California Surveyors Forums

Clark:

Thanks for your comments. The point I was trying to make in my article wasn't that measurements are the ONLY thing that are important in surveying, but that accurate measurements are STILL important.

Our ability to measure accurately is one of the reasons we were entrusted with the nations parcel boundaries to begin with...although I recognize a lot of other important skills are needed to be a good boundary surveyor.

Here is an interesting question:
Can you be a good boundary surveyor without the ability to measure accurately?

Landon

Sunburned

Good question, it is such a great question it begs more:
1) Do boundary surveyors measure or does the software measure? (today)
2) Do you need to be a boundary surveyor to measure accurately?
3) Will cell phones soon have the capability to measure with cm accuracy?

The boundary surveyor needs to be an expert measure person, but,
clear understanding of boundary location, tools and methods of the surveyor we retrace is paramount to distance and angles or coordinates.

Brian

Do you mean measure accurately, or measure precisely?

Almost anyone can measure precisely with equipment that is becoming increasingly affordable. It doesn't take much training. Even to make decent survey measurements, a reasonably intelligent person can be turned loose with the equipment to make precise measurements after several weeks.

A skilled person can make accurate measurements with a wide variety of tools ranging from survey grade GPS, a 3" total station, a 1' tansit and steel tape, or a compass and cloth tape.

A professional knows when each of those set of tools is necessary or adequate. Further, the professional surveyor knows (or should know) which are the correct points to be measuring between (the point of Mr. Mulford's advice).

Mike and Mulford were making much the same point, relative to the circumstances of their time. In Mr. Mulford's time, and still today, the concern was that there were, and still are many surveyors who seek to turn a boundary survey into a math excercise and make excellent measurements to the wrong points. They ran a great traverse but performed a crap survey.

Mulford was telling surveyors that surveying is far more than measuring. Measuring is a supporting function of what we are truly licensed for - our knowledge and judgment to recognize project needs, recognize and assess boundary evidence, and foresee the significance of what we find to our clients or to the publlic at large.

You think we're licensed to measure? How many of you remember the practical exercise we were required to do during the exam where we set up an instrument, checked it for proper adjustment, set the PPMs, turned a set of angles and measured a distnace.

Anyone?

Me neither.

I vaguely recall a question or two pertaining to measurement - atmoshperic corrections or curvature and refraction or something like that - but I don't remember a single measurement question on the LS exams I took or on those I helped develop and/or grade.

We are not licensed for our ability to measure! Period!!!

Any reasonably intelligent person can learn to make good measurements in a matter of months, weeks, days, or hours, depending upon the equipment.

That was the basis of Mike's point.

Those who build their professional practice and reputation upon the foundation of being expert measurers have built on sand. When almost anyone can buy a Leica Disto for $300, and as consumer grade GPS is getting more and more precise, the ability to make measurements approaching "survey grade" is going well beyond the surveyor.

Who needs a surveyor to set construction grade stakes? That was bread & butter for a large portion of survey companies 15 years ago. Now surveyors set some control and machines run by guys who struggle with basic multiplication and division set their own grades.

Sure, the ability to make good measurements is important for a surveyor. Landon, your article does a fine job of making that point.

But measurement is far from our primary or most important skill or function, and that's where you missed the point. We all know we need to measure well. The problem is that too many of us don't see the profession beyond that technical support skill.

1) Nearly every state has adopted mandatory continuing education, but there is apparently no evidence to cite that it improves the profession or the services provided to the public. But, it does add cost and creates a cottage industry.

2) An analogous claim is made in civil engineering that the college curriculum and licensing exam are out of touch, focused on the technical. Whereas the job often is permitting, planning, project management, legal compliance, managing, etc.

Seems like surveyors should have to pass the EIT exam in addition to the LSIT. There is a metric associated with passing an exam, as opposed to most continuing education where the only metric is the fee. Making the EIT mandatory would result in a broader minded future surveyor, and an improved perception of the profession. Likewise, maybe the civil engineers should have to pass the LSIT as well.

Calling a land surveyor an expert measurer is actually an INSULT.

Civil Engineer wrote:1) Nearly every state has adopted mandatory continuing education, but there is apparently no evidence to cite that it improves the profession or the services provided to the public. But, it does add cost and creates a cottage industry.

