§8771(b)

[Jim Frame]

I'd be interested in learning how various public agencies handle the monument protection requirements of §8771(b) when street improvement projects. The City of Davis puts the following language in its contracts:

It shall be the responsibility of the contractor to protect all property boundary control monuments whether or not denoted on plans and preserver their locations in accordance with section 8771(B) of the California Business and Professions Code (BPC).

It continues with language about referencing by a licensed land surveyor, Corner Record, etc., but in my opinion this does not comply with the central directive of 8771(b):

It shall be the responsibility of the governmental agency or others performing construction work to provide for the monumentation required by this section.

Contractors don't care about boundary monuments, they just want to build the project and get paid. Their construction crews don't know how to recognize the wide variety of monuments out there, let alone look for them before demolition, so the city's language is a bit like telling the janitor in a hospital to "ensure that the patient is properly prepared for surgery." What could possibly go wrong?

I'd like to find a best-practices document that I could forward to the city's PW director, so if anyone knows of such, I'd be grateful for the reference.

Thanks!

[Ric7308]

Jim,

I've try to attach a few documents related to a CLSA webinar that several of us from the Board did last year related to 8771(b), but for some reason I do not have that ability any longer.

You may also want to visit the members only section for a recording of the actual webinar for more information. Hopefully, this helps you.

Ric

[TTaylor]

Jim,

SoCal has a "Green Book" that has language on monument preservation you may be familiar with.

I am of the opinion that the LSAct in the Business and Professions Code are laws for the practice of Land Surveying. The rest of the Act focuses on all aspects of Land Surveying in California. I think that dictating what a government agency or a contractor does in the LSAct is misplaced.

To that end I have been advocating that the LSAct address the requirements of the Land Surveyor when monument preservation (conservation? perpeptuation?) is required to be performed by an LS in other codes.

So, I think that the Government Code should dictate the requirements of Agencies when monuments will be destroyed by a public works project, permits for private citizens should contain a clause for monument preservation, and Codes for contractors should contain language for monument perpeptuation. In all instances the Codes should contain language that the work be done by a licensed LS.

Just my thoughts.

[Warren Smith]

Jim,

Here is our Public Works policy for Capital Improvement projects.

The specifications include a bid item for monument preservation, and a unit cost is derived based on existing monuments shown on the plans. We have two LS's in our Field Engineering division who perform this research as part of the design phase, and file pre-construction corner records.

If monuments are found during construction that haven't been identified on the plans, the preservation is paid as an extra.

Our Encroachment Permits have a clause providing for pre- and post-construction corner records for existing monuments within the work area

[pls7809]

There is a whole page on the CLSA website dedicated to Monument Conservation. Developed by Annie Hoppe and the Monument Conservation Committee of CLSA. There are all kinds of links and resources there.

http://www.californiasurveyors.org/moncon.html

[btaylor]

Atherton and Hillsborough, probably two of the richest towns in this state, are great at scraping out old railroad spikes. If anyone needs a good railroad spike scraper, I will ask them who they use, because they do a top notch job.

[JoeC]

Here is our specification for surveying and monument preservation. If there is anything you see that I can add to clarify, please let me know. We add this statement to all our Public Works Contracts.

[LS_8750]

We all encounter those monuments buried under the asphalt along private roads. We dig them up and tie them out when if/when we find them. Or we dig into the flower bed to recover a monument. Property owners become irate. They insist on the surveyor replacing the flowers exactly as they existed, or they insist on the surveyor re-paving the road. The surveyor came in and destroyed their property. The surveyor is the scum of the earth. The surveyor is a witch. Nail him/her to a stake and burn him/her alive!

How does monument conservation/preservation fit into monuments defining private property boundaries?

We do not maliciously recover monuments. We just do our job.

[E_Page]

§8771 does not address monuments that are not within rights of way and seems to have been written with only street monuments in mind, although it applies to any monument within rights of way. It makes sense to bring a centerline monument to the surface (or place a mon box over it), but it may make more sense to leave some monuments at the RW lines buried.

Recovering other monuments on private property is covered in the trespass (right of entry) laws. If the monument is buried in a flower garden, the landowner may not prevent us from recovering that mon, but they do have a right to expect us to minimize the dispution to their property and to make a reasonable attempt to preserve and replant the flowers we would need to dig up.

When having to dig up a mon in a yard, the first thing I do is cut and do my best to carefully remove and preserve a sod patch big enough to accommodate the hole I'll need to dig to get to the mon. The last thing I do after locating the mon is carefully replace the sod patch and try to sweep as much dirt I may have left on nearby lawn into any gaps between the patch and the lawn around it. If a casual observer can't see any disturbance after I've left, I've done this part of my job well.

