Fuel Line Warning
Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 9:06 am
I wonder if the fine is considered when utility companies and city utility departments work around these.
The $250 fine for disturbing a monument has never been paid to my knowledge. In the entirety of my career the fine has been $250. Thirty years ago the monument may have been able to be replaced for that costs.
In my experience, monument preservation programs are either full compliance or zero compliance by the public agency. There is very little in between. The majority of the engineers place the monument preservation into the construction i.e. paving contract. Commonly the construction contracts do not have a separate line item for monument preservation. The costs for monument preservation is included in the overall bid. No line item costs, no surveyor, no compliance.
I have had two recent incidents in which the City Engineers, two separate entities, called me to question the contractor's surveyor saying the monuments no longer existed. Out of curiosity, I went out the Saturday before last and recovered several monuments that were down 0.2'-0.3' in asphalt. On another project we found 21 monuments the surveyor claimed "searched found nothing" after being hired for monument preservation. The surveyor-as it is was explained to me - "didn't budget enough time to dig up the monuments", said with a straight face.
I recently called out a surveyor for setting ties without tags - he set scribed crosses. Besides being the law and good practice, I am in a position to demand the tags are set. He went on to explain to me that if he sets crosses and the monument isn't destroyed during construction he doesn't have to file anything - he thinks he's being resourceful and saving the agency money. Setting tags would foil his plan. The fact that if he doesn't file a record he doesn't get paid escapes him. Another species grazing on the savannas of Africa would be eaten before they could reproduce.
Unfortunately, even when the public entities try to comply, the land surveying community fails them.
Heard on the Street
At an Association of General Contractor meeting last week, one contractor was showing off his new device, a TSC5. Apparently this was a genesis from using tablets rather than hardcopy plans. He went on to explain to anyone with two ears how they no longer hire surveyors because they can layout their own stakes. When asked if this included boundary lines for set backs he said "yes, if they are in the CAD file". Think about that next time a surveyor puts the shadowy "record boundary" on one of their topographic maps. The squirrel note "This is not a boundary..." on a map with a solid line having bearings and distances just took a liability turn, good luck with that note.
DWoolley