DWoolley wrote: Thu Jun 27, 2024 11:20 am
He is hardworking, smart, a family man, I told him our time is better spent discussing his path forward - which had to include a plan for transitioning out of the profession in the shortest term possible, budgeting five years. I explained that he is too young, has a family, there will never be a good time to start over. It was a sober conversation.
NO! That is not the point of these conversations. The point here is to find a way to save the profession and find a path forward together, not to encourage people to jump into the blue ocean from the Titanic 100 miles before it hits the iceberg. Because that is where we are at. Is there a massive problem here? Yes, yes there is. I think I got a hyperinflated sense of the issue over the past few years most people don't get, especially this early in my career. But the realization for me was that this is that this is systemic. We are on a path to failure/extinction, and no one will change things. I didn't handle that realization well in previous posts. But it seems like we all think we are on an unsinkable ship, and who cares if there's an iceberg in the way? Our ship is unsinkable. That's the point of this. I'm here trying to come back with as much evidence that I can you all are going to hit the iceberg. If you all want to jump off the boat before we even have the iceberg in sight, as far as I am concerned, we weren't going to make it happen with you and that's your decision. But let's hope you don't freeze to death before the next ship picks you up. Because with AI in play....there aren't a lot of ships in the ocean long term. In my opinion, professional licenses are the best ship to be on. It's the best bet you have because people know they have always needed public protection. Do you think Lawyers are going to deregulate themselves? The judges know. They know what this stuff means and that once the dominos start of deregulating actual professions, the question really just becomes how long until it makes it to them. They almost blatantly said it in oral arguments for Crownholm. They will only cast us away if they have to do it to save themselves.
DWoolley wrote: Sun Jun 23, 2024 12:17 pm
I can already hear the licensees wailing at the injustices of deregulation.
DWoolley
Deregulation in every market happens for one reason and one reason only. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and lots of it.
Frankly, surveyors just have not been a big enough deal in modern times that we catch the attention of major money. Thats why we don't have major issues with deregulation and we don't have any kind of real push for it. Its a hardworking profession with specialized knowledge that isn't exactly easy to centralize into an oligopoly. Not enough risk-to-benefit ratio to catch the attention of major business powers like private equity or VCs. So for the most part....who cares? Like, who cares about surveyors outside of the people we directly work with? Most people don't even know who we are. All this stuff we talk about, its all small potatoes for real politics.We aren't really even on people's radar. However, that is changing. Or it will likely change soon. AI is the first thing that comes close to the expertise level necessary to challenge surveyors and big money will start to realize the market is able to be disrupted/ money is in our market to be made.
How will it happen? It will be a combination of rising prices due to the decline of surveyors and technology increases. We will become a prime market for disruption and the money will start to become worth it. It will become very easy to make a new technology, get it close (or claim to get it close) to providing the standard of care surveyors currently provide. Then you point to all these issues and the long history of enforcement, and you say, "Surveyors are fraudsters and cheaters; I can do the same thing they did for half the price they did it for". The judges and the attornies will catch onto that. They will cast us away to save themselves.
TBH, Crownholms attorney's arguments were pretty bad. A lot of accusations with no real substance. You are giving them substance with this standard of care stuff. The judge in the appellate arguments directly told them what she would consider for deregulation, and he said something along the lines of "cities and counties taught mr Crownholm how to do this work," for a defense as though that was the government sanctioning deregulation? Without any understanding of the sovereign powers the state has vs the local agencies have? I mean, it was a joke of an argument, to be sure. (The citys and countys have no authority to overrule the state, it was completely backwards hierarchy, in fact it probably implied that cities and counties are doing things that are illegal by teaching Mr Crownholm) Again they were bad attorneys, bad attorneys can still win, but still, its very unlikely it was ever a real problem.
