The state of the Profession (in Oregon)

When I was a member/President of my local AzPLS chapter, we attended job fairs at high schools. Having an instrument setup and demonstrations of how things work really seemed to prompt a lot of questions. We also let them look through the instrument and hold the rod, so they could see the process in real time. The idea of working with technology outdoors was very appealing to many of the students. I don't have a specific count of how many actually took steps to become surveyors, but we did get a lot of attention there. I would say we were one of the most popular booths.

To be sure we need to build awareness that land surveying exists, but the major factor is pay. I’ve slowly drifted over to the Dan Beardslee's school of thought as I’ve observed that most PLSs are nearly ignorant of basic business principles, particularly risk to reward evaluations and opportunity costs. No amount of outreach to highschoolers will work if the majority of PLSs fail to recognize that one of our primary products is a hybrid form of liability insurance.

Examples of this abound and construction surveying is the easiest to quantify. Even large firms will often price jobs based on projected personnel hours without asking why a contractor doesn’t just stake it out himself. Is it really that technical to pull a string taught and mark some bolts? No, but you can always get a surveyor to price the job based solely on projected time and materials without even considering the risk to reward equation. Contractors hire us because they don’t want the responsibility of saying, “Build this here”, not because they can’t staff a surveyor, learn to use a total station, or find other ways to perform their own layout. Free insurance isn’t the greatest, it’ll still cost the contractor some attorney fees, but it’s still a heck of a bargain.

Here's a thought, if it takes five hours in the field and four in the office to stake a pad for a trailer house within tight setbacks, should you charge the same to stake a $1.5 million mountain home assuming it takes roughly the same number of manhours?

What can we do right now? Stop performing mortgage surveys or price them the same as boundary survey. Perform a risk to reward calculation and include it in your cost estimate. Don’t provide discounted prices for surveys even when they’re within a subdivision you designed or when you have previously obtained boundary data. Charge for liability and when the contractor squawks, tell him you'll reduce your rate if he signs a document absolving you from potential liabilities.

When you’re feeling guilty about the invoice you’re about to send out and considering write-offs, walk outside and take a good look at the vehicles your employees are driving and maybe even ask yourself how much you’d need to be billing to provide health insurance or a yearly bonus or a couple of classes at a community college.

Compassion mixed with ignorance foments problems much greater than it purports to solve.

I would love to see BLM Cadastral Survey put on "Retracement Camps" for students and surveyors. The idea is to have a week long "camp" that entails a couple of days in classroom and a field day going out to recover a GLO corner. Eastern States used to do them in cooperation with Alabama Society and Troy State. The camp was allowed to be used for continuing education and was a requirement to graduate from Troy State. There was a fee for the surveyors but I believe the society covered the students. Typically it was done on USFS land in Alabama. Fun and very educational for many. Too bad it has gone on the wayside.

Something similar to include high school students would be a great idea!

I used to do a lot more outreach. I really should get back into it.

I always found that the high schoolers like to play with the tech, but if any of them are outdoors-oriented, those folks will like the monument hunts, and a lot of them seemed to just like learning how to read maps. Basic orienteering and scavenger hunts were a good option too.

I'm not particularly worried about "obstacles". I really really hate the idea of dumbing down requirements for licensure. I want to work with good people who have been vetted by the formal education, mentoring and examination requirements. These "obstacles" aren't really obstacles, because as soon as we make it worth someone's while to go through school (if necessary) and get into the profession, they'll do it. Rates are going to have to go up as the number of surveyors decrease.

But we definitely shoot ourselves in the foot when it comes to bringing people in as new hires. Too often the focus is on "can we pay them as little as possible and bill them out as much as possible?" rather than "is this someone who is a good fit with our culture, has the drive and aptitude to go all the way to licensure, and is willing to help bring others along for the ride?"

(Obligatory shoutout to the <font face="inherit">Bozo Explosion</font>...)

