So I missed a lot. Now I was still in the geodetic and such so was still learning just not the daily grind of everyday surveying. In some ways I believe this gives me a different perspective . When I started in the 90’s. I remember a lot more mentoring going on. Even up to the year 2000 before I went into the military and became a geodetic surveyor . Since this past year being truly full time and involved with crews and LS it’s a totally different beast. The LS has very little involvement in the day to day. It’s here is this job and get it done. The questions come maybe after the job is completed. A traverse bust or a huge blunder happens not much feedback. I line crews out and every now and then he will call them and tell them to do Xbox y. Which usually means I get a call saying what does the boss mean about doing x or y on this job. Which is usually meant for a totally different job. It’s all paperwork and meetings. The structure doesn’t match the profession of responsible charge. Don’t know how to fix that at big companies. But I hope every day that we somehow get back to the mentorship that I had in those early years. It’s imperative for the future of the profession. Now many friends that are solo or small shops are very involved and have a understanding of the equipment and how to utilize it for work flows. I see a lot of money and time lost just through daily processes that have no need at all to be done that way with the capabilities of today’s software. If I perform a qa/qc and adjustment through the process of our standards it’s a 2x’s as long. If I utilize the same equipment and software and plan the job with that in mind it’s done usually at a higher accuracy and quality and yet much quicker in field and office. My crews do work for me and another manager out of state to them it’s frustrating as they go through a bunch of things that are time consuming for not much return. I am not saying manufacturers are the cure all. But a lot of what they have placed in the software came from request over years to simplify and make easier. I say learn that and adapt it to be more efficient where possible. Don’t give up the quality for a cool trick for sure but lots of things can be done so much smarter for sure. I have a job now that has 20 plus control points. 2 to 3 crews. Every one of them uses the same points but calls them something different. Every day for weeks. So it’s a disaster to manage .

Absolutely!

If they aren’t doing something right, oftentimes it’s us as the experienced, registered professional that isn’t giving them the necessary intellectual tools to do so.

As an (anecdotal) data point I'm seeing more and more licensees being detached from day-to-day operations, and becoming totally unfamiliar with the vast majority of equipment/software capabilities and workflows. The licensees that are actually involved are few and far between, and frequently "project surveyors" or "staff surveyors" with the same utilization rates enforced for them as for the rest of production staff - rarely put in positions where they are either able or mandated to train and mentor. Very often they are one-person crews by virtue of their knowledge and skill level.

When both individuals and groups get punished for not meeting utilization rates, and PLSs literally do not understand the day-to-day workflows that production staff live and breathe, it's not hard to see why we have trouble attracting people to the profession, and moving people down the path of licensure.

Speaking with family and friend in other industries - from the trades to software development to law to marketing - they don't have this problem, at least not to the extent that we do.

I think one item for me is simply getting better at anticipating what the client needs. My whole career so far I've heard "Soandso (client) doesn't know what they need, but based on previous experience we're gonna do XYZ" and I took those experienced people's word for it. This year I've been in a position to see some of that firsthand, so I'm hoping to get better at spotting that sort of thing and heading it off before it becomes a problem.

As far as housekeeping items, most places I've worked have tried to come up with an organized field to finish workflow. Some places were ridiculously cumbersome about it, so I was familiar with what that looked like, but until recently I hadn't seen a system that was a little more chaotic than I'd prefer to work in. Having seen some extremes now is already giving me some ideas of what is both reasonable and effective moving forward.

Lastly, even after the massive inflation and hot white economy the last couple years there are still outfits out there that don't value surveying...

Field to Finish is actually very simple if done correctly. I have witnessed what I perceive you are seeing. Where everything is burdensome on the field crews. I have seen the opposite of that as well cad office personnel do everything. There is a sweet spot that gets both field and office together and makes for a very productive system. I have done coding where I had signs rotate from field codes and place the text on the. Stop sign is easy but some signs can have lots of typing. I was honestly taken back when I came back to this side that the companies truly were not using a field to finish mentality. It blows me away that line work is being done by connecting the dots. With it drawing your screen now days it’s an absolute help in making sure you didn’t miss anything.

I had a true engineer on the site with me today. Old school he looks and walks every site he designs on. Was an absolute honor to see that. We walked around and he was like I want bring x through here. I said ok I will map this and that so you see how everything will lay. What a great client. What he thought he needed he was able to look on site with my map screen and his proposed plans and I did some measurements we did a little field design. Laid it out for looks. Yanked a tape checking existing buildings and utilities. He had forgot his scale so I let him borrow mine. Heck honestly I bet what we did on the hood and the data collector is what I will be staking in a month or two. Smart guy. But I say all this we have so much capabilities and not so much knowledge it’s there to be taken. Wisdom from the mentoring to apply all that knowledge and skills.

More what I learned about myself as a surveyor...

1. That I really wasn't looking for the same thing in a job as I was when I was younger (on the business side of the equation.) As I told my boss when I gave notice "you need a guy for this job (managing a nationwide business sector with about $15M in revenue) that's 45 and ambitious, not 60 and ready to slow down."

2. That I missed interaction with, and mentoring, the folks that were actually doing the work - rather than having my direct reports be regional operations managers who the PM's reported to. Now I have a six-person team: two techs that are on their way to licensure (one SIT who should be licensed by this summer, one getting ready to take the fundamentals exam), and an ambitions youngster that just graduated last spring from Penn State with a Geography/GIS degree.

I've learned previously, and been reminded that no one cares about you getting your license except you. Only you can do the work, find the ambition, dig deeper emotionally, drive yourself harder to find the focus, and by if some chance you find a few people that are supportive it's a blessing for the process and definitely helps to find solace in the path.

That being said, I need to get my nose into the stone....