The majority of private landownwers have little to no knowledge of the statutes governing our profession. They howl over our invoices because we don't tell them what to expect and why. When we do we are sheepish and apologetic. Inevitably many 'work with them' by reducing fees, partly because they themselves don't understsnd what we do.
Do a professional job and charge a professional fee. Mentoring employees and educating john q is part of that fee. You'll be surprised how many of our problems disappear.
Exactly.
Many surveyors feel sympathy for the client and behave much like a kidnap victim that begins to identify with their captors. The client complains about the price and you can be sure the surveyor will go low.
I call that phenomenon profit guilt and it is highly contagious.?ÿ
I have told several folks, "it's not personal, it's just business".
I am convinced it is because many of our peers are such terrible businessmen and have no clue how to determine overhead, profit & loss, sinking funds, building profit into every job, charging enough to pay people a fair wage, and on and on.
We can only charge what the market bears. It makes no difference what the cost of production is. If the cost of production consistently exceeds what the market bears, supply is reduced until scarcity increases the fees.?ÿ If the supply is sufficient to meet demand at any given price level it means that suppliers are making enough money to provide, at the least, a minimally acceptable product. In a nutshell that is free market economics.?ÿ
Private landowners, as a rule, may purchase survey services once in a lifetime. As such, they have no idea how to discern between a good survey and bad one. One surveyor's signature on a document is as good as any other. One set of boundary stakes are not likely to be challenged. There is a popular line of thinking among surveyors that once a boundary is staked, subsequent surveyors should (in the absence of proof of fraud or gross negligence) honor the stakes even if they are found to be poorly placed.?ÿ So they might as well choose the cheapest one.?ÿ Price is their only means of differentiation. There is no downside to choosing the cheapest. So they choose the low bidder. In such a market, for such a client, the bias is always to lower prices.?ÿ
Other types of clients have other motivations. Being more sophisticated they are able to discern between good survey service and bad.?ÿ Such clients are willing to pay for a higher quality product, schedule, more complex deliverables. They understand that a better product will save them money in other phases of their projects.?ÿ?ÿ
By all means, do not turn your back on the private landowner. But understand that their work is almost always going to go to the lowest bidder. Develop other markets or race to the bottom.?ÿ?ÿ
I do not blame the client for seeking out the lowest price but rather the surveyor for essentially working for wages.
We all worked hard to get licensed and part of the reason for my pursuit was to make a truck load of money and I don't know about anybody else here I damned sure did not get licensed in order to be a charity. A for profit business exists to make a profit otherwise it is a charity. Show me the money & you may disagree but if more people took a firmer business like approach we would be a lot better.
We all know that we can only charge what the market can bear, what I am saying is that the market can bear A WHOLE LOT MORE.
Many here are making excuses and giving some half baked reasoning but the simple reality is that surveyors do not charge near enough money. We tend to sympathize with the public.
I had this talk with another surveyor friend who is of the opinion that many of the "old guard" locally sees themselves as providing a public duty so they tend to charge accordingly.?ÿ
When 'production quality' gets low enough, forces beyond supply and demand may tske ovee.
In my opinion, only the PCs with several years of experience mentor. One of the problems is that the PCs were promoted after 1 or 2 years of working with little or no mentoring. I think the best example of a well-rounded PC is one who has both field and class experience. But my question is who wants to learn theory? I bet that 8 out of the last 10 PCs with whom I have been working could not answer this question correctly:
"Given 2 set of coordinates (points), calculate the angle and bearing between them. Show your work. You may not use a calculator for anything but the trigonometric values of an angle."
I might be wrong, but not by much. Of course, all data collectors do that for you, so why would he (or she) need to?
What I'm getting at is that I agree with your original opinion. It irks me though, because I do not know where we will go from here.
I also believe a lot of of the problem is a product of the schools and the lifestyles of the current generation.
But I'm an old curmudgeon.
JRC
Your point is valid but your example is poorly stated.?ÿ You need 3 pairs of coordinates to calculate an angle, and a given bearing to find the bearing for the other line.
Regarding answering a basic question, I have an elevation that I found written on a stake near my house, but have no idea how it was derived (and I'm not sure if our city public works ever converted).?ÿ I saw a solo field guy, probably 50 years old, from the company that did that work, so I asked him if it was NGVD29, NAVD88, and leveled or just GPS derived.
His answer was "we do everything in NAD83."
I didn't pursue the question any further.
I shoulda left off the angle part, but I believe a bearing can stated with the info given. I meant bearing and distance. Sigh.
Can't a bearing be derived using the coordinates given?
Yes, 2 points define a bearing in that coordinate system. I guess I was thinking of the problem of rotating grid to geodetic, which wasn't part of your example.
