> Texas board may think they need to micromanage you, but GA board actually leaves some things to your discretion as a professional.
I took a quick look at the Georgia "standards" and see that there basically aren't any modern standards. Compass surveying is perfectly fine and so are positional errors as large as 0.49 ft. in rural work? Considering what sloppy work is considered acceptable, that rebar 0.07 ft. off line would apparently be just fine in downtown Atlanta. LOL!
> I was elated that there was only 0.07' difference.
Yes, I just took a quick look at the Georgia standards and see that in rural areas one could even still do compass surveying without anyone raising an eyebrow. I hadn't realized that things were that relaxed there.
Kent,
Maybe you looked at some older standards. The newest we have are not as "loose" as you imply. Granted, there are parts that don't make sense. Survey in some of the swamps and mountainous areas we do and you hope and pray for a 1/10000 closure. Closures are numbers. I'd rather follow a 1/5000 survey where the corners were actually set than a 1/50000 where all those "IPS" symbols are imaginary. Same said for a 1/50000 survey that uses a wrong corner....
Okay, I took a second look at the Georgia minimum standards dealing with survey accuracy.
While they mention compass surveying, apparently the BOR thought it needed to mention that you could use a compass for retracement as long as you "reduce" your work to a non-magnetic traverse. I initially thought that they expect the compass bearings to be reduced to true, but suppose that what they intended to say was that you can use the compass to find the boundary, but then you have to break out the total station or GPS.
😉
There aren't many WV rules. It is how it should be, left up to the professional to determine what is needed.
There are some rules and our society is currently trying to get them removed!
The thing with position rules is how do you enforce it? YOU CAN'T. It's all worthless wording to make somebody somewhere feel good.
If the government tried to enforce the accuracy rule it would costs thousands per corner by the time they got done 'verifying' it.
What do you do if you find a corner set by others to be 0.07' off? Turn them in to the board? I don't get the putting numbers to the accuracy when it can't be enforced.
Do they tell you that you can use a shovel to dig for buried boundary markers, also? :>
Kent,
I realize that you are from Austin and so may think that Atlanta is Rural, but it is not. Atlanta would be considered an Urban Survey. As such it would require 1:10,000 and an allowable positional accuracy of 0.1' according to 180-7-3 (a) 1. In case you were curious, Stacy is not from Atlanta, but from Elberton, GA which is firmly in the rural category. You are incorrect in your interpretation of GA law. the 0.07' would be able to be called as online.
Stacy,
I would love to see the full size.
> I realize that you are from Austin and so may think that Atlanta is Rural, but it is not. Atlanta would be considered an Urban Survey. As such it would require 1:10,000 and an allowable positional accuracy of 0.1' according to 180-7-3
Yes, I realized how the Georgia board was specifying allowable error in measurements after reading their rules again. So in urban Georgia, if your error in measurements can't exceed 1:10,000, I assume that you interpret that as meaning that the semi-major axis of the 95%-confidence relative error ellipse can't exceed 1:10,000 of the distance between the points.
Actually, no. The traverse must close 1:10,000. The irons are not required to be part of the traverse, rather they can be sideshots. So the 95 confidence between two irons must be no more than 0.1' error. What I find interesting is the signicant digits. Since the law allows 0.1' then if I am off 0.1495', that rounds to 0.1'. Not saying it is necessarily right, just saying that it is legal.
Basically, most surveyors will do way beyond what is legally allowed. Most will do their suburban and even their rural surveys to urban standards. Is it right or smart? I do not know. You are opening yourself up to a liability that you do not necessarily need to. Instead certify to the lower level and still do the work as if it was higher. That is how I have always done it. In SC we had class "a", class "b", etc. I was one of the few that I knew of who would put his lot surveys in a class "b". I did not want the boss to have to defend to a higher standard if it ever came to that. But I still did the work as if I was working in an urban area. That is just good work habits.
I think that is what Stacy did here, he did the work right, but then used the allowable error to call the irons on line. That way, if he had any error, he was not on the hook for "you said the iron was 0.07' off line but I find it to be 0.14' off line.
I would really like to see and hear the results of Kent running line in the Redwoods in Northern Calif.
Keith
What the Georgia rules say
>The traverse must close 1:10,000. The irons are not required to be part of the traverse, rather they can be sideshots. So the 95 confidence between two irons must be no more than 0.1' error.
Well, the Georgia rule actually says:
Measurements shall be made with instruments capable of attaining the required accuracy for the particular problem involved. Angles and distances shall be measured to obtain an accuracy of not less than 1:10,000 in urban or suburban areas and 1:5,000 in rural areas except as follows:
(a) the allowable positional tolerance of property corners with respect to each other within a given survey may not be greater than:
1. 0.1 foot in urban blocks
2. 0.25 foot in suburban subdivsions
3. 0.50 in rural areas.
Hmm. Well, the only interpretation of the actual words that makes sense from the standpoint of modern surveying is that the accuracy of rural survey results, i.e. the combined errors in distance and bearing between any two points separated by a distance, [tex]d[/tex], positioned by a survey shall not be larger than
[tex]d/5000[/tex] or 0.50 ft., whichever is smaller.
and
[tex]d/10,000[/tex] or 0.25 ft., whichever is smaller. in suburban work.
What the Georgia rules say
That means that to meet the standard with what is normally considered to be acceptable confidence (95% confidence), you'd be surveying to a target value of better than 1:20,000 or 0.12 ft. in suburban work, whichever is smaller.
