Oh Yeah the Holidays

Well it’s the Holidays again. 

I want to take a moment to thank anyone that has posted and participated on my blog this last year.

Good, bad, hateful or indifferent, you help make it fun.

I want to wish everyone

Merry Christmas

Happy Hanukah

Happy Kwanzaa

Or whatever your thing is, enjoy and make it a great one. 

2012 Has been a hell of a year. It’s been up and down and around all over the world.

2013 looks promising and I intend to charge at it with full force.

Now then, lets once again give it up for the surfing Santa.

 

 

See all of you crazy kids next year.

Happy Holidays and Happy New year.

Record Plat

One of the most important things I learned in John Rose's surveying class is the definition of a monument.

"Set at or near a property corner".

Now this is also one of my favorites and maybe the most important.

"A boundary is defined on paper".

I love this stuff. I love recorded plats because that's what they are. Recorded, a legal document that has permanently defined a property boundary.

Who can define a boundary in Arizona? If you said a surveyor then you are wrong!!!!! Only a court of law can do this.

Yes there are platting exceptions but all municipalities have a legal department.

All that said brings me to my point.

I have been running across a lot of cad files lately in which the surveyor has gone out in a platted subdivision, recovered the monuments, drew a line between them and called this the boundary and given it to the architect and civil for design.

I understand this method, however in the case of a platted subdivision I fully disagree with it, unless there is a serious blunder, which we all have found at one time or another.

I am of the opinion that a monument does not define a boundary, but simply represents a controlling location that is subjective depending on who surveys it.

Going back to the find and trace method. In the case of a platted subdivision, once again in my opinion is fundamentally incorrect based on the fact that 5 guys can go out, shoot the same monuments and come up with a different boundary. Before you know you have people arguing that the perfectly good plat is somehow messed up because the monuments measure different.

Whatever!

Why go to all that trouble when there is a perfectly good legal boundary? How about simply hopping on a meridian and use some good old surveyor common sense and use best fit and make sure that no one loses?
Call out a falling on a monument you don't like it.

Now there are some that will argue this point and say monuments are the end all of the universe and that's fine, however in my mind it's mute.

Why do surveyors want to take all kinds of liability when all they have to to do is provide evidence? That's what I am. I am a professional evidence producer. Do I want to re-create the world of a platted lot? Oh hell no!!!

I am speaking from the perspective that the cad files I recently received were in a platted subdivision, there were only topo's done and no results of survey filed and in a couple of recent instances I have had to re-do the boundary for some legals I had to write based on the fact that the particular city that everything was going to would have kicked it out, hence causing some changes to the design.

So you're out doing a topo, you've gotten your meridian and you miss a rebar and cap. So What!! It's just a representation of what some other guy did and who knows what the crew chief did.

Now getting into boundary surveys is another thing and I use many methods for those. Record and measured and falling's being my first choice in a platted subdivision. That's why we file results of surveys because it is the result of the evidence we produced and yes I know that there are applications for different types of surveys but today is about the plat map.

I have done it all different ways but I always fall back on the fundamentals learned from John Rose and many old timey guys, especially in a platted subdivision.

" A MONUMENT IS SET AT OR NEAR A PROPERTY CORNER"
"A PROPERTY CORNER IS DEFINED ON PAPER"

Brilliant, just amazingly brilliant!!! Got to love the old guy common sense.

I think Boundary Control and Legal Principals I & II should be a mandatory requirement for anyone that is allowed to even trace a boundary line.

Employers call Phoenix College and immediately enroll your people. I used to send selected people through myself included and it was some of the best money I ever spent.

Peace out surveyors, make a great common sense filled week.

Tire Kickers

I always find people that are shopping for the cheapest price amusing.

While I understand their outlook on the situation I always muse about the shitty job they are about to receive at a cut rate.

My prices in opinion are actually right in the middle of industry standard.

In talking to peers about this very topic I have come to the conclusion.

While everyone can get a job done for a certain cost there are those who have gone into this thing I call "disregard profit mode".

This I am going to tell you is a travesty. Anyone that is willing to work without profit should have their right to do business revoked.

Now this is merely my personal opinion but if you think about the long term ramifications and the absolute destruction of client loyalty this causes it is a pretty big deal.

As things continue to turn around we will see less of this sort of thing mostly because the cheapo's will be to busy and guys like me will start getting more calls.

I had an experience the other day. This person calls me, tells me what they think they need and me knowing what the particular city will accept I proceed to tell them that they may be cutting themselves short and they should verify.

The verification occurred and I was asked by the same person "this is only a few hours worth of work right?" Well actually no it was much more in depth and I estimated it at a professional rate.

Needless to say I have not heard back but that's ok. I would rather pass on the opportunity to get jammed on for a cut rate price and just move on to the next job.

During the peak of the last recession at times I would get really pissed off when I got beat. Today I actually pity the client because you and I know that the service they will receive for the cheapest price will be sub par and essentially they get what they pay for.

This whole cheap thing is now coming back around to bite a lot of guys on the ass now. I think I always knew it would but wow is it better than I ever imagined.

Peace out surveyors. Make it a great profitable week.

America Moving Forward

I very rarely discuss politics in public and I am going to continue that trend.