But now we are actually potentially getting statements by state courts that our standard of care is that low? Someone with some sovereign power is now stating that the services (or conduct) provided by surveyors is no different than any ordinary person? Are you actually giving substance to that argument that could be used to show there is no difference between a surveyor and a layperson when doing certain types of surveying work? Especially for boundary-type work that is at the very core of our licensure. That any old lay person can go find two pipes drop in a boundary and its the same standard of care as surveyors give? Do you not see how that could be interpreted as infringing on someone's constitutional rights? Infringing on the principles of freedom and individual rights our country was founded on? When it can be proven that there are no real protections between a lay person and a surveyor and that the state is just using this license to monopolize a certain type of work and keep people from doing it with no good reason to do so? Yeah......its a problem. That case in San Diego is a problem. It needs to be a one off. It needs to be the "mistake" the courts made, and we need to get the precedent back in that bottle fast.
This case in San Diego. Ugh its really just so bad across the board. There were so many things wrong with it.
Before we go on a tangent, trying to solve this by 3Xing BPELSG's enforcement costs because apparently, BPELSG is out to get surveyors. In those states where they have 3 expert panels. Do they have standards? (because most do) Are the experts judging based on their personal expert opinion of negligence like they are in California, or are they basically just the expert voices confirming that a widely agreed-upon standard of practice was violated? Isn't the problem here that everything is basically one other surveyor's opinion based effectively on hot air? Not widely agree upon practice-based guides? There is effectively no defense right now for anyone who gets reported. No real ability to debate. Brown and Waddles are our standards of care.....except when they don't cover our situation and are misinterpreted. Then we go to court and we find out they don't even apply.
Are you just hoping that with 3 people instead of 1, you can sway two of them? Doesn't that mean.....you think that SME's are bad eggs and that they don't treat us fairly as is? So, taking one problem that we already agree on doesn't work and multiplying it by 3 is the solution? Us having a shot at convincing 2 SMEs that 1 SME is a bad egg instead of having rock-solid evidence to convince an SME or even a judge by using NSPS or CLSA standards that the SMEs are treating us unfairly is better. SMEs effectively directly sign up to discipline surveyors, I am pretty sure I can take bets on which way they will fall when asked about questionable situations........and....just add more of them?
Also, let's not pretend that the person who reported that guy wasn't part of a "star chamber" to begin with. (personally I like to call them the "volunteer survey police") It definitely already exists. No one was hurt, and no one cared about the work that guy did. The only people who seemed to care were other surveyors. And we made a court case out of it? We weaponized BPELSG to impose our will/view of surveying on other surveyors when it really didn't seem to matter. No one outside the surveyor community even cared about this situation? Did they retrace this guys work confront the guy and say "you missed this pipe, I came up with a different solution we should talk about it to make sure we get it right". My guess is most likely not. Knowing how petty this seemed, my guess is they saw the work and just turned them in then what happened at BPELSG just happened at BPELSG. (again I don't know, the guy could have been a straight up ass to everyone and was on a bender to prove he was allowed to do record maps)
At least with standards, you will now have a defense. You have no defense now. All anyone has to do is report you right now and what happens at BPELSG with an SME happens at BPELSG with an SME. And the worry is that once we give you all a defense against nuisance enforcement stuff like this.....enforcement will get worse? I dont get that at all. This is to help you. This is so you don't have to fight cases like that case in San Diego and we all can practice without the board coming down on us.
Allowances for record maps should never become law in my opinion. (see conversation above) Whether they should be strictly enforced or not is entirely another matter. There are cases where no one was harmed, and why are we coming down on them? What is the end goal of enforcing a record map provision on a guy who just made a couple of bucks for an ADU site plan, and they likely could have built the ADU anyways without knowing where the boundary was at all? Who does that help? Who are we protecting with our enforcement action? was the ADU out of place? oh by 0.2'? let me get my hammer out and pound the form board over a little. Let me chip the footing a quarter inch or so and remeasure my setback to get it in close enough tolerances. I mean come on. We have decided to put our entire profession at risk and force the courts to decide on our standards of care for something like this? Its just ridiculous.
