BrandonA, post: 387118, member: 11837 wrote: I completely agree, field work is something that has been lost. I was fortunate to spend some time in the field as an intern while in college and had an RPLS put me in situations to learn things. By the same token, RPLS that never went to college and refuse to learn the ever changing technology are just as big of a problem. We have an RPLS that refuses to use email or learn about GPS equipment, I think that is just as bad.
Agreed. It's tough to get the right mix of technical, theoretical and practical in employees, and old-timers can be just as detrimental to the profession as the brand-new graduates. We have a local professor who repeatedly hammers home the "practicing" part of being a practicing surveyor - namely, that if you are not keeping up with advancements in the profession (whether they be technological, legal, business-oriented, etc.) and striving to increase your knowledge, you are not fulfilling your duty as a professional.
To their credit, most of the students I see coming through the geomatics program are able and eager to master the hands-on, field skills (which is difficult to cram into the standard four-year program beyond the very basics), but have difficulty finding the right mentor/teacher who will invest the time required. This is invariably driven by economics.
Lots of bad surveying in Texas, that's the impression I'm getting
Monte, post: 387113, member: 11913 wrote: I also am worried about our newest bunch of RPLS that come straight from university
Well that's quite a problem you have in Texas if you have licensed surveyors coming straight out of college. Up here you can't sit for the licensing exam without having a number of already licensed surveyors vouch that you are ready to enter the profession. If there are guys (and gals) getting licensed here that aren't ready to practice the profession the way it should be practiced it's not the new guys or the university's fault...it's the fault of us "old timers" who signed off on their applications 😉
MightyMoe, post: 387129, member: 700 wrote: Lots of bad surveying in Texas, that's the impression I'm getting
I'd say that's a fair statement when you consider that the greatest number of surveys in the booming Texas market are made in connection with residential sales and that high-volume market is dominated by El Cheapo Rapido firms, many of which aren't even owned by licensees.
[USER=136]@James Fleming[/USER]
Texas has a 4yr college requirement plus a mentoring program.
Candidates for license testing must have worked in a supervisory position for a specific period of time.
I remember having to get 3 surveyors to send in a recommendation form before I was approved for testing, sure it is still that way.
Personally, I've had 4 candidates that have come thru me toward getting their license.
Three of them dropped out because they were attempting to shortcut their way to get a license and were not interested in being taught or in operating under the legal guidelines.
I see many surveyors simply losing their way and allowing themselves to be deceived enough to tarnish the profession by producing an inferior product and giving a cheap, quick, fast and worthless survey and make a fast buck and hopefully be gone and forgotten.
Everyone of them I've crossed paths with say the same thing "my guy said the machine says it is good, so it is good" and they are not ever out in the field.
Yall make it sound like there should only be solo operations allowed. How would large pipelines, transmission lines, roadways, etc. ever get built if only RPLS were allowed to do the field work?
Kent McMillan, post: 387110, member: 3 wrote: Well, vigorous enforcement of anti-trust and consumer protection laws would be a start that would limit the abuses of the monopolistic power of many large corporations. In the surveying profession, I'd :
1. require all corporations offering surveying services to the public to be entirely owned by registered professional land surveyors (and their unlicensed spouses, Texas being a community property state),
2. have the licensing board establish maximum supervision ratios (non-licensed employees to licensed) that, if exceeded, would be considered prima facie evidence of incompetent practice,
3. have the licensing board establish minimum standards for documentation of survey work, both research and field work, and consider the absence of which would be considered prima facie evidence of incompetent practice,
1. So a company that offers engineering could not also offer survey? I can see that a surveyor should have an interest in the corporation; however, what you are proposing is very restrictive. Some states require that the Surveyor on the Certificate of Authorization have an ownership in the company. In Georgia, you only need to have a R.L.S. as a full time employee. Definitely, some ownership should be required.
2. I don't believe that I will live long enough to see our Profession agree on the proper ratio. A separate thread could be started to have this discussion. I certainly do not want the State to dictate what this ratio should be. Sorry, I can not do your project, as I would need to hire another person and it would put me over my required ratio.
3. Our profession should establish a Standard of Care for all areas of land surveying and have the licensing boards adopt and enforce. Not the other way around.
Government alone is not going to solve the problem.
lmbrls, post: 387166, member: 6823 wrote: 1. So a company that offers engineering could not also offer survey? I can see that a surveyor should have an interest in the corporation; however, what you are proposing is very restrictive. Some states require that the Surveyor on the Certificate of Authorization have an ownership in the company. In Georgia, you only need to have a R.L.S. as a full time employee. Definitely, some ownership should be required.
