Filing a Complaint

[kwilson]

Recently I filed a complaint against an architect preparing a site plan without a survey. The Board fined him $1000. The wording in the citation went this way:

"You prepared a site plan that was submitted to the city of ... for the purpose of a building addition permit...Said site plan depicted and dimensioned property lines and included dimensions from property lines to an existing structure and a proposed addition on the subject property. As such, you practiced land surveying, as defined by the Business and Professions Code section 9726(c) and (g) without being legally authorized to do so, in violation of B&P Code 8792 (a)."

Today I sent the attached to another architect who did the same thing. I let him know what the law states and that in the future he should get a survey before preparing the site plan. He did not agree and after I sent him the law and a redacted copy of the complaint he said "Ok, so now this is starting to sound like a threat from you, as a surveyor, towards me and my company." I immediately filed a complaint to the board and did not reply back to him.

I also am not sending the client a proposal to survey his property and provide a letter of certification for the forms. Unfortunately the homeowner takes the hit but I don't want to be involved any longer working with unscrupulous individuals.

[bryanmundia]

Kudos to you on this one. Handled like a true professional and tried to educate another profession on what constitutes Land Surveying. It is unfortunate to have to get to the point of filing a complaint but maybe these folks will finally get the hint and stay away from tasks that are outside of their area of competence.

[DWoolley]

Recently I filed a complaint against an architect preparing a site plan without a survey. The Board fined him $1000. The wording in the citation went this way:

"You prepared a site plan that was submitted to the city of ... for the purpose of a building addition permit...Said site plan depicted and dimensioned property lines and included dimensions from property lines to an existing structure and a proposed addition on the subject property. As such, you practiced land surveying, as defined by the Business and Professions Code section 9726(c) and (g) without being legally authorized to do so, in violation of B&P Code 8792 (a)."

Today I sent the attached to another architect who did the same thing. I let him know what the law states and that in the future he should get a survey before preparing the site plan. He did not agree and after I sent him the law and a redacted copy of the complaint he said "Ok, so now this is starting to sound like a threat from you, as a surveyor, towards me and my company." I immediately filed a complaint to the board and did not reply back to him.

I also am not sending the client a proposal to survey his property and provide a letter of certification for the forms. Unfortunately the homeowner takes the hit but I don't want to be involved any longer working with unscrupulous individuals.

Strother Martin, "What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men."

Clearly, you care enough about the profession to put the work in to preserve it. Others will simply walk towards the sun until they collapse and die. I appreciate it.

DWoolley

[hellsangle]

Years ago I get a call from a contractor requesting the boundary to be staked - chop! chop! He sends me the architect's site map which prepared by a surveyor.

I called the surveyor to make sure they were paid and asked if they forgot to file their Record of Survey.

The surveyor said they only did a topo. NO BOUNDARIES. NO APPROXIMATE BOUNDARIES!

The story goes: the architect, slapped a boundary on the surveyor's topo . . . got approvals for a remodel . . . and the owner sold the property as a "turn-key" ready to go project.

Well this didn't set well with the contractor who I sent back to the original surveyor, who, I would assume has control through the property, and is a competent boundary surveyor.

I've never heard back from surveyor, contractor, architect or owner.

Wouldn't you all agree the buyer has been harmed? In the middle of construction no less!

BPELSG has a "Guide for Consumers" that explains what a surveyor or engineer does and can do.
https://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/pubs/consumer_guide.pdf

We should attempt to "educate" building/planning departments with BPELSG Guide to . . . for City/County Officials
https://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/pubs/local_of ... _guide.pdf

Crazy Phil again . . .

[LS_8750]

The white paper via this link describes the site plans and their requirement and use in planning and development projects: https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21A ... 21&o=OneUp

LSACTS is not dead.

[kwilson]

The Bpelsg "local officials guide" is very thorough. For this particular item see Point 48 and 69. I have tried on several occasions to reason with the chief Building Official of cities in the South Bay area with little success. This guide from our board may help. But if surveyors continue to keep the board busy with fairly easy citations for surveying without a license at $1000 a shot, that should send some noise into the architect community and encourage them to stay in their lane.

[LA Stevens]

Why doesn't the architectural board take issue with their licensees as well?

[CBarrett]

Why doesn't the architectural board take issue with their licensees as well?

Maybe we need to review their code and see if we can file complaints with their board, that would put the ball in their court little more than having just our board deal with each individual architect.
They probably have some sort of a clause about having to practice within the sphere of their expertise. Showing boundaries on their plans without proper survey is outside of their expertise.