California Surveyors Forums

What we have is a collision between two differing postures or attitudes and the relationship of those attitudes to what we run up against in our legal system, especially with regard to any gray areas.

It reminds me of the debate in the local rag a few years back, when the city was proposing the use of red light cameras to (wink, wink) make the city's intersections safer. I wrote in asking if we really want to live in a society that splits hairs like that? Really? How about mid-block cameras to automatically ticket j-walkers and send them a huge bill? What about cameras that automatically ticket all cars in a signalized, dedicated left turn lane that don't have their turn signals on?

Sure enough, there were people who wrote back stating that, yes, in fact we do support any and all fines like that, even for the least offenses. "It's the law," they adamantly announced, and we should have no complaints when we violate them.

There is a posture that does not care about nuances and reasonableness in the interpretation of the law. It's a posture that always tilts toward the strictest possible, letter-of-the-law interpretation.

It's sad that we have to adjust ourselves, our work, and our professional discretion to the fear of attorneys out there who can get away with using that posture to denigrate a professional's work without benefit of the oversight, wisdom, and stewardship of a reasonable judge.

So, I guess we're all in agreement:

Everyone's going to show what they measured from now on.

Well, actually Steve I've been following this post and remembering a recent quarter section breakdown I did where I held the westerly quarter corners as my bearing base and hit record by 0.01'. Through the Santa Cruz mountains!

One hundredth in twenty-six hundred and some-odd feet. I showed my measurement on the ROS as differing by 0.01' because after some contemplation I figured it would look more strange to have actually hit record exactly. Was I calling record off? Not to me, I thought I was demonstrating how tight the prior survey was.

A couple years before that I hit a quarter section line last surveyed in 1911 by 0.03', again through the Santa Cruz mountains. I showed that on a ROS too.

And a couple years ago I even hit two pipes eighteen hundred feet apart by 0.003' but did not need to file any map for whatever reason.

What I am saying is that statistically, getting that close to a record distance, or measuring anything multiple times and getting the same result, is like a winning lottery tickect, or randomly picking 15 numbers on a Keno card and getting zero.

Oh, but measurement is dead according to the concurrent post about construction staking by non-licensed people.

Cheers.

If you think that it is fraud just because you did not report a difference that is less than your relative positional certainty, then you do not have a full understanding of measurement and may not understand your client's needs.

No responsible professional does a boundary survey without measuring. The record information helps you get to a point where you can then assess your measurements, the record information, and all the other information and evidence regarding that boundary to exercise professional judgment. In a few cases, where no statistically significant differences exist between any of your measurements and the record dimensions, professional judgment may guide one to conclude that it is better to simply report that you have confirmed the record rather than potentially confuse the client and other end users of your report. Do you really think that any measurement you make is exact enough in angle or distance to justify contradicting another's measurement?

I can believe this has made it to three pages because I recognize that some surveyors view measurements as being at the pinnacle of importance of the data we analyze and report, and many surveyors see only one valid way to report data regardless of surrounding circumstances. Those surveyors refuse to consider circumstances where reporting insignificant information has more potential to confuse clients and/or other end users of the data, and that this consideration may be greater than the surveyor's otherwise self centered need to report just how "good" his work is, perhaps because he has a misplaced sense of pride tied to his measurements.

My personal feeling and professional judgment, if I haven't already made it clear, is that it is not wrong to always report your measurements, exactly as you measured them or as resulting from a valid adjustment, depending on circumstances and project requirements. It is often wrong, probably in most cases, to not report your measurements. When you show measurements, you should also report the record measurements in order to report the differences. And in some rare cases, when there is no statistically significant differences between one's measurements and the record, it is within the realm of reasonable professional judgment to choose to report only that you have verified the record boundary per a previous survey.

I am not particularly losing hope for the profession on this front. As long as a surveyor is not sticking to record dimensions when they are contrary to the location of a properly retraced boundary, as long as they are not ignoring and misreporting when there are any staistically significant differences between current measurements and record, as long as they are adhering to the requirements of the project, adhering to the law, and exercising appropriate professional judgment, I have no problems with someone reporting only that they verified record.

Let's toss in a different scenario from a different area of practice. Let's say your company is doing the construction staking on a particular site. Your other crew staked out some curb yesterday but the contractor called you to come out and check a portion of that stakeout he has some question about. This is on a residential road on a hill, with the profile slope being approximately 8%, so it's not very flat.

So you set up and backsight on appropriate control, you take a check shot on a 3rd control point and are good to go. Of the 20 stakes you check, you hit only 2 flat horizontally, most are just under 0.02' off, but none are more than 0.03' out according to your measurements. As to vertical, you do a little better overall, but hit none flat. Most are +/- 0.1' off, and 3 are 0.02' off according to your current measurements.

Are you now going to bump each hub that you did not hit exactly over the 0.01' to 0.03' to put them on exactly? Are you going to change all of the cuts and fills to reflect your current measurements? Didn't the contractor ask you to measure these stakes and compare your current measurements to the stake positions and the cuts/fills, weren't these stakes and grades set per the same plan that you are using to check them? Isn't the plan the "record" and the stakes the physical representation of that record on the ground?

What are you going to do? Will you restake or remark the stakes or will you tell the contractor that the stakeout is fine, that you verified that yesterday's stakeout is adequate to build the curb from?

If you don't restake or "correct" the stakes according to your current measurements, then by your standard, you are committing fraud upon the contractor, the developer, and any future users of this road.

