Measurement is Dead

[E_Page]

Measurement may not be dead, but the nature of it along with the ability to portray the making of precise and accurate measurements as a valuable professional service are rapidly changing.

There has been hand-held laser distance measuring devices used by related industries for many years. About 15 years ago, when I was surveying Pac Bell mountaintop microwave repeaters, the phone company guy escorting us to many of the sites had this thing that was about the size of, and worked much like a top mount EDM that was commonly in use by surveyors in the mid to late 80s (think RED-2 with a pistol grip under it instead of a mounting bracket). About 8 or 10 years ago, Leica and one or two other firms came out with handheld EDMs about the same size as an HP-48 (Disto) that measured with a precision of +/- 1/8", an effective range of about 300' and could be had for less than $500.

During my drive to work today, I heard a radio ad from one of the big box hardware stores touting a similar device, "accurate to an eigth of an inch" with a range of 50'. I don't recall them stating a price, but I'll bet that it's between $30 and $50. It won't be more than a couple of years before a commercially available device like this is being sold at Home Depot and Lowe's with a range of 300' or better and a precision of 1/8" or 1/16", and available for the price of a good home project cordless drill.

That handheld, RED-2 sized EDM used by the phone company guy could be attached to a staff, had a means of electronically measuring and factoring in the vertical angle (or slope), and could report slope distance, horizontal distance, and vertical distance. Apps for smart phones with built-in accelerometers can report compass or GPS bearings with fairly good results.

It's not much of a stretch that a device with GPS, an accelerometer, and EDM capabilities could be built and marketed to contractors and weekend home project enthusiasts within the next few years for $500 or less. I can see it now: it will have preprogrammed common angle values and be able to tell the user to turn the instrument this way or that by use of arrows on the output screen to get to the predetermined angular value. Why not, our DCs and robotic TSs have been doing that for us for a few years now.

That capability is already here. The general commercial availability at a general commercially viable price point (what the average weekend home project enthusiast's wife will let him spend on a new tool) is only a few short years away. And the progression to the capability of making ever more precise and accurate measurements continues at a geometric pace (that pun just kind of tumbled out. I'll let it stay).

Respectfully disagree as you like Landon. The facts however, lead the observant to an inescapable conclusion that the ability to sell expert measuring as a professional service is narrowing significantly and quickly. Unless you get into an aspect of measurement that requires a degree of precision and accuracy well beyond what would ever be needed by a contractor, non-survey mapper, or weekend home project enthusiast - such as precise machine placement, atomic accelerator alignment, and the like - your forward focus, both for your skill set and for what you can credibly portray as unique professional services, should be on what you do with the measurements rather than on the measuring itself.

Thinking back on the LSIT or the exams for either of the states I've been licensed in, I don't recall being required to set up and instrument, turn an angle, measure a distance electronically, by tape, or by any other means, make a GPS observation, or scan so much as a table top for any of them. I vaguely recall a problem on taping corrections, but can't say for sure if it was an actual question on the LSIT or just part of what I had studied.

We are not licensed so much to know how to measure. We are licensed, at least in part, to know how to work with those measurements, recognize the significance of their results and how those results should inform our professional decisions after the measurements have been made.

When it comes to measuring tools, given one with which you have no experience, you should be able to learn enough about it's use to be effective after no more than a few hours. After week of steady use and studying its user manual, you should be an expert at its use. A skill gained so easily is merely a technical skill and not professional knowledge, and thus not a basis for claiming to provide a professional service as an expert measurer.

Being expert measurer should merely be a part of what we are in order to provide adequate data to be used for those tasks for which we are uniquely qualified and for which we are licensed.

If you want to continue to disagree and market your services as a professional measurer, that's fine. There's many who will join you in that disagreement. Good luck with that. I hope you're able to stay ahead of the avalanche until retirement.

[Dave Karoly, PLS]

The supposed threat from cheap, low quality, consumer goods is nothing new. Heck I own several consumer grade power saws and drills, that doesn't mean I'm going to be able to compete with a real cabinet shop.

Contractor grade transit-levels have been in use for decades yet they still hired a surveyor to do their layout. Any consumer could cheaply acquire a one-hundred foot tape measure.

We tend to undervalue our technical skills because it all seems so simple to us. Bubba next door can get a $200 Disto and compete. Sure he can make one measurement of 125' but let him try to put together a network of 50 measurements and make sense of it, he couldn't do it.