In urban work, you'd be shooting for 1:20,000 or 0.05 ft., whichever is smaller.
What the Georgia rules say
an incorrect assumption. Here is why: what would the relative positional Accuracy be on a line that was supposed to be 10.00'. Now put it in an urban area. If you are surveying in in urban, you are to show distances to the hundredths and angles to the second. Guess what? By your argument to show what is acceptable would be illegal.
What the Georgia rules say
Well, considering that the rule provides:
a) the allowable positional tolerance of property corners with respect to each other within a given survey may not be greater than:
1. 0.1 foot in urban blocks
2. 0.25 foot in suburban subdivsions
3. 0.50 in rural areas.
It starts off with a maximum relative positional uncertainty of less than 0.10 foot between every corner positioned on the survey. What does that mean in practice? It means that the survey has to choose a confidence level at which to evaluate the semi-major axis of the relative error ellipse between pairs of corners positioned by the survey. 95% confidence is widely used as a result of the ALTA/ACSM specifications, so I think it would be a reasonable choice.
So, if the object is not to have any pairs of points whose relative positions as reported are in error by more than, say, 0.10 ft., it means that about two-thirds of them need to be in error by less than 0.05 ft.
For two corners 10 ft. apart, the rule basically says that their relationship should be exact since there is no provision otherwise in the language. The gimme for rural work is that the maximum allowable positional tolerance for rural work is 0.50, but the rule doesn't say what the units should be, whether miles, chains, inches or yards.
> The thing with position rules is how do you enforce it? YOU CAN'T. It's all worthless wording to make somebody somewhere feel good.
>
> If the government tried to enforce the accuracy rule it would costs thousands per corner by the time they got done 'verifying' it.
>
> What do you do if you find a corner set by others to be 0.07' off? Turn them in to the board? I don't get the putting numbers to the accuracy when it can't be enforced.
I agree, John. Of the mentors I learned the most from this was a point that came up often. There is/was no way BOR accuracy standards would ever be enforced, and they would, in most cases, be irrelevant to the situation of the survey's requirements. I never saw one, however, just willy nilly throw those standards out the window so as to make their lives easier, so to speak. But, as some have said, what good does it do to show a pin off line 0.07' and a traverse closure of, say, 1'/50,000' when you're locating a 30" White Oak at one end of the line and a 1' square 'stone' at the other end and neither point has been documented by another surveyor in the last 50 or 75 years, or something. I don't care what anyone else says, at some point along the line common sense and "local" custom and the surveyors good learned judgement has to come into play. Then, let the chips fall where they may in relationship to the particular survey. It always has, always will and always does 'depend'.....mmmm,..., except of course DU! (and maybe, West Texas?)...:-)
>Of the mentors I learned the most from this was a point that came up often. There is/was no way BOR accuracy standards would ever be enforced, and they would, in most cases, be irrelevant to the situation of the survey's requirements. I never saw one, however, just willy nilly throw those standards out the window so a
Well, the reason to adopt accuracy standards is to be able to identify substandard work. Without a formal written standard, it all boils down to a whittlin' contest. With the standards, there isn't any doubt but that the work is incompetently performed.
The way that the world works is that if you were to slack the standards off to +/-1 ft., within a week you'd have the marginal operators traversing by Disto and compass and failing even the slackened standard.
> Well, the reason to adopt accuracy standards is to be able to identify substandard work. Without a formal written standard, it all boils down to a whittlin' contest. With the standards, there isn't any doubt but that the work is incompetently performed.
>
> The way that the world works is that if you were to slack the standards off to +/-1 ft., within a week you'd have the marginal operators traversing by Disto and compass and failing even the slackened standard.
No doubt. And I personally take great pains to uphold the standards I'm held to by law. But, I make a lot of common sense decisions that those standards never even come close to addressing the right or wrong of. And never will. Facts be known, the only regulations that BORs can dictate and enforce are the ones that address ethics and law where we cause damages to the public for which it is entitled to relief. They certainly should have a say as to whether or not we should be sued, or reprimanded. And that will many times be fairly easy to determine. And showing a pin to be on line which may be, by my own expert perzacktly measurements, 0.07' off line ain't one of the things I worry about.
>Facts be known, the only regulations that BORs can dictate and enforce are the ones that address ethics and law where we cause damages to the public for which it is entitled to relief.
Actually, I think that the better statement is that licensing boards can make and enforce any rules that they are empowered to by the acts of the state legislature that created both the license and the licensing board. One commonly cited reason for the licensing of land surveyors is the protection of the public.
>They certainly should have a say as to whether or not we should be sued, or reprimanded.
I don't think that the licensing boards should be intervening in civil suits to which land surveyors are a party if there is no complaint before them related to the matter.
>And showing a pin to be on line which may be, by my own expert perzacktly measurements, 0.07' off line ain't one of the things I worry about.
Well, as a rule it is hard to see how encouraging surveyors to be less than honest in their reporting of findings is in the interest of the public.
What the Georgia rules say
Ah, but there is the rub. 10.00' is an approximation. It is any number between 9.995 and 10.005. And each of those numbers is an approximation of a more accurate number. Therefore any number is going to have some error. That is why the 0.1' would apply rather than the 1':10000. Because the irons at 10 feet apart would, using the 10.00' approximation be technically over the limit that would be allowed.
Really, it is common sense. You make sure your traverse is 1:10000. You shoot your irons from multiple setups. And you let your friend StarNET do a good least squares.
Not really as hard as you are trying to make it out. The Georgia board just realizes that arguing over 0.04' is foolishness.
