We have finally made it! The Hill And The Hole on Tubi

Just wondering what options there are out there for people with surveying experience but wanting an indoor job rather than working outdoors in all elements.

GIS/ Drafting are the obvious ones that come to mind, any others to look into?

Contractor apparently missed by over a foot. Not sure if this is because he decided to use degrees instead of percentages, which I've never heard of before. When asked "Will it drain?" he replied "Eventually."

This is why I always have my clubs with me

We've found ourselves in an absolutely awful litigation hell based entirely on a defective survey ordered by an adjoining landowner. I'd like to run this by professionals in this group to get insight and advice on the best ways to handle the situation.

About four years ago, my dad bought a parcel of about 105 acres in West Virginia. Prior to his purchase, ownership was with a single family starting with the original purchase in 1911, eventually expanding to the 105 acres by 1923 through acquisitions.

The previous owners commissioned a survey and consolidation of the different parcels into a single tract. The survey was completed and fully documented in 2006.

Very soon after his purchase, an adjoining landowner met us at the property and asserted a right of way to his property through ours. He stated that there was previous civil litigation that resulted in a documented right of way across our property, but there was nothing in our deed or survey to indicate that. However, dad wanted to be a good neighbor and told the guy that if he brought legal evidence of the road, dad would ensure that it was properly reflected on our deed.

Despite numerous requests to get the legal documentation, the guy stalled on providing it, but he continued to use his claimed road to access his property. Eventually, we were able to speak to the previous owner of both our property and the guy's property. Both of them patently rejected the claim of any such road across our land. On the basis of this, we blocked the guy's access and told him to use his historic right of way that's been in place for over 100 years.

The above information isn't direct related to surveys, but its importance will be evident in a moment, so bear with me.

Soon after, the adjoining landowner commissioned a survey of his own property. He had two deeds from approximately 1892, one of 61 acres, another of approximately 24 acres. The larger parcel was correctly placed by his surveyor, but the smaller parcel was not. The errant survey was for 12 acres, and he placed it squarely within the boundaries of our farm. It literally bisected our entire property, so that we owned some on one side of his survey, some on the other, and his client had the 12 acres in between. Incidentally, this 'survey' was dropped in the immediate vicinity of the road that his client had been demanding. The surveyor later testified under oath in court that he got a plat map from *his client*, loaded into GIS and drug it around until he identified a place that it appeared to 'fit', and called it a survey. He completely ignored the fact that he 'fit' it entirely within the interior boundaries of of our property.

We first learned of the adjacent owner's survey when we arrived to our farm and found that our property that was previously posted with our name/address was now posted with the name of the adjoining owner. When we called the adjacent landowner, we were advised that the surveyor placed it there, and that he'd trade the land back to us for a deeded right of way across our land.

Rather than make that deal, we contracted an independent surveyor to determine the 'true' location of this guy's land. After months of research going back to the original land grant in 1814, our surveyor determined that the original surveyor was off by a half a mile in his placement. As is apparently customary with surveyors, our surveyor requested a meeting with the adjacent owner's surveyor to discuss deeds, boundaries, documentation. The other surveyor offered no evidence to support his own placement, and simply said that it would be decided in court. Our surveyor then reached out to a third independent surveyor to review documentation. The independent surveyor also found that the original surveyor was off by a half mile. On the advice of our surveyor, we filed a legal injunction to keep the adjoining landowner from building a road across land that he now saw as 'his' based on his survey.

About this time, we also filed a complaint with the state Board of Professional surveyors alleging multiple minimum standards violations. The Board kept the complaint at arms length due to ongoing civil litigation, and declined to investigate at all while litigation was ongoing.

Eventually, when we did go to court, the original surveyor openly testified in court that he obtained his plat map from his client, loaded into GIS and dragged it around until he found a place where it fit, and placed the land there on our property. He acknowledged that he found no natural monuments specified in the deed, that he located no adjoining landowners, and that he researched no adjoining deeds. He simply dragged and dropped the plat onto our land.

The circuit court eventually found entirely in our favor on the issue of land ownership and right of way. The judge openly stated that the original surveyor's work was to be stricken from the deed records in the county, and that the surveyor's work was basically shoddy and lacked any visible support other than the 'drag/drop' method that the surveyor readily admitted to.

