What is an office surveyor?

I have always believed that "Office Surveyor" is a contradiction in terms (i.e. oxymoron).

Loyal

The survey that was done for my present lot, either the stamping PS never set foot on it, or if he did, he didn't bother to look over what he was stamping; the survey has set & found iron stake indicated for my sideline corners - problem being they are actually chiseled "x's" in concrete, one being found (existent), the other being 'set' (newer concrete).

Me too.

I am fortunate to have a job where I do everything, the field work, the research, the calculations, the drafting, everything. Of course when I screw something up I know who to blame too (an added plus).

One time I couldn't find the target in some trees 1500 feet across a canyon. Of couse my young employee could see it with the naked eye. He said "let me know when you want me to find it for you, chief!" After some swearing on my part I had to let him find it then I remarked, "I guess you got some more stuff to add to your medical log on me." He said, "Well lately it's been so much I've gone to a little pocket tape recorder."

A lazy SOB that is not a real surveyor.... Around here we call them "surveyors on paper," most are engineers that have a surveying license that do not or cannot actually do a survey. It is easy to tell who they are... After you go behind the a few times.

Oh now come on people.

If it wasn't for the 'office surveyor' I'd never have gotten enough experience to get a license.

Once my boss decided I was ready, then he started me out on simple jobs and gradually to difficult jobs. How else are you supposed to learn.

My boss wasn't an office surveyor in the strictest terms but my being able to do a job start to finish left him free to run a crew also.

I go on every job but if I had competent employees that I trusted to do the work then I would send them. Right now I don't have employees.

What is an office surveyor? TRUST

It's all about trust in your field monkeys.
I was always a field operator.
I also was asked to review final drawings before they got filed.
I've also filed some of those drawings myself.

TRUST, TRUST, TRUST...

IMHO that's what it's all about.

My boss. Hasn't seen the field in ten years and he's in his mid forties. Doesn't mind telling you how he would have done it if he was out there though.

My goal is to never claim to be a professional surveyor while spending more than fifty percent of my time in an office. I believe there is a big disconnect between a person who thinks he can survey and those who actually do it day in and day out.

I'll go on a limb here. I think in the old days (pre data collector), the LS in the office often was on site and on a very regular basis. He had first hand knowledge of the conditions, and the crew was truly supervised.

Now in the high tech world of button pushing crews, all the data looks good. All the time, or they just adjust it or go figure out where the issue is within the data.

What gets missed is that experienced set of eyes looking for things they don't even know are there, but likely are. Just some oddball evidence from the old days.

Meanwhile, the crew is just trying to obtain data that works, in a timely manner, and move on. Everything to that LS in the office looks great on paper, even though there may be substantial conditions in the field that need re-visiting. Not that the crew is intentionally missing something, they just don't know when to keep looking - and worse off - where to keep looking. So when the data fits other data, just move on.

What is that old GIS phrase - bad data begats bad data. or something like that

I suspect most current "under supervision of" laws carry forth the old day philosophy, but it never quite gets followed with the intent that it was set forth.

$0.02

Knowing and trusting your field people. I go in the field once a month...maybe. Most of the time besides that I am in meetings with clients, bidding jobs, doing CAD work, property comps, QA/QC checks, invoices, etc.

I do all the boundary determination myself but I know and trust my party chiefs and my CAD technicians. They usually construct deeds for me and sometimes I challenge them to come up with a property determination themselves. Then we go over it and see how they did...it's good training. Of course I review EVERYTHING to do with property lines and ensure that the work meets my specs. But ensuring that every item located is 100% perfect is what the people who work for me do before it gets to me. I spot check them but not every one.

I do the research on hard jobs but I have one guy who has been a very friend for over 20 years who is about to go for his LS...he is my lead party chief and technician, and he keeps a close eye on the other guys. He is also getting very good are research, even finding things I missed at times. He'll be a partner before long.

The guys who work for me care, they know what I expect in the field and if they have a question they call. We run 2-3 field crews at a time, have 2 office people, and our work is top notch, that's the reputation we've gotten with engineers, attorneys and construction clients. I'll stand with anyone who is in the field all the time on my property line decisions.

I've spent a lot of time wading through swamps and snow, traversing up and over mountains and cutting line through hundreds of feet of prickers. I still like to get out there sometimes but my job now is to accurately determine property lines (which requires a lot more legal knowledge than technical skill) and to develop my business.

Tom

I think Tom hit the nail on the head with his comment. The ability to feel comfortable with not going in the field on every job comes down to employing the right people. Are your field guys the type who are looking to push a few buttons and collect a check at the end of the work or the type who are looking to make sure the company succeeds and are working towards becoming licensed?

Too many people, once they got their license, got moved into the office because they were supposedly too expensive for a field crew. This has been very common with larger firms.

I got caught in that trap myself in the past, and it led to a near disaster. Now, I might not be on every survey event, but I make sure I've been to every site, boots on the ground, and the bigger one's I make sure I'm involved heavily in the field on.

Having images from digital cameras makes supervising
much easier.

I know an Office surveyor. He spent 3 months in the field one summer but because he had a degree he was allowed to sit for the test. He eventually passed. He's been in the office surveying now for more than 15 years. He couldn't balance a traverse or even set the gun up much less conduct a field survey on his own. This is why he has 5 crews and 5 cadd techs.

If you can't tell from what has been provided when you need to visit the site and when you don't, then you probably are not qualified to be an office surveyor. It doesn't just happen, any more than being good in the field just happens.

If you're working for someone that never talks with field crews and never visits a site, then you should try to get experience somewhere else before contemplating your own license.

For the first 15 years and 4 companies of my career the PLS never left the office. The first company I worked for where any of the professionals left the office, it was the CE, not the surveyor. As said above, the PLS was deemed too expensive to spend time on field work.

Now all these registered surveyors came up bootstrap, not a one of them had a college degree, and as was said above, this was pre data collector. The requirements for field notes and field procedure were not subject to individual interpretation but had to meet written standards. Most of the punchlist items were common sense, such as north arrow, but some were company specific due to certain legal positions. At one we were prohibited from noting the physical house address of the lot we were doing while at most others that was required.

I know to many of you who are single practitioners and have always done your own field work the thought of signing a survey you've never set foot on is anathema, but once upon a time the metro survey factory was the successful business model, just look at the gross operating costs to see why. Crews were expected to crank out a set number of mortgage surveys a day and your pay scale was based solely on production numbers. I sucked at this, as I've always been a 'the job is done when the job is done' kind of guy, especially about what the folks living on the property think is their property line which may or may not agree with the plat. Fortunately I had a few bosses that recognized that and steered me into industrial and commercial development, where I was more cost effective.

> What is that old GIS phrase - bad data begats bad data. or something like that
>

The one I remember is: "garbage in, garbage out"