2. I don't believe that I will live long enough to see our Profession agree on the proper ratio. A separate thread could be started to have this discussion. I certainly do not want the State to dictate what this ratio should be. Sorry, I can not do your project, as I would need to hire another person and it would put me over my required ratio.
3. Our profession should establish a Standard of Care for all areas of land surveying and have the licensing boards adopt and enforce. Not the other way around.
Government alone is not going to solve the problem.
I see the arrangement whereby surveying work is organized and control is exerted by unlicensed people to be inherently problematic. While I'm sure that there are some engineering companies who maintain very competent surveying operations, the opposite is what I ordinarily see. I think that the requirement that a licensee(s) own at a minimum a 50% interest in the company offering surveying services would work well. Many engineering companies already split out their surveying functions as separate entities, i.e. New Zenith Engineering and New Zenith Surveying.
As to supervision ratios, does anyone seriously contend that certain ratios are completely unmanageable? The purpose would be to separate out those obviously incompetent arrangements from those that at least have a chance of working.
As to standards of care, I think there should already be wide agreement on obvious stuff such as minimum research and quality assurance of measurements. The only change I think is advisable is requiring a paper trail that is easily auditable by any regulator.
Texas does have a problem. To be able to sit the exam in Texas requires among other things, 2 years responsible charge, basically working under an RPLS for 2 years demonstrating you can do the job. As mentioned previously, some guys are just letting their charges work for 730 days, and call it good, not worried that they spent the entire 2 years only doing one type of survey job. And as mentioned, some applicants shop around looking for their 3 sponsors. It's like any other industry, profession, calling, what-have-you. There are guys who honestly try to do a good job and believe in their work, and there is a small percentage who want to get rich quick. The public has no real idea of what a survey entails, so they have a hard time understanding why El Cheapo Ranchito can do a mortgage survey for $400 but my firm starts out at $1,400. Unless they have a dispute with a neighbor later on, the quick find 4 things that might be pins that line up with about where the fences are seems good enough. The fact that the crew sends their data to a RPLS in an office 300 miles away who has only seen the property on google earth doesn't play into most consumers thoughts, because hey, the guy has a license, right? He must know what he is doing. My counter to that is how can an RPLS who never leaves his desk have any idea how well his crew looks for monuments? how can he explain to the landowner about the pin being off to the side of the fence corner if he has only seen a photo of it himself? I realize that many of todays RPLS in Texas couldn't go to the field and run an instrument, because they were not taught how. I see that as a fault of their mentors. But I also see it as a fault of somehow thinking the word professional ties to not getting your hands dirty. I dont suggest an RPLS on each crew. I suggest RPLS actively oversee their crews. I suggest the state board oversee their registrants for quality of work done, not quantity. All the new fangled thing that have come around in the last few years, allowing just about anyone to measure anything with some buttons being pushed, and a computer program to tell you what it means, if surveyors don't get out there and make themselves needed and of value, no one is gonna notice when we are gone.
Monte, post: 387183, member: 11913 wrote: I dont suggest an RPLS on each crew. I suggest RPLS actively oversee their crews. I suggest the state board oversee their registrants for quality of work done, not quantity.
Yes, but when there is a fairly direct connection between quantity and quality, shouldn't the TBPLS focus on what is more easily auditable? Supervision ratios would seem to be fairly easy to quantify and audit. When one can easily identifying the practitioners who are serial abusers of their licenses, that seems a great place to start.
It is interesting that this thread parallels the conversation at the Chapter 10 TSPS meeting last night.
Someone reported that the board is discussing dropping the requirement to have an RPLS physically at each branch office. As I understand it, the push is coming from the corporate consultant class and the general consensus of (I hope) a majority of the board is not favorable to this proposal.
There was also discussion about changing the way that board members are selected. Instead of a political appointment, use some other mechanism to select board members.
Discussion of moving the regulation of surveying away from a function of the state to a self-regulated profession model (like the lawyer's bar) was mentioned, which seemed like a good way to head off deregulation attempts by the "smaller government" types. If I recall, all revenue collected by the TBPLS is directed into the general fund and then the state gives the TBPLS some of it back for an operating budget which doesn't seem to adequately fund enforcement activities. I would think if the regulation and purse-strings were given to an organization whose directors were not political appointees and independent of the voracious state budget, the proper amount of money could be directed towards hiring more full time investigators to actively work issues. (I think the board currently employ 2 part time investigators).
It was a very lengthy meeting and a lot of discussion about the future of the profession in the State of Texas. I'm sure I am missing many of the other points that were discussed, but it was a very informative discussion and makes me feel more positive about being a member of the TSPS.