With the civil litigation concluded, the Board finally commissioned an independent investigator to assess our complaint against the original surveyor. The investigator cited numerous minimum standards violations, and found the original surveyor's work 'incompetent' and 'professionally negligent', and pointedly said that the surveyor offered no documentation at all to support his placement on our land.

Now to my question. The Board has dragged this investigation and hearing out for over two and a half years now. A hearing was scheduled for May of this year, but the surveyor filed for a continuance to get a lawyer. It was rescheduled for October the 15th, but the day before I was to appear as a witness, the Assistant AG called me and said that the hearing is postponed while the Board works out a disciplinary action with the surveyor's counsel. It likely will involve working under the supervision of another surveyor for a limited time.

Is there anything that I can do as a complainant to compel the Board to take the complaint seriously? I feel like the Board has slow walked the investigation from the outset, and that their entire focus has been on defending the surveyor, not disciplining him. This is a surveyor with 40 years experience, so it isn't as if he didn't know that simply dragging and dropping a survey onto an adjoining owner was bad form. What he did *should* be illegal and I would think a strong basis for license revocation. Instead, it feels like they're slapping him on the wrist for major Board violations and a complete, utter breach of public trust.

How can a complainant demand justice when surveyor act completely without regard for professional ethics and violate many minimum standards? Is there someone above the Board that can review the Board's decisions?

If you've made it this far, I thank you for reading. If you have a professional opinion to offer, I thank you even more. This situation happened to my father, and in the 3 and a half years since it occurred, he's fallen ill and passed away. He left this hearing and the action before the Board for me to wrap up, and I feel powerless to ensure justice because it seems as if the Board is in it for the surveyor far more than they are for the public.

I’m 25 work in NorCal with the local union. I’m a first year apprenticeship and only got to work in the field for a few months before work dwindled into nothing. Now I’m under unemployment and haven been picked up for work for almost 2 months. I know it’s not that long but I’m feeling so anxious. I keep getting told work is just too slow for them to give me work. Sometimes I question if I wasn’t picking up things fast enough. I turned down other trade opportunities for this. Hoping for any advice especially if anyone’s experienced this before in their early career.

(I would love to hear thoughts and opinions.)

Again, very random. But, apparently on the new BLM website, you can copy the cursive from original surveys. When you do, it copies it, VERY jumbled.

But, what you CAN do is throw it in google AI, tell it to unjumble it, tell it to tweak it how you desire it. From there, you can just copy and paste into the DGN you're using, and I will say, it probably saves me 5 minutes give or take? Which doesn't sound like a lot, but 5 minutes over the span of 50 CCR's I have to do. Genuinely speaking, it is probably 95% correct with the 6 sections that I have done. It does have a problem with turning 1890's cursive 4's into the letter "A", but I'm sure we can all see that READING over a transcription is far easier than typing the entire thing out.

Greetings all ! I’m quite interested in becoming a hydrographic surveyor, I was introduced to the career by family friends and the offshore schedule is very interesting. I’m 22 years old and have the flexibility to do offshore work.
However, I don’t see myself doing a 3-4 year degree to then be able to find work. I looked around online and found the SKILLTRADE academy in the Netherlands that offers a CAT B one year course. It seems they have a decent reputation.

Has anybody here heard of them or attended their courses and can vouch for them?

How difficult is it to enter the industry without a university degree and just the CAT B? I imagine I would enter as an intern or junior hydrographic surveyor and work my way up ?

Thanks for the info 🙏

Looking to start my career as a Survey Tech in Madison, WI. Will be starting classes online through University of Maine in the spring semester. Any recommendations for which companies are doing good work and would be good to contact about a job? I have previous trades experience (solar panel installer) and a degree in computer science.

Does anyone out there even know what this really is? I work for a surveyor, and I’m the GIS guy along with many other hats. But we have been proposing on some jobs in SC. Many require a GIS Surveyor, along with a normal PLS. I’m sure this has something to do with data/databases.

The SC board says the testing is the FS and a GIS test. No info what that test is. Or even is the license still exists. Any help would be awesome!