Do you hold to the rigid concept that, at a minimum, you need to at least change the marked offsets and cuts/fills, or do you think that exercising the judgment to just tell the contractor that the staking will serve his needs is a reasonable course of action?


I say that if you cannot fathom a circumstance in which valid professional judgment may lead a surveyor to simply report that the record was verified and not report one's statistically insignificant differences, perhaps you are too rigid in your professional judgment, or you place too high an importance on the value of your measurements. If the precision of your measurements defines your identity as a surveyor, if you have some inordinate sense of pride and self tied to your ability to measure better than any other surveyor who preceded you, then your focus and sense of professional value as a boundary surveyor is misplaced.

I say that we have too many engineering techs pretending to practice surveying. If you think measurements are of paramount importance in a boundary survey and that your measurements are so exact that you feel a need to show your miniscule contradictions to someone else's measurements, then don't burn down our profession. Instead leave it and go into engineering where exact values hold a valid place in practice.


Did I tick some of you off? TOO DAMN BAD!!! Stop accusing others who have the ability to see professional judgment more broadly than you do of lying, of promoting or committing fraud, of not having pride in their profession.

Thanks, Evan. That was a great presentation of the case. Better than I could have done myself, and exactly in the direction I favor.

......and when you have multiple record dimensions to pick from, which will you choose?

Is this another "professional judgement"?

What is so important about ANY record measurement that you would change your measurement to agree with someone else's value?

Your measured value is what you measured. Are you ashamed to show that value, or afraid to disagree with another surveyor?

PLEASE DON'T HIDE BEHIND THE VEIL OF PROFESSIONAL JUDGEMENT WHEN YOU CHANGE YOUR MEASURED VALUE TO AGREE WITH SOME ARBITRARY RECORD MEASUREMENT! IT DOES US ALL A DISSERVICE.

That's a weak argument, at best

coast wrote:......and when you have multiple record dimensions to pick from, which will you choose?

Is this another "professional judgement"?

Yes. I'm sure you can figure it out on a case by case basis.

coast wrote:What is so important about ANY record measurement that you would change your measurement to agree with someone else's value?

Well then, maybe you can't figure it out as you seem not to understand errors in measurement. If my adjusted values are within the relative positional tolerance of matching record, if I simply report record, I am not changing my measurements to match anything. They are statistically the same. That's LSIT level stuff, read up on it.

coast wrote:Your measured value is what you measured. Are you ashamed to show that value, or afraid to disagree with another surveyor?

Afraid to disagree? Have you been reading my posts? Have you ever met me in person? Ask around, I'm not really afraid of disagreeing with anyone, on line or in person. Maybe you need to read slower or maybe I need to write slower for you to understand. If your sense of identity and pride as a surveyor is in your measurements, it is misplaced. Darn near any yahoo can make good measurements these days. What matters is whether you know what to do with your measurements , how to assess them. Since you're not clear on errors in measurement and relative positional tolerance, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you don't understand this either.

coast wrote:PLEASE DON'T HIDE BEHIND THE VEIL OF PROFESSIONAL JUDGEMENT WHEN YOU CHANGE YOUR MEASURED VALUE TO AGREE WITH SOME ARBITRARY RECORD MEASUREMENT! IT DOES US ALL A DISSERVICE.

I'm not hiding at all. I called you out and anyone else who doesn't understand their own measurements well enough to understand when two numbers appear slightly different are statistically the same.

A record measurement is not an arbitrary number. It is one that until I discover otherwise, I will assume was made with the same skill and care that I exercise and expect of other surveyors. My work is not at all arbitrary. My decision to report that I have verified an existing survey as opposed to reporting my own adjusted values is not made arbitrarily.

Your lack of ability to grasp the basics of measurement and error theory, or the professional judgment that goes into making the decisions of how to report your data doesn't do me a disservice. It doesn't do a disservice to anyone who is capable of doing more than simply regurgitating measurements without thought of their significance. It does you a disservice by willfully remaining myopic as to the reasons other professionals (and I'm feeling like I'm using that word - other - quite loosely at the moment) make the decisions they may make. It also shows you to be far less than professional that you mindlessly condemn while demonstrating such a glaring lack of understanding of basic concepts.

coast wrote:That's a weak argument, at best

This coming from one who presents no sound argument but simply condemns others for possibly doing something you don't understand the reasons behind.

That statement is a slightly more articulate way of saying "what-ever!", which as I tell my kids, is how someone responds when they have no idea what you've said to them because it's over their head and they don't care to attempt to understand.

I had a Surveyor argue with me once that sometimes it is OK to fudge the numbers to show your level loop closes because maybe you don't really want to run levels back up and down the mountain. That just goes against the grain of everything I was taught as a Surveyor. I feel the same about reporting something different than what I measured... even an inverse from an adjusted traverse, that is the measurement to the best of my ability. I may add a statement about the expected accuracy, but I will not write down someone else's measure as my own.

I agree with Ken Wilson, Brue Hall, Dave Woolley, Ruel, and SDANGLER

Surveyors are supposed to experts in measurement; part of being an expert is making it clear what you measured and conveying the accuracy to user of that data

So pride, we now learn, is the provenience of only one side of the issue. Anyone taking the other side is not just a liar, but has no pride as well.

You know......you might stop to consider that, every once in a while in the public arena, there appears an issue that is susceptible to two (or more) equally defensible, reasonable, articulate, well thought out positions.

Instead of attempting to table the issue by claiming the high ground, would that we had the wisdom to acknowledge that the position of "the other side" is as honorable as our own.

Reasonable people can disagree. Sometimes professionalism isn't as black and white as we want it to be.