This stuff is us. This is the profession's moral compass, the way we treat each other as a whole. That's the problem. You go into the BPELSG's files; you go into their procedures with a public information request, and you find where they treat Land Surveyors any differently than they treat any other profession they deal with. Then you can come back to me about how we need to change BPELSG and how surveyors are unfairly treated. We did this to ourselves, and I am pretty sure BPELSG just fell in line and backed their processes and SMEs because that is what they do for every profession they deal with. They are backing geophysicists just the same on another matter right now.
Massachusetts dealt with this problem in law with the following from 250 CMR 5.02: (Registrant is licensee, it applies to both Civil and Survey)
(h) A Registrant shall provide written notification to other Registrants in the event substantial disagreement with the work of the other. When appropriate, both Registrants shall investigate and attempt to resolve the disagreement collaboratively. The notified Registrant is required to respond in a timely manner to the Registrant giving notice.
Self regulation: the fact of something such as an organization regulating itself without intervention from external bodies.
Last time I checked BPELSG is an external body to surveying as a whole. Its not self regulation, its external regulation when you use BPELSG. Its taking a weapon against your fellow surveyor. Are there times you need to do it when there are clear violations of the law? Yes. But its a backstop, not a first-strike weapon. Its tattling to dad or mom as a kid because the other surveyor hurt your feelings. That is its equivalent. But apparently, people have done it so much that the principal or cops are starting to get more and more involved. (The courts) You aren't going to like the results if we let the courts do the deciding for us; I can pretty much guarantee it. The courts are going to see these cases as a nuisance compared to all the other crap they deal with. They are going to do exactly the same thing they did in San Diego and go, "WTF, why am I dealing with this? Get this off my docket." I mean, courts deal with nuisance stuff all the time, but not from professions against their own regulating body. They aren't going to be friendly to us. You cannot fight your own regulator and expect your regulator to keep helping you. It will almost certainly end with very bad things long term.
If there is one thing I have learned in my life, its that there is always someone smarter than you are out there. I think a lot of you just don't really know what kind of potential there is out there when they finally get their sights set on something like land surveying. If you don't have a long term plan to deal with all this......how are you going to beat them? But I shouldn't worry right? We will just keep pounding our heads against unlicensed practice. Throwing more money at the problem that already has decades of proof that it isn't working.How long do you all think board members at BPELSG in other professions are going to be cool with spending 50% of their enforcement budget on one profession? They are effectively paying for all this just the same as we are. Arguably, other professions are paying 43% of all these costs. (I have not personally verified Dwoolleys statistic claims) You think this is all just going to disappear? You think other people won't start getting "ideas" about other ways to handle all this? But its under control, right? No need to change anything?
I WANT STANDARDS. Because the only way we can move forward is by agreeing on what we are doing now. If you can't even agree on what we should be doing right now, there really is just no hope here and its time for our regulator to step in and dictate the standards we need. Because yes, I am almost positive BPELSG can force standards on the surveying community if it wants to do it. The fact that they haven't, and that we are still being treated like all the other professions they deal with is most likely a testament to the allies we have at the BPELSG right now, nothing more. Don't waste it away. Once BPELSG starts changing things specific to surveyors and starts treating surveyors differently than it treats other professions, it is like putting an employee on a PIP.......You all are asking for the PIP? Like you want the PIP?
Our licenses were effectively created to stop fraud and incompetence. It seems only fitting that fraud and incompetence are the issues that are beginning the possibility of an hour when our license would end, when those within the license are becoming fraudulent and incompetent themselves. I know there will be people that step up to stop this over the next few years to try and stop all this, the question will just be is it too late? And is it still worth it? If you all want to jump off into the blue ocean to take a shot at something else before we find out the answer to that question, be my guest. But unless you are going into another white-collar profession, I don't like your chances. Maybe construction? But robotics are coming for them, too. Professional licenses are the only thing that is truly close to safe, in my opinion. Unless you are jumping to another professional license, your best shot is to keep trying to keep our license intact. That means changes to the way we do things and how we treat each other. Will you all make them? TBD.
I'll post standards up here in a few weeks. Almost all of it will just be copied from other states. Again, I'm not saying this is what will be final. It just seems like you all need something to start discussing, and its actually pretty easy/generic to copy other states.
