Guys, I am still working on writing a magazine article for POB mag and have gotten some input from about a dozen guys on this website in the past on this subject. Still hoping for some more people to chime in with your comments. This is because I value your comments and need more of them.
Does anyone work in a state where certain surveys have to be filed, submitted for review, etc. ? The websites of all 50 states give me the codes and rules,etc., but I need to hear from actual land surveyors.
Do you have to turn in a survey map or plat to a city or county surveyor department for review ? To a planning department? To a surveyor contractor hired by a city or county ?
The most important part of my article is how do you feel in general about the comments that come back to you ? Are they reasonable ?
Do they catch minor errors that may have gotten past you ? What about procedure ? Are there times when the "reviewer" may raise questions about your procedure or suggest other approaches ? Do you find having a second or third licensed person look at what you did helps to improve your survey ? Or is this another example of "over-reaching" by the powers that be.
What do you think ??
Alaska: Record of Survey statute (as it should be). No survey review (also as it should be).
No other profession--medicine, law, veterinary medicine, engineering, etc.-- is demeaned by having a glorified clerk check its every decision as is the case in some "review states."
FrozenNorth, post: 336384, member: 10219 wrote: Alaska: Record of Survey statute (as it should be). No survey review (also as it should be).
No other profession--medicine, law, veterinary medicine, engineering, etc.-- is demeaned by having a glorified clerk check its every decision as is the case in some "review states."
Alaska does have a review, if you are turning a plat in to the State, BLM, or most municipal entities- The municipality of Anchorage charges a pretty hefty fee for plat check and review.
I work in Oregon and Washington. Both are "recording" states.
Oregon has County Surveyors by statute. They are required to review surveys before accepting them for record. Some of them take the task very seriously, especially the ones in the metro-Portland area. Yes, they find things I miss. They aren't supposed to be checking the boundary resolution, except for pre-subdivision boundaries. Sometimes it seems they get a little over-enthusiastic. Mostly what they want is reasonable, once you identify which of their comments are suggestions and which are requirements. It is a very rare thing for a survey to simply be accepted without comment.
In some Washington counties their are county surveyors that review surveys, but it isn't required by statute. In a lot of cases the only review is by the auditor's clerk who makes only the most cursory check -for surveyor stamp, signature & contact info, north arrow, scale bar, and the like.
"Alaska does have a review, if you are turning a plat in to the State, BLM, or most municipal entities- The municipality of Anchorage charges a pretty hefty fee for plat check and review."
If for the State or BLM--then that is your client doing the reviewing. And when referring to a municipality, I assume you are referring to subdivision plat review. Perhaps I misunderstood the OP--I thought he was referring to private surveys being reviewed by a county surveyor or equivalent before the Record of Survey could be filed.
I couldn't imagine having to submit myself to some desk jockey for "approval" of my professional product. What's the reason in having a license in such states? If every survey has to be checked before the government will accept it, the license is useless.
Tommy Young, post: 336391, member: 703 wrote: I couldn't imagine having to submit myself to some desk jockey for "approval" of my professional product. What's the reason in having a license in such states? If every survey has to be checked before the government will accept it, the license is useless.
So what state are you from Tommy, where you are fortunate enough not to be looked over and examined by a "desk jockey"
FrozenNorth, post: 336387, member: 10219 wrote: "Alaska does have a review, if you are turning a plat in to the State, BLM, or most municipal entities- The municipality of Anchorage charges a pretty hefty fee for plat check and review."
If for the State or BLM--then that is your client doing the reviewing. And when referring to a municipality, I assume you are referring to subdivision plat review. Perhaps I misunderstood the OP--I thought he was referring to private surveys being reviewed by a county surveyor or equivalent before the Record of Survey could be filed.
Frozen, am inquiring about any and all types of plat/map submittals. Good pt. you raised about state & BLM !
Tommy Young, post: 336391, member: 703 wrote: If every survey has to be checked before the government will accept it, the license is useless.
The fact is that some licensees are worse than useless, but still continue to practice. I consider map review by a competent and conscientious County Surveyor to be a valuable service, both for my own surveys and those of others. I do wish their were more uniformity of review fees across the many counties, but we're not there yet.