Today however I am very sad for our great country.

On November 6, 2012 the United States of America decided to continue the unfortunate and extremely precarious position that is placed its self in 4 years ago.

The magnitude of this decision is serious and we will have little idea of it for the next year or so.

Why did this happen? I know why, but I refuse to discuss it here just as I refuse to disparage the continuing President of these United States.

Many will tell you how much trouble we are in.

Fat chance!

To them I say “Shut your ignorant mouth”! Take your mudslinging and shove it.  Keep your trap shut unless you have something constructive to say about how to help us progress.

We are Americans. We are the greatest country the world has ever seen and by nature we will prevail no matter what is handed to us.

I am an American Patriot through and through, I love my country and I will succeed no matter what comes my way.

I'm moving forward.

 

 

Re-Plat

I was recently hired to do a replat on 2 lots in a subdivision.

I did some prelim calc's and went out to do a search and destroy monument search.

I held a brass cap on the section line and the northwest corner of the section which was the corner of the subdivision as my meridian.

The distance checked 2' +/- short of record plat. This kind of irritated me because everything else was checking real nice.

This plat was done in the 80's and all evidence points to the section corner being accurate and in character.

I searched along the subdivision line and found nothing, nada, nill.

Unfortunately in order to reconstruct these lots establishing the subdivision line was completely required.

I pondered on it for a bit. I applied an index to the lots therefore shorting my 2 lots .6'.

I had located a lot of the walls and the index gradually caused some major encroachments so I threw that idea out the window.

I finally decided to calc the lots at record and hold the brass cap that I found on the section line and the walls fell perfect.

I forgot to mention that the brass cap checked great to the west 1/4 corner and the interior brass caps and property corners that I recovered.

So now we have a 30 year old plat with a bad distance. Why?

Some guy from way back made a typo and I will stand behind that statement.

Why? Because I've done it and so has anyone that has ever drawn a survey.

This boys and girls is the reason we check things in the field and use our awesome data base to verify.

I love boundary stuff that makes me think. It's truly the one thing about surveying that I like to sink my teeth into.

Make it a great week surveyors.

Value of Time Off

Last week my kids had fall break. A few years ago when this came around I was skeptical at best and wondered why in the hell do these kids needs so much time off and my wife used to lose it because there were kids around when they should not be.

This year I went about it a lot different. I was waiting on some projects to kick off and had little to do so I packed the family up and went to the ocean for a week. Yup I took an October vacation.

I will tell you right now that it was fantastic and much needed.

Back in the days gone by when I had a lot of employees running around I used to take quite a bit of time off. The reason was I needed to chill out. Running a very busy business is extremely hard on a persons soul. It can ruin your mind and create a major asshole. I would work 4.5 days a week and never on the weekend. Those 4 days might have been 12 hour days but Friday I always left at 9-10am after going over the books, signing checks and addressing any unforeseen issues.

Over the last 4 years of being a skeleton crew has left me with a lot less time to chill out and that has become a major problem. Being an army of one can only go on for so long.

Back when I was a worker bee I used to criticize the owners for taking more time off than anyone else. I never understood how a person could do such a thing and I now believe that deep down I was just jealous.

Worker bees may never understand because they are technicians and only have to hold up their end. The owner on the other hand has to steer the ship, deal with the worker bees and all of the other stuff that can land on a person on any given day. Sometimes it's pretty thick.

Another very important thing that I have learned over the years of being in business is that anything that happens is my fault. Yes the technician can cause the initial damage or a client can do something stupid but at the end of the day it's my fault.

Who does anyone turn to in crisis? Who does anyone remember being the shit heal? Yes that's right the owner.

At the end of the day the owner is the wheel grease, the nuts and bolts and the pilot of a company. The worker bees are very important components but the owner is and always will be in front and have the most pressure.

A lot of people that follow this blog have no idea what it is like to have 200k in receivables and no one wants to pay, have 50k due in payroll the next day and have nothing in the bank to pay them with and then have to get on the phone and hustle of a quick 50k.

That is just an example of a situation. There are so many it's just crazy.

Time off, when it can be taken has just as much if not more value than the job itself. A clear head makes for a better business man.

Peace out surveyors, make it a great week.

Bad Surveying

OK . I do have something to say.

Today I was on a job site.

I tied into a quarter section line and the distance hit within .06 of record plat. I'll buy that all day long and I went about my biz.

I had another survey printed out as reference. I looked at it and noticed that they called the plat distance which I hit reasonable and then they called a measured distance that was much shorter and identical to that of the GDAC Plat and is a grid distance.

This happened to me twice today in adjoining sections.

To this I say what the hell man?

Did you really think your paper survey would go un-noticed until the end of time?

If you're going to use gdac stuff and calc it out at least apply an index so at least seems that you actually surveyed it.

I was not there to do a hard core boundary survey but the fact is that I see this kind of stuff all of the time and it makes it more difficult for people that want to do the right thing.

Do I care enough to call these people up? No, but it is a little frustrating.

In situations like this if I am doing a boundary I find it easier just to set what I think is right and file my own map. Any good surveyor will be able to tell the difference.
In extreme cases the call gets made.

UGH!!!!