2) An analogous claim is made in civil engineering that the college curriculum and licensing exam are out of touch, focused on the technical. Whereas the job often is permitting, planning, project management, legal compliance, managing, etc.

Seems like surveyors should have to pass the EIT exam in addition to the LSIT. There is a metric associated with passing an exam, as opposed to most continuing education where the only metric is the fee. Making the EIT mandatory would result in a broader minded future surveyor, and an improved perception of the profession. Likewise, maybe the civil engineers should have to pass the LSIT as well.

#1 very true
#2 also applies to Surveyors as much as Engineers

double exams? I fail to see the connection.
... aspiring Engineers should pass the LSIT also?

The connection is "exams in lieu of "continuing education". An exam has to be studied for, and provides actual proof that something was learned that may benefit the public and the profession.

1) It would provide a uniformity in the metric used to attain licensure, potentially leading to a greater sense of equality amongst engineering and surveying professionals.

2) The EIT exam provides a metric of broad competence with basic physical principles.

3) Project coordination could be improved if civil engineers better understood surveying and property rights in general. Civil engineers could take the LSIT, perhaps instead of the special "surveying" exam they currently must pass to become licensed. My understanding is that currently civil engineers must pass 5 exams if the take home and EIT are included.

The above comments are rooted in the perception that the new multiple-choice licensing exam may be a lower bar than the previous surveying exam format; and that the rigor of the LSIT exam is significantly lower than the EIT. But, perhaps this is misperception.

And while we're at it, let's require all of us to take the exams for geologist, forester, and the Bar. {Where's that sarcasm font when I need it?}

Civil Engineering and Land Surveying are separate professions. There is some overlap, but not so much that the EIT is applicable to surveying or the LSIT to engineering.

We will have a greater sense of equality between engineering and surveying when:

1) Surveyors come to a greater realization that education is an important element of preparation for licensure,

and

2) Civil engineers come to the realization that land surveying is not a subset of civil engineering but is fully a profession in its own right, requiring a different background of training and experience.

3) Rather than civil engineers thinking that they can study a little more, learn about property rights and prove it on the LSIT, if they instead respected the fact that land surveying is a separate profession rather than merely a specialized technician's endeavor, they would learn to rely on the expertise of surveyors so that they could focus more on the professional aspects unique to civil engineering.

The LSIT is an exam that tests broad technical knowledge, much like the EIT but focused on surveying technical matter rather than engineering technical matter, with engineering related content only to the extent that the technical aspects of the professions overlap. Much of the EIT has no application to surveying just as much of the LSIT has no application to civil engineering.

If you want a dual license, great. I encourage you to go for it. Once you pass both levels of the exam (LSIT and LS), realize that by passing the exam you have proved that you are minimally competent by current State standards. Without continuing your training after passing the exam, you are likely to slip back to being less than competent.

As to continuing education, generally one gets out of it what one puts into it. If you just plan to show up and get lectured to for 4 or 8 hours and walk away with a booklet that you never look at again, you will get nothing out of it. If you show up planning to engage in not only following the presentation, but also engaging the speaker with thoughtful questions and later to study the materials on your own, you may actually learn something and become a slightly better professional for your efforts.

I agree that there should be some measurement metric that must be made to be awarded credit for any associated CEUs. A take home exam that requires 30 to 60 minutes to complete would seem about right for an 8 hour presentation.

I expect that proponents of continuing education are already putting in that level of effort to learn, while those who oppose continuing education and dismiss it as a "cottage industry" rarely if ever do.

Civil Engineer, I agree with your sentiments regarding the focus of the college programs, and to an extent, about the focus of the licensing exams. But getting back to the importance or role of measurement in the practice of surveying, what does taking the EIT or arguing about college degrees and continuing education have to do with it?

E_Page wrote:...
We will have a greater sense of equality between engineering and surveying when:

Civil engineers come to the realization that land surveying is not a subset of civil engineering but is fully a profession in its own right, requiring a different background of training and experience.