I recorded ten surveys this morning, for a total fee of $240, in the new Recorder's Office in downtown Tucson, Arizona. The nice lady took them into the back where someone verified I had sealed and signed them, there was a scale, there was a border, and it was black ink on mylar. Then she brought them up front, entered the key data, gave me ten receipts, and I was on my way. I don't like going downtown but it seemed pretty painless.
I had a clerk tell me she wasn't going to accept my plat because I used grey lines, which didn't come out when scanned. I told her to use a different setting other then black and white, she didn't listen. For the most part, I don't have a problem with the County Surveyor reviewing my plats, only when they nitpick small stuff on the legend and word smith dedications, because usually your already submitting a mylar. I suggested to several counties that we submit a paper copy first if they were going to review and just kick it back to us, but it went in one ear and out the other.
Although there is a county where they will record any map, even plats stamped preliminary. There is a surveyor/engineer who keeps recording plats with text that are about a 0.04 in size and every time you get a copy you can't read it. I actually mentioned it to him and tried to explain text size vs scale but I don't think he does his own drafting. He hires young workers with no experience.
For billvhill
One of the surveyors whose work I follow regularly was Bill Hill. County Engineer in two of my standard counties, at different times, of course. From the 1940's to the 1980's. Was still doing some projects while in his 80's.
I believe someone else mentioned that to me at one time. The vhill is for Vigil just so its pronounced correctly or close anyway, I not sure I even do. I'm In Colorado
Locally, the NE Texas counties budget leaves no room for an official review process and none of the elected and/or non elected positions require a background that could properly perform the duty.
A number of years ago, a few self appointed Reviewers attempted the process and with no actual power to enforce anything, attempted to critique drawings that were brought to their attention.
I can remember being on a group call from them and during the short blast of questions being ask "how do we know that what you are claiming on your drawing is actually there?".
Knowing them already and their superior personas, I had to tell them that if they had to ask, they really did not understand the existing Texas Survey Licensing Act. When they persisted, I had to inform them that they were going to be billed for the amount of time they were requiring during work hours because the client had already payed and adding new charges to their bill was not ethical. Their experiment into becoming Drawing Nazis was short lived.
Not in USA obviously but here in Tasmania every time you place a boundary mark in the ground, you have to prepare survey notes to be registered at the Land Titles Office (LTO).
For a repeg or remark there is no checking, it just gets attached to the original survey or plan.
When we do a subdivision, lease survey or strata survey, those surveys are checked by the LTO examiners. These surveys are checked because they are the ones that are changing peoples interest in land.
In addition to this we have a system where every now and again a government surveyor will pick a survey of ours and audit it by going into the field and retracing the survey to ensure that everything is correct.
Both the LTO examination and auditing are there to maintain the quality of the cadastre. Here it is just like everywhere else where the majority of surveyors are good, some are excellent and some should have their registration taken off them.
I have no issue (and no choice either) with the LTO checking my work before it gets the final stamp of approval. Occasionally they will find minor errors with my work that have slipped through our in house checking system.
The LTO examiners certainly do not act like some of the ones I have read about on this site. They are NOT arrogant, pushy or unreasonable and they do their job in a sensible manner. In some ways I wish they were a little more strict. Not so much now with computer drawn survey notes but previously I wish they would have refused surveys based on the legibility of the survey notes. Some people submitted plans & notes that are terrible to read which is a shame considering how long those documents will be relied upon.
The checks are there to protect the public which by and large do not know how we do things and even if they did, they would be unable to check our work.
I have seen so many complaints here about other poor quality surveyors and yet there seems to be quite a bit of resistance to the notion of checks. If more checks were done and rectified at the time of the survey, then the overall quality of the cadastre would improve.
But the big item is that you have to be a recording state in the first place. Personally, I think non recording is ludicrous. There are two sides to every boundary we survey and if you don't record your surveys, how is the owner of the land adjacent to your client supposed to know how their boundary is affected? As cadastral surveyors, we all have a duty to maintain the cadastre. Putting surveys on record is a very easy step in helping this happen.