My biggest worry is the lack of mentorship and training, which exacerbates a lack of fundamental knowledge among those in the licensing pipeline. I get that the easiest metric to measure is "how much money did we make", but it's a crappy stand-in for actual performance and incentivizes assembly-line methods, which suck for advancing employees. Most firms will try and get away with as little training as possible and expect employees to bridge that gap on their own time with no help.

That, plus the technology gap between leadership and incoming new hires - we have a bad habit of turning our noses up at technology because "monuments rule" or "follow in the footsteps" or "the best tool is a shovel". Yes, those are absolutely valid concepts, but that doesn't mean that we can't embrace top tech to streamline our work. Or even supplement it - we do GIS, laser scanning, monitoring, UAS, utility mapping, renewables work, etc. in addition to traditional boundary work. Potential hires don't have to be exclusively boundary-oriented, all of the time.

You can bet the next generation of surveyors are going to be technology-savvy, and are going to expect their employers to be as well. I started surveying twenty years ago, and it's incredible how much tech has changed. If we don't keep up, we're not going to be as attractive of a career option.

This has to be one of the best written and thought through pieces of what I have seen since being back and observing. I have friends licensed in different states and the FFA and 4H are such great programs that are not being tapped as I believe they could be. I mean my 12 year old daughter is learning how to conduct a parliamentary type setting as a officer. Much like a board of surveyors do. They are not just about livestock they learn so many valuable skills that can aid in growing the surveying profession. Technology discipline learning to speak publicly STEM programs. Environment soil And much much more . These kids come to these programs because they like nature outdoors forestry agriculture etc. usually some very talented and intelligent kids. I keep telling my boss but he is all city and can’t see it. Yet will hire a farmer lol.

...only to have them poached by another who offers a dollar more.

I think that's a pretty big overestimation. Sure, money is important, but a dollar? Comon'... I think if someone leaves for a dollar then there was various other dissatisfaction going on.

There are guys out there that all they care to do is show up, punch a clock, and grind topos. But I don't think those are the guys that the boards are worried about losing. I think pigeonholing is actually one of the bigger problems. Speaking for myself almost every place I've worked since getting out of school has tried to pigeonhole me into a topo grunt or a cad tech or some other role with no real variety and no opportunity to grow my career.

I found a spot now where I'm able to do all of the things and it's great, but I think opportunities like this are uncommon in the profession. Wowing student with gadgets is convenient I suppose, but if you want to build longer lasting appeal then I think you'll want to be able to tell them what an actual career in surveying will be like and not have it sound boring or repetitive.

"There are guys out there that all they care to do is show up, punch a clock, and grind topos. But I don’t think those are the guys that the boards are worried about losing..."

There is nothing wrong with guys doing the job for awhile and then moving on. You don't worry about losing any individual as long as there is a steady supply of replacements. This game isn't for everyone, after all. Not everyone at NASA is an astronaut.

I think we should have a multi faceted approach to gain some replacements for our future retirees. I don't believe a 4 year degree is a good "absolute" requirement to be a licensed surveyor. I have worked with many excellent surveyors that had no degree and we should keep a pathway for those that aren't meant to learn in a classroom. I have a 4 year degree and it has helped me in many ways and I do encourage those that would similarly benefit to do that. It is not for everyone so we should not exclude them from future license holders.

One of the other pathways is one that I am learning about every day through my son who just entered a voc- ed program in our town. There are a great many students that will spend their high school days splitting time with a more "on the job" training program than a traditional high school. Similar to a college co op program students work for periods in a chosen profession while also completing their courses in high school. Many of these programs (plus other tech high schools) offer students instruction in engineering, drafting and construction that could lead to potential surveyors in the pool of graduates.

Ultimately, all of this needs to follow through with graduates getting hired by firms and supported with as much education as is possible (college and/or experience) as well as earning money to survive and thrive in this world. There is a great demand for our services and it contains a lot of technical aspects that line up well with tech schools and voc ed very well. I know it has been used by some firms with great success and I think it will help solve a problem. Retaining these people is mostly a money issue which has improved for many over the past few years and should continue in that direction.

