California Surveyors Forums

If any of you did not have the time to sit through today's NSPS webinar with Gary Kent going over the proposed changes to NCESS model law I encourage you to take a look at them, Attached as proposed are the model law revisions.

I like that there was effort put forth but I think there are some serious shortcomings and lack of understand of surveying outside of (drumroll), boots on the ground boundary surveying.

In the revision to B.4. iii. the change to only "Performing an original retracement survey" if enacted on a state level removes the legal standing the CA board used when adjudicating the ever so popular Crownholm case. Where on page 11, they specifically stated "In the court’s views, a person of ordinary intelligence would understand from the plain language of the statute that, absent a license, they cannot distribute or offer to distribute site plans to customers for building permits if those site plans retrace or reestablish boundary lines from preexisting public geographic information system data, and also that inclusion of a disclaimer does not shield them from liability." Case is attached for reference as well - page 11 is where the aforementioned quote came from.

Also, the logic that state boards are to allow unlicensed persons as long as they are certified GIS professionals to do what essentially amounts to land surveying. Is mind boggling from a regulatory perspective. So if you take a boundary survey that for instance has Nad27 coordinates on it, reproject it to a project design coordinate system and say its "not authorotative", your good to go, unless your not a GIS professional - then the board that has no authority over the privately regulated GIS certification can deem what you are doing as land surveying?
Riddle me this - what if I do all the stuff that only needs a GIS certification and I don't have one, does the board need to verify my certificate, from a non regulated private entity, or does the GIS certification entity come after me. OR am I just free to do as a I wish.

I for one am not happy with this and would like to see what other California Surveyors have to say in a productive manner so that we can reply to NSPS with it's newest members perspective (California).

-Nate

I attended a GIS conference in Boise last year in which allowing GISPs to survey (survey by California definition) was a topic. The Crownholm case, the first I had heard of it, was being passes around among the participants and discussed at lunch tables in quiet corners. The GISP collective perspective was Crownholm was allowed to create site plans and that this case was the catalyst needed to overcome the prevailing definition of land surveying. To their credit, the GISP crowd is well educated, sophisticated and can perform two monument tangos that are likely better than the land surveyors. When land surveyors do not file maps (search for or set monuments) it probably doesn't matter the GISP community cannot file maps and doesn't set monuments.

The GISP crowd has an appreciation for the land surveyors, but it was noted at the conference the land surveyors do not participate in their community (there was a show of hands). From my perspective, the only thing they hear from land surveyors is they (the surveyors) cannot and will not do their GISP work, but they (GISP) are not allowed to perform their work. That sounds like a surveyor thing.

I have written a volume on deregulation, self performing unlicensed people carving off segments of the practice and the trade unions claiming the work as their own (to the exclusion of licensed land surveyors). I suspect the only purpose served in the writing was the self serving catharsis.

There is a reason the model law uses the words reestablish, retrace etc - straight out of 8726. The GIS crowd wants to carve off their piece of the practice. Reading their proposal closely, they want to do land surveying and add a caveat that says it is not a survey - sort of like our wayward surveyor pals. This gives Crownholm et al exemptions and a path forward as a GISP. Who's going to stop them? BPELSG? Pfft, one at a time? There are legions of well educated GISPs that presumably do not have criminal backgrounds. If only they knew the right people and the right questions to ask....

As California land surveyors, what are you going to do about it? History tells us, nothing. Save your breathe and read the recent threads on this forum. We have a land surveyor advocating record boundaries, not looking for original monuments (going so far as a faux citing of Brown), and further recommending, if caught the best course of action should be to appeal to Superior Court and hope the judge doesn't understand the issue. We have surveyors that do not want to tag found moments or to set monuments. Land surveyors, again, read the forum, do not want to close the door through regulations that may impose any standards on the practice...[queue the music] they see me rollin', hatin', patrolin'...

The cake is baked. Folks my age caught the last train to Clarksville. I will meet you at the station. If your under 50, learn to code.

DWoolley

I took a brief read of this and I don't like the language in 4(c), especially the part stating that:

"Unlicensed persons who hold certification from the GIS Certification Institute, the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing or substantially similar certification as approved by the Board may provide the services and products described above in 4.a.i., 4.a.ii., and 4.a.vii., as it applies to 4.a.i. and 4.a.ii.,..."

If I am reading this correctly, by stating that they can provide the services and products in 4.a.vii, it means that they can "Creating, preparing, or modifying electronic, computerized, or other data, relative to the performance of the activities in items a–f i-vi above"

Well how can they create, modify electronic, computerized, or other data for an original survey or a retracement survey? How can they do this for a subdivision map? Most importantly, how can they do that for the determination by use of surveying principles the position of survey monuments (boundary or non-boundary)?

I see an monkey and the engineer scenario playing out.
Who will clean up the mess when the train derails?
Are the courts available to handle what is coming?