California Surveyors Forums

Section 8726 (a) “Land surveying definedâ€￾ of the LS Act has always confused me. It reads:

“Locates, relocated, establishes, reestablishes, or retraces the alignment or elevation for any of the fixed works embraced within the practice of civil engineering, as described in Section 6731.â€￾

Section 8728 “Restriction on designâ€￾ reads:

“Surveys authorized under this chapter do not include the design, either in whole or in part, of any structure or fixed works embraced within the practice of civil engineering.â€￾

Does 8726 (a) allow the Land Surveyor to establish the elevation of a storm drain or is that considered designing? Section 8726 does not allow the LS to size storm drain, but does it allow the LS to establish the alignment and elevations or is this what Section 8728 is trying to restrict? What is the "legal" answer and does that differ from the "standard practice" answer?

It is fairly obvious that when construction staking off of a grading plan, that any problems with the plan and its relationship to the field conditions needs to be brought up to the engineer of work. Whoever is responsible for the plans is responsible for the design (this is not my question).

Thanks,
Ben

No one has an opinion? This has been a debate in our office and we have not come to a resolution.

Thanks,
Ben

Ben, in this case, the land surveyor "establishing" the elevation of the storm drain does NOT mean "using engineering principles to determine the height at which the storm drain should be built". It means figuring out what the elevation of the already built storm drain sits at.

And, no, I wouldn’t even attempt to DESIGN the elevation without significant input fro the Engineer of Record (EOR).

I'm surprised that there would be any debate over this.

As far from deviations from plans, the standard of practice is to inform the engineer responsible for the design that there is a problem and that these were the steps taken to correct that problem. If the EOR has a different solution, that should be forth coming before the structure is built.

In practice, when I have called the EOR to discuss the problem, the response is usually something on the order of, “You’re the one in the field! You fix it!” End of Conversation.

By "engineering principles" do you mean line and grade? In this example let's say it's a proposed storm drain on a set of plans. You find that the design doesn't work, or will work if you change the slope of the proposed line. Again, I'm not asking if you should fix the storm drain in the field or call up the EOR.

My question is, does the LS have the right (under section 8726 (a)) to establish new flow line elevations for the storm drain? Ian, from what you’ve said, this is a resounding NO.

So the LS Act has limited the LS to only locating and reestablishing (from existing or from plans). And the term establish means establish in the field something that’s already there (an existing utility) or something that is shown on plans.

Thanks for the clarification. It seems weird that landscape architects can do drainage but surveyors cannot.

Ben

I will echo that resounding "No!"

By changing the slope, you change the rate of flow in the pipe. Do you know if that change will be significant to the design? Do you know what effect the fix that seems obvious will have on other design elements that may or may not appear on the plan set you are working with?

Most of the time it works as Ian described. The surveyor calls the EOR, describes the issue and maybe provides a suggested solution, and the EOR directs the surveyor to make it work.

To your basic question of law, surveyors have no design authority at all. So, the actual question becomes the one that you dismiss, whether or not to call up the EOR.

My answer to that is, if the chief has design skills equivalent to a skilled engineering tech (and a qualified construction chief would), then most fixes for issues as you described can be accomplished in the field without prior input from the EOR. But the chief better run the issue and the fix by the EOR before the design element (pipe, in this case) gets built so that it becomes the EOR's decision to either let the fix stand or to alter the design in a different way.