Death of Construction Staking

I was setting a bunch points Saturday morning on a concrete footing for block retaining walls and block stem walls for a giant custom home in North Scottsdale and found myself thinking about how the demise of the surveyor that does construction staking is here.

First let me tell you why Saturday. I hate being on a job site when there are people everywhere and mixers and different pieces of equipment are running. The footings were poured (90 yards of concrete with #6 and #8 bar) and there was zero chance of me seeing anyone and since it is a flat rate per task job I got it done faster without interruption and turned a better profit.

While I was working away I found myself thinking of the methods of the past and how things have evolved to the extent that aside from specialty the construction staking surveyor will soon be gone.

Examples:

1)      Machine control. I love it. I love the idea of having to go in, set a few control points and get out.

2)      Grade checkers with gps units. Once again I love it due to the fact that I never have to pound another hub and the contractor is absorbing all of the liability.

3)      Construction companies that hire on staff surveyors to do the staking. Awesome!!

Once again it removes the liability from us and dumps it on the contractor.

(Note: I was on a job site recently and the concrete guy who I have known for years came up and asked if I was busy. I told him that I was swamped. He was amazed and asked who I was staking for. I told him that I mostly do survey work and that I do very little layout stuff and I have never considered staking anything more than revenue. The confused look on his face said it all. He had no idea what survey work is and that is scary.)

As technology progresses more companies will move forward in this direction and big engineering firms will cut back their survey field crews as they will no longer be needed.

This will be good for the companies that only do surveying. The big machines will no longer be a factor and we can concentrate on surveying and people will actually begin to understand what we do and the value of it.

The career hub pounder will either evolve into professional LS or go away.

Some will argue that this is a horrible thing and we need to be worried about the future of survey dollars.

 I say bullshit. If we evolve with technology and progress with the future we will all prosper and be much better for the loss of staking. This actually gives us the opportunity to focus on becoming a true profession through education and drive the evolution of surveying into new areas.

Surveyors will always be involved in construction to an extent in areas that require extreme accuracy, as-builts, and legal issues and yes some staking, but the days of spending 6 months to 3 years on a single site are numbered.

I for one think this is one of the best things that can happen to a professional land surveyor.

Hooray the future!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Field to Finish

I have been talking a lot lately about how technology has made it easier to turn a profit. Well yesterday I did it again.

I had a 1.2 acre hillside subdivision lot to do a topo on with a 50' vertical and an average amount of vegetation.

I did all of the calc's on Sunday while I was watching the race.

I rolled on to the site at 7:30, having stopped at another small staking project on the way, I established control holding the centerline monuments, went around the property looking for monuments, I found 5 of 9 and they checked really well. I then proceeded to topo the crap out of this thing taking around 350 shots +/- and picked up some extra things for the architect like view corridors and certain pre-flagged spots around the lot for design rotation.
When I was finished I dipped the manholes, picked it up and headed for the office.

Side note: I did encounter a big ass rattle snake who was less than thrilled that I was around!!!

At the office I downloaded the data, brought the points into Cad and went right to work drafting. (Note: I am yet to set myself up for auto line work).

This is for the business guys.

Total time break down is as follows:

Pre site calcs and research- 1 hour
Field time - 4 hours
Drafting/finish time - 4.5 hours
Invoice - 5 minutes.

Total time 9.5 hours, 5 minutes all done myself.

Now here comes the cool part. I charged 1750 for this job. Those of you familiar with labor burden will see the significance.

Note: there are always different factors when bidding a project. Available info and benchmarks is what dictated this job, which there was plenty of both.

Go GPS and AutoCad!!!!

Stick

So there I am in the beautiful Aqua Fria River bottom this morning blazing through the sand setting panels.

The day was going way better than expected thanks to the GDAC guys and AZ Cors everything came together quickly and accurate.

I was on my way to set a panel close to a 1/16th and when I pulled up I heard a hiss. I looked and there was a stick about 1/4" in diameter sticking out of my side wall.

Needless to say I was a little dismayed so I did the sensible thing and grabbed my hammer and drove the stick further into the tire and almost stopped the leak.

Fortunately I found it early enough and I raced through that river bottom like a bat out of hell, laid down my last 2 panels and actually found a rebar at center of section that hit with .15'.

As I was wrapping things up I noticed the tire was getting pretty low, so I hurried to pack it up and blazed to the gas station to cram it full of air and head for home.

Now here is something kind of cool. I went into the store to get quarters for the machine and the guy turned it on for nothing. How cool was that?

Yes I made it home with ample air and switched trucks, however when I return later it was totally flat.

That's what I call dodging a bullet!!!

Now I have to once again give props to GDACS for all of their great work. Using the information I pulled from their site and network gps, I was able to go around an entire section, do a property corner search and everything checked well, lay down and control 8 panel points in a river bottom that required 4 wheel drive, deal with the tire issue all in 6.5 hours with travel both directions.

Also props to AZ Cors network GPS. I think this is a great advancement. I have used AZGPS and Spider Net as well and really like them both, but AZ Cors has a really good price tag.

I love the technology and info that has enabled us to be a 1 man machine in most cases.
I ran a 50% profit margin on this particular project because of it.

Busy

I have been sooooo busy that I have neglected my blog for the last week or so.

For those of you that follow I am working on something that will blow your minds. I mean really blow them.

For the moment check out this little cartoon I found. Enjoy.