I'm a newly licensed surveyor here in Oregon, and I'd like to share my story about my recent path to licensure.

I was one of the first Part 107 licenses issued in Oregon back in September of 2016. I started my own drone business back then doing photography for real estate marketing. After 2 years of that I began to explore other avenues of using a drone professionally, and work with LIDAR and mapping caught my eye. When I did the research into what was required to do that type of work, I found that a Professional Land Surveyor or Professional Photogrammetrist license is required. I made the decision in 2018 to shut down my drone business and return to college to pursue a degree in land surveying so that I could one day return to the UAS world and do that type of mapping. I graduated in 2022 and received my Professional Land Surveyor's license in Oregon in July of 2023. I now work at place where, because of my interest and qualifications, we have purchased a drone and are using it for mapping, just like I dreamed. It took 5 years of hard work to get to where I can do this work in compliance with ORS 672.

Unfortunately, when I look around Oregon at the successful drone mapping companies out there, I don't see Surveyors or even Photogrammetrists. I see a lot of mapping being done by drones under the umbrella of GIS. I see realtors using drone photography with tax map lines overlaid to represent the approximate location of property boundaries. Most painfully, I don't see or hear of the state board doing anything actively to protect this type of work for those like myself who pursued a license. I didn't enter this industry to be the police force of surveying, turning everyone I meet into the state board. I now have a lot of student of debt, no drone company of my own, and established competitors in that industry, and I wonder if pursuing a survey license was worth it. (It was, and I LOVE this work, even the non-drone aspects of it, but I still feel like I have been cheated out of the rewards of following what I believe to be the right path).

When I first started school, professors were quick to point out the statistics about the lack of surveyors and the average age of current surveyors, claiming that as a young licensee I would be able to name my price because I would be such a rare commodity. Instead I see surveyor forums filled with conversations about deregulation, lowering the standards for licensure, and giving up longstanding aspects of our profession to machine control and GIS, instead of partnering with those industries and embracing that technology.

I certainly don't have any answers, but I don't think deregulation and lowering the standards of licensure are the right answer. I work in the review side of surveying, and I would love to see not more regulation, but more standardization and professionalism.

Early in my career GPS was the new emerging technology and there were early adopters providing specialty GPS control services. Not all were licensed surveyors, and a lot of such work was done in the name of GIS. Now, years later, GPS is just another tool in nearly every surveyors kit. And the GIS collection by unlicensed persons goes on. The business of drone mapping is on very much the same trajectory.

BTW - this symposium is going to be rebroadcast this week. I think maybe people could still get in on that. If so, it's super cheap and easy PDH's. Just sayin'

Fellow Oregon PLS. My hats off to you for stepping up and taking the PLS route. Among drone companies as you note, extremely rare and most are either ignorant, ignore the law or explain it away. Price of entry is way too low to get into UAV photogrammetry is part of the issue. In years past photogrammersits came up through the ranks working for mapping companies under a license with manned aircraft and 100's of thousands in hardware, now buy some hardware for essentially pocket change and start producing junk. I really wonder about folks using unlicensed drone mapping what their mind set is? And I agree, there isn't any apparent enforcement of the laws, at least here in Oregon. I have entered discussions many times in several online forums and most drone mapping providers think they are doing something surveyors can't, thereby providing a valuable service. My thoughts are it is a lot easier to turn a PLS into a drone operator than the other way around.

SHG

I was recently told about a drone survey that came up with some startling results. Not my monkey and not my circus, but I have one of those feelings..........

Anyway an irrigation company gained 100 AF cause of the drone/bathometric combo survey.

They aren't complaining.

Here is the link in case anyone wants it. (Maybe it is posted but I missed it- and I'm struggling to get it right, let's see if it works). PLSO or https://www.plso.org/resources/Documents/2023 BOD Mtgs/2022 Surveying Taskforce to Address the Shortage of Licensed Surveyors in Oregon - March 6'23.pdf