Andy Nold, post: 387199, member: 7 wrote: Someone reported that the board is discussing dropping the requirement to have an RPLS physically at each branch office. As I understand it, the push is coming from the corporate consultant class and the general consensus of (I hope) a majority of the board is not favorable to this proposal.
There was also discussion about changing the way that board members are selected. Instead of a political appointment, use some other mechanism to select board members.
Discussion of moving the regulation of surveying away from a function of the state to a self-regulated profession model (like the lawyer's bar) was mentioned, which seemed like a good way to head off deregulation attempts by the "smaller government" types.
Except, the reason why the practice of land surveying in Texas is in the condition that it has fallen into is that powerful lobbies like the large home builders and realtors' associations prefer having plentiful cheap surveys. The model that has taken hold is one of very lax regulation with fines levied going into the general revenue as a sort of Tax on Idiocy and Malfeasance along with the money from license renewal fees that serve as a sort of Occupation Tax.
You'd have to create a system that maintained a large oversupply of surveyors with money for the general fund continuing to flow into the State coffers to have a proposal that would pass the scrutiny of the interests that created the present mess.
Yep, but self-regulation would be popular with the small government, low-taxes crowd maybe enough to make an end run around the corporate consultant class. It is a suggestion for change as was requested in the early part of this thread and even though one you might eschew on the initial mention, something to work towards. And for what it's worth, there is no oversupply of surveyors (willing to) work in my part of Texas. Perhaps that's why we're seeing those remote control survey companies like what I heard mentioned based in Florida with a Texas ticketholder and 30 crews floating around out here mucking things up.
Andy Nold, post: 387218, member: 7 wrote: Yep, but self-regulation would be popular with the small government, low-taxes crowd maybe enough to make an end run around the corporate consultant class.
This gets into Texas politics, of course, so we'll have to disagree about what the agenda of the folks presently in the majority in State government actually is.
Shortly after i graduated some 18 years ago the Bachelor of Surveying disappeared. Some years later it was scrambled back together in some adhoc form. Basically a 1.5 year surveying course was tacked onto the end of an environmental science degree and rebadged as a "Masters of Surveying". I did 4 years of study to come out with honors and now i could get masters after what is in reality 1.5 years of Surveying training. Some of that time also counts towards their license. Gone are the years of formal training and then more years of training under a senior surveyor. I worry and am frustrated as to what is happening to this industry/profession.
I agree that you guys are banging on large firms way too much. For me the last company I worked for prior to taking the plunge was like a University where i learned what a professional operation looked like.
Having a professional staff now is my best asset. I learned early on I cant be all things to all people. I choose to be a coach to my employees, a mentor because I can't be in the field everyday, draft all the plats, prepare all the proposals, answer all the calls and walk ins, build great relationships, check all the plats, pay all the bills, do all the collections and schedule all the work all at the same time. If you choose to do all that your income will stay pretty low and you will eventually screw up big.
I'm not saying a solo operation can't work, but it's difficult to maintain clients only doing as much as one person can do.
[USER=7]@Andy Nold[/USER] I am not up to date on everything TSPS, so I may be completely wrong, but I was at the strategic planning, and was under the impression that much of what you say ya'll discussed at your meeting was allowed to fall off the discussion table for the year. Did anyone at your chapter meeting bring up the discussion at the strategic planning meeting about some crazy guys ideas of ways to make TSPS more available to members and increase membership?
Lugeyser, post: 387257, member: 1249 wrote: I agree that you guys are banging on large firms way too much.
I don't think anyone is alleging that large surveying offices are inherently bad although they do tend to be Chinese fire drills. The issue is whether the activities of the office are properly supervised by a licensee or not, which to me means that the licensee has personal direction and knowledge of everything done under his seal and signature. At some ratios of supervisees to supervisor, that becomes completely unlikely and it is reasonable to assume that it ain't happening.
Some might argue we had too many LS on staff there, so it may have been an exception.
Every time I go to my dentist office, my dentist is in the room. For a standard cleaning, she will be there at the start and finish but leave for a bit while the technician does the dirty work. My dentist checks the results before I leave the chair. Anything more serious and she is present throughout the procedure.
Every time I go to my doctor's office, an M.D. by the way, I see my doctor. Nurses may be involved for certain functions, but I always deal directly with my doctor. I could go to several other medical offices closer to my residence but they attempt to provide my care with less trained employees. That is why they do not get my patronage.
When I need legal assistance I only deal with those having their J.D. and license hanging on the wall next to their desk.
When I need professional assistance I insist on it being provided to the maximum extent by that professional.