As to public agency CIP contract provisions, the law places the responsibility for mon preservation on the licensee in responsible charge at the agency. The agency can make the contractor financially responsible, and can even make it a provision that they hire a LS to handle the monument preservation. That does not alleviate their statutory responsibility to ensure that the mon preservation was done and done right.

An LS might put a provision in an employment contract with a chainman that the chainman is responsible to ensure that all monuments placed by the LS or his crew be properly stamped with the LS's license number per §8772. At some later date, BPELSG contacts the LS because the mons on several of his surveys were found to have not had any markings at all. BPELSG is very unlikely to recognize the LS's delegation of his statutory responsibility to an unlicensed employee, even if it is as a provision to a duly made contract.

I haven't seen the webinar Ric mentioned yet, but I suspect in it BPELSG staff says something similar.

When I started working for El Dorado County, the CIP contracts had a provision pretty much as Jim described above. They thought they were being progressive by addressing monument preservation at all. I suppose that since many agencies don't address it at all, any provision that attempts to address it is better than none at all. The problem was that the project engineers dropped it in as boilerplate - an "include it and forget it" matter as they were under the impression that they had effectively offloaded the responsibility on the contractor. Although the provision was in the project specs, there was typically no separate bid item, and hence no payment mechanism for mon pres work.

After I placed §8772 in fron of a few key people and explained the statutory responsibility to them, they didn't need much time to understand even though they struggled with the potential added costs to some projects. There seemed to be a thought process of "We've been getting by as is for so long, what are the risks if we change nothing?" going on, but fortunately professional responsibility won out, at least in the office I was working in, and we changed to a policy and procedure much as Warren posted.

County crews located as many monuments as we could find within the project area prior to construction, the contractor was responsible to either hire a LS or to notify us when they disturbed one of these mons or if they found any objects which may be monuments at locations not identified on the plans. The project engineer, with survey review identified an estimated number of mons that would likely be disturbed or destroyed and the contractor used that as a basis for his bid. The contracts were written such that if the County replaced the monument, it would result in a charge of some set amount to the contractor. The amount was apparently close to what it would have cost to hire a private LS to do the work because we did most of it.

An important part of making the policy effective was getting the inspector on board. If left solely to the contractor, they would view monument preservation activities as direct cost and probable delay of other work. Very few, if any instances of monument disturbance would get reported. The inspector on the other hand, was proactive in that he would not only keep his eye out for monuments during active construction, but would also notify us a couple days in advance if he thought particular monuments might get disturbed by upcoming work. That allowed us to keep a list of mons to later check on.

I don't know what they do now, whether they've continued that process and policy or reverted back to the include and forget boilerplate. The process we developed worked to protect landowners' interests at the project sites and to protect the licenses of those at the agency in responsible charge of the various projects. Any process short of what we did accomplished neither.

[Darth Vader]

Joe,

The document you attached was very interesting and I believe it could cause some contractors to perform or subcontract work that they are not able to provide. It is my understanding that only people with a California PLS, California Civil Professional Engineers or firms with and Organizational Record on file with BORPELSG can offer to provide the services required to establish and reestablish monuments. In other words a Contractor can not subcontract to an agency to provide these services unless they have a PLS or Civil PE on staff.

"Payment for Item 10-1.10, "Surveying Services," shall be at the contract lump sum price as set forth in the proposal, and shall include all labor, materials, tools, equipment, and all work necessary for the completion of this item. Failure to correct any erroneous or incomplete information will result in the Contractor absorbing all the cost for the City to hire a Land Surveyor to complete any or all of the remaining survey work."

Your thoughts?

Darth

[land butcher]

A little late tonight and just skimmed the above but I have a question.
What about PL prod monuments that are set on TC or on the sidewalk and removed during const within public r/w
Over the years I have returned to dozens of commercial sites to find PL tags in sidewalks gone because of replacing a section of conc walk or curb for unknown reasons.

[Warren Smith]

LB,

Those are indeed controlling monuments, and should appear on plans and specs for reconstruction projects.

Evan is right, the inspector is key to ensuring that the work is done properly, and letting the project manager know about monuments that were not shown as soon as they are found. This starts the extra work payment process.

Another thing our survey crew will do as part of a pre-job walk is to paint visible monuments, especially those offset points in concrete.

[mpallamary]

For the most part, the only way I got local government to protect survey monuments was by using investigative TV reports and a Grand Jury Report. There needs to be some harsh penalties associated with the destruction of monuments.