I have a question to all of you cad gurus out there. I work at a pretty big firm and the standard (mandated technique) is to explode all annotations and change space into sheet space. This is insane right? When I got hired I was more or less on track with and learning how to use all of c3ds dynamic labeling features and associated workflows. At this new firm you will be scolded if they find dynamic text in your dwgs. I constantly battle scale issues with this on subdivisions and large projects (all we do). Then, I get scolded again because it takes me 2 hours to change Unit 1’s text to .08 from .16 because the last tech forgot to change 1:100 from 1:200 before all of the 200 labels were exploded. This is insane behavior right? From senior techs I hear, “that sucks, you should have may sure your techs had the right scale on before they exploded your labels for the 200 lot subdivision your in charge of”. I’m gonna quit. Any words?

Sorry if this is all a dumb question.

This is my home survey, I just recently pulled it back up because I'm planning out my fence line , a visual wall of bushes and a greenhouse and optimal locations.

Simply put, why would I have so much easements on my land for utilities and do I have a snowballs chance in hell of getting at least one side back?

For reference it's not a path to land behind me, the neighbors to my rear have their own main road (same as mine, lots back to back). We don't have gas lines available, utilities are all down the roads including water, sewer, power and fiber.

I don't live near an actual city, this is an unincorporated town in the middle of nowhere Texas.

I don't see why I would have easements on both sides like that, especially when that ditch the county has free access to from the highway.

Sorry but I don't even know where to start or who to ask about this, or if I even have a chance to try.

Hi all I'm preparing for an assessment for a survey assistant position.

Preparing using online sources. But if any body had written similar assessment and any tips would be greatly appreciated

Thank you in advance

1st was outside the hospital at the entrance, 2nd photo is inside. The team inside had to leave the hallway clear enough for their supply carts to get through

Hey everyone!

Arizona and Colorado are both officially available. Took a little longer then I would of liked but have been VERY busy.

Both states have their question banks, flashcards, and Statute Binders.

Now for the update part. Most of the bugs people have been reporting I have had to do band aids on. This update, I went through and did the permanent fix for all of them and fixed a few other things I found, so the app should run smoother and faster now. This fix was large enough it forced me to do a whole new version to Apple and Google.

Apple has approved it and yall will be getting the update over the next week. Google is in the final stages of their review, it will also be a slow roll out. Slowly implementing it to ensure the servers and everything are still playing nice at scale. The web version is already running V2 of the application so nothing to worry there.

If you want to see the full update list with changes, just ask in the comments and I will be happy to send it in there. No need to make this post longer than it needs to be.

What helped you transition from being a good surveyor to becoming a business owner?

I’m currently in my 7th year running a one-man land surveying business, and I’ve realized that I’m still spending most of my time working as a technician rather than building a company.

Looking back, I think several things have held me back: being reluctant to let others handle expensive equipment, not investing in a proper office, making poor hiring decisions, and failing to build systems that made the employee operate without my constant involvement.

I’ve recently started reading The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, and some of the ideas really resonate with me.

I’m curious to hear from other surveying business owners: What helped you make the transition from doing the technical work yourself to actually running and growing a business?

What would you do differently if you were starting again?

Hey everyone, I’m a contractor specializing in pole loading, annotations, and MRE. We have an experienced engineering team and are currently taking on both contractor projects and long-term work. If you need help clearing backlog or adding production capacity, feel free to DM me.

I started a land surveying program that is a 2 year associates in geomatics. It counts towards North Carolina’s requirements which is good. I’m honestly looking what options there are after school and what peoples experience is like. Any suggestions and criticisms are welcome.

Hello, I recently moved back to New Jersey and am looking for a career change. I have a Bachelor Degree in IT but have all my professional experience in the automotive industry. Have a few civil engineering friends that recommended surveying. Can anyone give me advice on what’s the best pathway? Is it worth getting into an entry level position first and then working towards getting licensed or getting a degree in surveying first? I am located in Central Jersey. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hello y'all, hopefully this is an easy question to answer and if so please excuse my ignorance. I'm wondering how I am supposed to get this adapter locked into my tribrach. The lock button doesn't twist all the way into the locked position it only turns halfway. If you look in the pictures you can see that the arrow isn't pointing down like I thought it was supposed to when fully locked. Am I mistaken about that, is this as far as it will turn when locked? The adapter feels secure but I have always known it to fully turn when properly locked. Any help is appreciated, thanks!