r/Surveying

How are other companies out there handling drive time? Our crews take the trucks home and we are looking to modify how much drive time we pay for (to be as fair/competitive as possible to the field crews, not to pay less). We do not pay door to door currently. Boss asked me what others are doing so I figured I would post here. I am not an owner, just a salaried project manager/pls at a mid size full service consulting firm. If you could also let me know the type of firm you work for/manage/own in the response that would be amazing.Thanks in advance!

Looking to get into surveying and I have an offer for $20/hr from a survey/civil engineering firm. Is that what all imans are starting at? Should I keep looking for more pay?

Anyone have experience with this?

I’m currently working toward my bachelor’s degree in land surveying and completed my first surveying internship this summer. One area I’m still trying to better understand is how many direct and reverse angle observations should be made when traversing.

On one job, we used a manual total station and observed the backsight and foresight in direct and reverse, then averaged the angles. I understand that additional sets can improve the reliability of the angle, but how do you decide how many sets are appropriate?

Is it mainly based on the accuracy requirements of the survey, traverse length, instrument specifications, and expected closure, or is there a standard workflow you normally follow?

Personally, I like the idea of using the same procedure at every traverse point: backsight, foresight in direct, flip the scope and turn right, then backsight and foresight in reverse, repeating additional sets when greater precision is required. But I also understand that time is a factor in production surveying.

How do experienced surveyors decide when one set of direct/reverse angles is sufficient versus when two or more sets should be turned?

Disclaimer: grammer and formatting were assisted by AI.

Hi guys,

First-time poster, long-time lurker.

Anyway, I recently joined a medium-to-large-sized engineering and surveying firm as a survey field tech. I came into the job with some previous field experience under my belt, and generally, it's been an awesome gig. All of my coworkers are great, have taught me a lot, and allow me to work with autonomy with the exception of one guy.

This guy is a control freak, to the point of telling me how to swing a hammer and hardly ever allowing me to run the equipment. (I can swing a hammer just fine, and I have completed solo layout, retracement, topo, staking, setting markers, etc., in the past and with other field staff at my company.)

What prompts me to write this post is that I have observed unethical behaviour from him:

Time theft: He regularly charges an extra 0.5 to 1 hour every single day.

Ignoring contractors: He fails to listen to contractors' requests on construction sites. For example, they ask for x-foot offsets on the inside, and he gives them x-foot offsets on the outside (even though I try to tell him that's not what was asked for). Or, they ask for a particular gridline laid out, and he lays out footings instead, which are perpendicular to the requested gridline (and when I point this out, he shuts me down). These are just two examples of many.

Horribly inefficient approach to jobs: tells me to set the gun up somewhere (to which I say hey man this isn't going to work for what we need to do) yet he tells me to do it anyway, and of course it doesn't work out. Layout for high precision jobs is done with the 1.5m pole and 360 prism without a bipod, but he extends it to 1.7m for literally no reason. I'll say hey shouldn't we use the peanut prism and he just ignores me.

Faking accuracy: If a nail or marker we set isn't where it needs to be, instead of letting me adjust it after I set it, he will just lean the pole to fake it.

What's a newbie to do? I'm still in my probationary period, and nobody else at my company operates like him. Thankfully we aren't always paired up, but for the last couple weeks we have been and I want to pull my hair out.

I know I can do better work than him, with more integrity. I highly value integrity. He only has a few months more experience than me.

Edit: I am a woman and he is an immigrant who's residency is tied to maintaining employment. I'm not trying to ruin his life I just don't want to work with him any more. Like I said, this is not my experience with literally any of the other field crew. He's a nice enough guy and we get along well, but he's a horrible survey tech.

Buying rural land in the Southeast, and I’ve got a title/survey knot I’d love honest takes on.

The history: my tract and the neighbor’s both come out of a common former owner. Back in the 1950s, a narrow strip described as a dirt road, the road access to what’s now my property, got included in a transfer to the neighboring property by mistake and got deeded back to my side of the chain by a recorded 1956 deed once the mistake was realized. In 1973 the heirs on my side confirmed the strip as part of their land. When that estate wrapped up, the strip passed with everything else and came down my chain.

The neighbor’s chain tells the same story from the other side: their deeds carry a less and except specifically exempting that road strip from their chain, all the way through their 2014 deed.

Then it gets interesting. Around 2021 the current neighbor buys his place and has it surveyed. Admittedly the surveyor, title agent and closing attorney all overlook the less and except in the neighbors own chain, and the road strip gets included inside the neighbors plat.

Come 2026, I buy my tract next door. Unknowingly at the time the same surveying outfit does my survey and leaves the road bed off my boundary even though it’s in my chain of title and it’s my road access. My deed now describes the property by the new plat.

So now: the neighbor points at his plat and claims the strip. The surveying company says they can’t show it inside my tract without documentation of title, while the conflicting plat next door is their own work from years ago made off an overlooked exception.
He

So I did a base and rover setup to locate Boundary. Rotated to the original plat in CADD. Exported, and when I put it back in the collector, check in, I'm half a foot off. Same scale factor and units all the way around. All coordinates in TBC, CADD, and collector match. But something seems to be scaling, when I check further out I'm 1.5' off. If all scale factors and coordinates are matching, any ideas?

How rare is this?

Hi everyone, I’m a new member of the community and currently live and work in the Greater Toronto Area.
I work in engineering and land surveying and would love to connect with professionals and companies in the GTA involved in engineering surveying, land surveying, construction surveying, and related services.
I’m also hoping to learn more about how to get into the local surveying community and build professional connections. If you have any advice on networking, joining industry groups, or getting started in the GTA, I’d really appreciate it.
I’d also love to know where people usually look for surveying-related jobs in the GTA, such as Survey Technician, Surveyor, Construction Surveyor, or Geomatics positions.
If you have any recommendations for companies, job boards, or other places to look, I’d really appreciate your advice.
Thank you, and I look forward to connecting with fellow professionals!

What elevation measurement do you guys base your flight off of? AGL or ALT? The guy that trained me said to use the ALT altitude but wouldn’t that affect the GSP and risk going over 400’ AGL?

Hello fellow Surveyors recently I have been thinking of switching workplaces specifically more towards the metro Atlanta area.Im not far from the city currently I live,and work in Hall county. Right now I do Boundary work,line staking,Topo ,and the occasional construction layout not like anchor bolts or slab,but I have done work purely on a construction site doing that type of layout . Any firm recommendations would be welcome even if it means going out of town for work. Any help would be welcome.

This morning I got a call from a contractor accusing me of not giving them offsets and elevations. I drove to the job site and pointed out the offsets with cuts and fills to finished grade..... They claimed that 10 and 15 ft offsets were too far because they couldn't put a 4 ft level on it. However, the job requires 12 ft of excavation depth (which 10 &15 is already too close for shelving) and I put the offsets in a place they could not excavate due to existing road.... They asked for hubs within 3 ft of the excavation site and I told them "NO" because they would definitely wipe them out. They argued and kept on arguing. Would you have given them additional offsets when they are already have them?

Here's a poorly written article on a terrible website of a cool story about the last US homesteader.

https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/in-1974-a-vietnam-veteran-moved-to-alaska-for-a-new-life-14-years-later-he-became-the-last-person-in-us-history-to-get-a-homestead-patent/amp\_articleshow/133157686.cms