Rather than civil engineers thinking that they can study a little more, learn about property rights and prove it on the LSIT, if they instead respected the fact that land surveying is a separate profession rather than merely a specialized technician's endeavor, they would learn to rely on the expertise of surveyors so that they could focus more on the professional aspects unique to civil engineering.

What's the difference between surveyors and civil engineers?




Surveyors don't think they're civil engineers.

Did not mean to INSULT you Dane, here is another quote A.C. Mulford:

“The vocation of the Civil Engineer has always been invested with a dignity of its own. But it seems to me that of late years, in paying him the honor which is his just due, we are apt to fix a little too wide a gap between him and his humble brother, the Surveyor.
We give Engineering the chief attention in our technical schools, but surveying we are wont to relegate to the Freshman class. Yet the profession of the Surveyor deals with one of the oldest and most fundamental facts of human society – the possession and inheritance of land.â€￾

(and here it comes the best part)

“Fire, Flood and earthquake wipe out the greatest works of the Engineer, but the land continueth forever.â€￾


Mulford got it correct

Brian

I had an old Engineer tell me one time:

"You never want to find more than two points on a survey because any more would not fit and there will be problems"

I left his office as soon as I could. He was much older than me and thought he knew better. I suspect that I would not even know if I ran across one of his surveys due to lack of filing.

Certainly there used to be, and probably there are still a few around, Engineers who are highly competent Surveyors. They are harder to find nowadays though.

Steve Martin wrote:I had an old Engineer tell me one time:

"You never want to find more than two points on a survey because any more would not fit and there will be problems"

I left his office as soon as I could. He was much older than me and thought he knew better. I suspect that I would not even know if I ran across one of his surveys due to lack of filing.

Certainly there used to be, and probably there are still a few around, Engineers who are highly competent Surveyors. They are harder to find nowadays though.

True

Mr. Blake,
One of Einstein's admitted greatest faults was that he lacked the math skills to explore, or back up, some of his ideas.

My answer to you is yes. You can be a fantastic evidence recovery specialist and lack the measurement skills of the modern day land surveyor.

That is why we have mentors.

So you want to fault engineers for thinking they can delve into the expertise of any profession they choose?

Who is to blame them? Look at the curriculum they endure in their university studies.

Does the medical doctor compare? Not even close. Doctors are students of engineers when it comes to diagnostics and repairs. What about the law? Students of the law mostly fall into the prostitution trap, they have no morals.

Surveyors? That is high school level math to the engineer. Boundary law? What is there to learn, except to just stay current on case law? How difficult is that?

The exams? Come on! The engineer has been taking exams since the first grade, and of course scoring higher than everybody else. You can't put an exam in front of an engineer that he/she cannot pass. Engineers have been taking, and passing, exams all their lives. Enough of the exam garbage.

What would happen if all surveyors boycotted working for/with engineers? Engineers would take the LS exam, pass, and then leave the surveyors to play cribbage.

Measurement is dead. What do you do for a living? Enjoy your cottage cheese industry while you hear the same old stories and then go out and punch monuments six inches away from another.

Clark, I don't get it. Why do you post messages disparaging the Land Surveying profession? Particularly when you are a licensed LS?

You lost me as well, Clark. I'm not sure if it's sarcasm or an actual slam on surveying and surveyors.

First grade was a long ways back, but I don't recall that the engineers had been separated out from the rest of us peons who were destined to become doctors, lawyers, or surveyors. I think that we all took the same tests (exams being several years off yet). The math I took in earning my BS in Land Surveying was higher level than what most engineers had to take. The survey curriculum was no less rigorous and perhaps just a little more so than the CE curricula at both colleges I attended.

Apparently law is lost on many, particularly most of the engineers who think they are also surveyors, as most tend to look at all survey problems as mathematical exercises. I don't doubt that most have the intelligence to understand the job, but most simply won't consider that surveying is anything more than a very minor subset of civil engineering that can be done in its entirety by a semi-skilled technician.

I agree with you about the exam. It's been dumbed down so much that even engineers should be able to pass it on the first attempt. Even so, many, including many licensed CEs fail it every year.

I'm not sure where you got the nonsense about not working with engineers. The point I've made is that they are separate professions. Surveyors have always recognized that. The percentage of engineers who actually believe that has varied from very few to a bare majority.