We all know that we can only charge what the market can bear, what I am saying is that the market can bear A WHOLE LOT MORE.
In other words, if the market would just change to what you think it should be...... Sorry, it doesn't work that way. You are tilting at windmills.?ÿ Your only hope is to show that your competitors are not meeting statutory minimum standards. Or find other clients.
I'll have to make a mild protest about the schools' role. Note that I said "mild."
A student who has completed Algebra 1 and Geometry should know enough math to solve that problem, with a caveat or two. The student would use the two points to calculate the slope of the line between them. That slope is the tangent of the angle between the line and the x-axis, always between negative 90 degrees and positive 90 degrees, but you would want the angle between the line and the y-axis, counting clockwise from the positive end. The student would likely not know that, so he might be deemed dumb or uneducated, but he's likely neither.
If a new-hire answered your question as he had been taught in school, how would you teach him or her the surveying interpretation of the problem?
Now, the best math students take Algebra 1 in seventh grade and Geometry in eighth grade, except in North Carolina where the EdD's have worked their brand of magic, so nobody knows what they've studied, what they're currently studying, or what they need to study next. Comparatively few middle school teachers have math degrees, so many do not teach the subtleties of slopes and tangents, hence part of the "mild protest." But enough do so that there are a lot of very smart, well-schooled high school freshmen who, with minimal instruction, could grasp that problem in a heartbeat.
As to work ethic and attitudes, consider this. Schools get students 6 hours a day for 180 days each year. That's just over 12% of the total time contained in a year. Undoubtedly, schools could set better examples during their limited time, but their message is just one of thousands bombarding students, some for much more time than the 12% that schools get.
Forgive me, please, but schools bear only part of the blame.
I know, not much of a profession without secret terminology. I knew what a arm bone was as a freshman high school-er (and the neck bones connected to the head bone,etc.), but didn't find it Humerus until I broke it several years later and a doctor let me in on it.
When I was teaching surveying, one of the concepts some students had trouble with was the idea that a direction is an angle from some reference line. When they start to get it the next question is always "why is it different in math (east), basic CAD (west), and now this (north)?"
And students who didn't have much trouble with the concept with either from rural areas where map and compass were taught as part of hunting with family, or if from urban areas had been involved in Scouting.
Schools used to enhance rather than take the place of parenting. Seems to me it's the idea schools can do it all that is misguided; the evidence of the past 40 years shows not.
@duane-frymir
One of my friends who was a far better teacher than I was asked a class which way North was. A fair number of them pointed up; that's what they saw on wall maps!
My dad was a terrible teacher. A furniture maker with a ton of experience, he expected every new hire to have all of his knowledge coming in. Lots of disappointment and turnover.
Teaching is hard, especially when there's work to be done. Patience wears thin, but creating good help is the first step toward keeping them, so training and mentoring is a must.
Once upon a time I taught people how to fly airplanes. When I passed the Flight Instructor practical test I thought I just needed an eloquent spiel for each operation, wow I was wrong, couldn't be more wrong.
Mostly it comes down to a little bit of talk which goes in one ear and out the other (if they understand 10% of what I just said that's good), then go out and coach coach coach, let them fly, let them make mistakes, try not to interfere too much unless danger requires it. My flight instructor experience came in very handy teaching my children how to drive which is a lot scarier.
Most people have a pretty good sense of direction. We would take off and go out to the practice area. Most people in a lesson or two could get themselves back to the airport. I had this one student, he had zero sense of direction. That was a trip, could never figure out how to get back to the airport which is required. Pilots have to be able to find their way around, very little of it is in a computer.
Better than fish tacos, those things are a foul and disgusting use for a piece of nasty imported Chinese tilapia fed and grown on waste products. A better use would be to throw them in the trash.
A plumber is required by code to do the work. None of this DIY.
Had proper materials been installed, plumbers would not be needed as much as they are.
Surveyors are only needed once on a boundary survey when it is done correctly and proper monuments are put in place.
My biggest problem is the surveyors that go out and do a brother in law rate survey for all their buddies and it gets broadcast to every realtor and banker around and then everyone expects the discount.
Right on. But we are bound by regulatons as well and while it may not be a building code most states survey standards are codified in law.
And the incidences of surveyors offering up the brother-in-law rate is an epidemic along with the good friend rate and the friend of a friend rate and the church piano lady rate. I am surprised many surveyors don't pay the people to do a survey for them.
And if you're a company owner and if you allow your PC to drive a truck home you definately should forbid and prohibit them from taking the equipment as well because they will use it. They will use it without your knowledge. Don't think they won't.
And the people with the most money are the biggest skinflints.