I don't think the problem approaches the extremes either way, either there will be no market for measurement services because everyone has a super-Disto in their back pocket but it won't approach the amount of labor required in 1950 either due to our increasing productivity. Increasing demand (for point clouds, for example) has kept some people employed but productivity is increasing.

The real money is in the value added to the data and always has been. In 1950 the Surveyor would stretch the tape 200' from the rebar to the pipe, the property owner could do that with out too much trouble. What the Surveyor brought, and always has, is the value of what it means, the rebar and the pipe. You know, the rebar is the property corner or it's just a goat stake, the pipe is the property corner or it's an old power pole ground or maybe a horseshoe goal. It's the same with other measurement services too. There's the data then there's the answers that can be obtained from the data. I could call a 1000 people and ask who they are voting for in the next election but I don't have the statistical background to assess what it means, whether it's accurate data, is it a reasonable predictor.

We get too focused, too freaked out really, on the technology. I own a phone just like every polling service. Joe owns a disto, oh my gawd, may as well retire now.

[TTaylor]

I am of the opinion that it is the high quality, high accurate data that is important to me. Why? because it is the products that I produce from this data for my customers that is important. These customers can/do include maintenance/operations, geotechnical, design, environmental, project management, legal, and construction to name a few.

That having been said, I do think that the data collection process has several aspects that are just plain not trivial. Calibration of the equipment (especially TMLS), selection of a coordinate and elevation reference frame, understanding error sources, employing local transformations, and having a robust QC/QA plan in place that includes "proofing" the final collected data to name a few.

Clearly, on major public works projects (upwards of several billion dollars) the protection of the public now and into the future is enhanced by having a licensed LS involved.

I have always felt that our profession has 2 main sides: Boundary and the scientific (geodetic, error analysis, deformation modeling, VDC/BIM, etc.)

I just don't get the arguments from one side or the other that disparages the work of the other side. IMO, it does not add anything to their arguments of the value they provide as a professional. It just seems petty.

As opposed to the idea that the new technologies will make non-boundary surveying obsolete in the future, I think that it will open up a whole new customer base that will benefit from professional services related to working with high volume, high accuracy, survey data.

[E_Page]

OK, there seems to be a perception or comprehension challenge going on. When I say that we are not licensed because we are expert measurers, or that it is not wise to build one's practice on the idea that one is a professional measurer, I am not saying that good measurements are not important. That they are important should go without saying.

What I was saying is that "The real money is in the value added to the data and always has been. ... What the Surveyor brought, and always has, is the value of what it means, the rebar and the pipe. You know, the rebar is the property corner or it's just a goat stake, the pipe is the property corner or it's an old power pole ground or maybe a horseshoe goal. ... There's the data then there's the answers that can be obtained from the data."

And that we can call ourselves professionals "because it is the [knowledge and skill that goes into] products that I produce from this data for my customers that is important."

"I just don't get the arguments from one side or the other that disparages the work of the other side."

Neither do I. If you got that from my posts, then you read something that I did not write.

"It just seems petty."
If that's what you got out of it, then you really missed the point, because what you wrote in argument is in full agreement with what you seem to be arguing against - or more accuratley, arguing against what you thought I wrote.

"As opposed to the idea that the new technologies will make non-boundary surveying obsolete in the future," [Who said, or even implied that?!?] "I think that it will open up a whole new customer base that will benefit from professional services related to working with high volume, high accuracy, survey data."

That's right. But the professional service isn't going to be in the making of measurements in itself. You can have trained technicians do that just as well as you can, but probably do it more cost effectively because they will bill out at about 2/3 of what you will. The true value in your service, as you pointed out, is what you do with the data.

One thing I will point out that we may truly disagree on (but I doubt it after you consider it) is that the value is not necessarily in the products you produce (a commodity or goods), but in the knowledge of what the data means and the ability to convey it in a way that's understandable and useful to your client. The product is just the means of delivering the results of your professional skill and knowledge that was applied to the data.

[TTaylor]

Well, ok, Evan. My comments were in response to the whole thread and to the notion, in general, that measurement is dead as written in the trades and presented at conferences, not at any of your comments in particular.

I guarantee you, Evan, I am not "comprehension challenged" as you state right before you copy parts of my post in yours.

Take it easy, Evan and have a nice day.

[Mike Hartley]

What's the difference between a civil engineer and a land surveyor?

[dmi]

About 100K a year

[Dave Karoly, PLS]

Yes, but are the dead measuring?