You are one of the very few CEs I've known who has seemed to recognize and respect surveying as a distinct profession. So again, I'm confused by your post.

[font=&quot]Clark,[/font]
[font=&quot]On May 27th this year your posted;[/font][font=&quot]
[/font]
[font=&quot]“When I got my PE, I was like "yeah, whatever". But when I got my LS letter in the mail, I jumped up and down, pounded my chest, hooted and hollered, and danced on the tops of cars during the night. It was a good thing.â€￾[/font]

[font=&quot]How doe this comport with your latest post?

[font=&quot][/font]
[/font]

I took no offense. I was making a general comment about the phrase "expert measurer". IRC, the term comes from a judge who was trying to put land surveyors in their place. Do not get out of line, know your place, just measure stuff, be a good technician and you will be fine.

The notion of an expert measure has done much harm to the profession and is responsible for the widely held belief by the public, that all surveyors do is measure stuff.

Make no mistake there are some awesome surveyors who do nothing but measure things, settlement checks, dam monitoring, controlling construction for skyscrapers, high precision networks, making sure barges can fit under bridges.....the beat goes on...
Others have said it better, but measurement is ONLY a form of evidence that must be considered in the proper context of the ENTIRE evidentiary fabric related to a particular boundary question.

dmi wrote: Make no mistake there are some awesome surveyors who do nothing but measure things, settlement checks, dam monitoring, controlling construction for skyscrapers, high precision networks, making sure barges can fit under bridges.....the beat goes on...

That's why I don't mind the term "expert measurer" if the phrase is used in it's proper context.

I am also an "above average hole-digger"

My take of the article seems to be 180 degrees off from what is being posted. My take of the article was that:

1. The statement “measurement is deadâ€￾ was an over-the-top hook to get the potential reader interested. It worked, I read the article.

2. The primary focus of the article was to promote mandatory continuing education.

3. The land surveyor should become some sort of land planner, paralegal, and/or manager.

4. To a lesser extent the article promoted the continuing effort to further segregate from civil engineering.

////////////////////////////////
I am in the small minority of civil engineers that believe land surveying is a part of civil engineering, and that land surveying has suffered by not bringing in enough EITs and PEs into the profession. I also believe that this has been a disservice to the public.

The article was very well written, and I appreciate the author's effort.

Evan wrote: "But measurement is far from our primary or most important skill or function, and that's where you missed the point. We all know we need to measure well. The problem is that too many of us don't see the profession beyond that technical support skill."

I didn't miss the point. I just respectfully disagree with it. :]

Landon

Civil Engineer wrote:I am in the small minority of civil engineers that believe land surveying is a part of civil engineering, and that land surveying has suffered by not bringing in enough EITs and PEs into the profession..

Oh, this ought to be good...

LS_8750 wrote:You can't put an exam in front of an engineer that he/she cannot pass.

Or get someone else to pass it for them. I can think of a couple that must've had someone else take the test for them.

Sniff.
The disparaging comments are not directed to the profession, but to some of the practitioners of this fine profession. Those reading, and/or responding, to this forum may be excluded, or not.

Measurement is dead. Find your alternate strengths to help this fine profession survive. That means continuing, and alternate, education. Don't tell me your four year degree in "land surveying" (static mentality), is going to prepare you for a career in this profession. The unions no longer prepare candidates to become professionals. No, those once surveyors are now grade checkers with GPS tools. The contractors now take the risks, they may employ one LS for an entire region, just to wiggle through the boundary domain elements of the construction staking side of the business. Say bye-bye to the union influx of qualified LS examinees, for there is no incentive to pursue it (for example). Enter the college crew.

To the "Deed Stakers" (apologies to Jeff Lucas), measurement is dead. Monuments control, unless otherwise can be proven.

Apologies, land surveying is, or was, or could be, a profession unto its own. I understand it on several levels. What struck me as odd when I got licensed was this: Having practiced as a CE for several years by the time I got my LS, I found it striking that the land surveying community would cut one anothers throats, toss all aspects of the PLS Act aside, in order to compete for the few jobs that were available, all for a few hundred dollars per job. In the meantime, I was reading this forum and learning about the supposed righteousness of the profession at large, those following the letter of the PLS Act.

It was all a lie.

I understand that desperate times call for desperate measures, but the LS community disappointed me.

And Mr. Page, calling out an engineer's math skills is like challenging a tiger to a cat food eating contest, or a skunk to a pissing contest. Really?

OK Clark. Now I see better where you're coming from. Your cynicism is running high, but we have several points of agreement.

"First, calling out an engineer's math skills...? Really?"

No, not really. Re-read the post. I did not dispiarage the math skills of engineers. I said that in the pursuit of my LS degree, I took more and higher math than most civil engineers were required to take. I took a bit more than what was required for my degree. Even so, as I was pursuing my degree, the math requirements for the LS degree were slightly higher than they were for the CE degree at OIT.

Excellent math skills are something I certainly expect of an engineer. It seems that it is you who is making the assumption that a surveyor, even one with a BS degree never progresses beyond basic trigonometry and so lag way behind any engineer. Granted, many who work in surveying and even progress to licensure without a degree may have no more understanding beyond basic trig, but don't assume that's true for all, or even true for all lacking a degree.

No one I know of has claimed that having the BS degree by itself is going to prepare one for a career in surveying. I wouldn't expect that a degree in engineering prepares one any more completely for a career as an engineer either. I have always maintained that a degree is only one (very) useful part of that preparation. In synopsis of posts I've made on that subject in the past, the degree gives the student a broad exposure to many aspects of the profession that they may not get without the degree. The preparation is quite broad but fairly shallow. Further study after graduation and actual experience give the depth needed to complete the training. The degree can give the graduate a head start and/or prepare one for faster advancement in the pre-professional stage of one's career, but that tends to fade away after a few short years. After that point, the primary benefit of the degree is that one learns how to study effectively while pursuing it.

As far as I know, unions have never done much to prepare one to become a professional. Local 12 does a good job of providing and requiring training for advancement as a technician, and much of that training is useful toward licensure. But the individual needs to take the initiative to continue studying beyond that and learning the professional aspects as opposed to the strictly technical.

I agree with you on the throat-cutting nature of our industry (I hesitate to use the word profession in that context because that side of it is not very professional). Many surveyors, licensed, unlicensed, degreed, or minimally educated think of themselves as working stiffs. They think in terms of an hourly rate they want to make, and often think not in terms of the value of their professional services, but in terms of providing commodities - maps, corners set, stakes in the ground, etc. (borrowing heavily from MP's articles here). They think like retailers trying to find a way to get more business by getting their commodities to consumers just a little cheaper than the guys over at Surveys-R-Us, Stakeway, or Maps Measurements & More! When they inflict this "service" on a complicated boundary, their made-in-china approach shows when one later analyzes what they've done.

In my experience, much of the discount surveying has been the result of the principles and senior project engineers of engineering firms pressuring their surveyors to find ways to decrease their project estimates before including them in company proposals, or simply slashing the estimates themselves - using surveying as a loss leader (a retail term and a retail strategy) as an incentive to the prospective client to award the contract on the overall project to their firm. Of course, the principals and sr engineers then hold the surveyors responsible for meeting the slashed budgets.

Similarly, many one-man shops run out of the sole proprietor's spare bedroom are run with the wage mentality. They want to make $40/hr, have to pay their part time chainman $15/hr, so charge $75/hr to build in a little cushion. That allows them to put a little aside to buy a GTS 3 for $500 in case their GTS 2 gives out, and get new tires for the truck once a year.

And then there are plenty others who panic at having to compete with those guys and join in the race to the bottom.

But there are still many who provide professional services rather than just stakes and maps. They respect what they do and are often succesful in projecting the value of their services so that existing and prospective clients see and appreciate it as well.

There are plenty of surveyors and engineers who have little concern to ensure that they follow the PLS or PE acts, and may not have even looked at their practice acts since the day they took the exam that got them their license. But there are also plenty who do strive to become and remain familiar with their practice act(s) and the other laws governing their practice.

Sorry that your business is suffering from the competition of retail survey product providers. I don't deal directly with it myself anymore, but I can relate.

Trashing those who would attempt to lift the standards of practice and promote the professional nature of surveying does nothing to help matters.