California Surveyors Forums

LS Act 8771(b) When monuments exist that control the location of
subdivisions, tracts, boundaries, roads, streets, or highways, or
provide horizontal or vertical survey control, the monuments shall be
located and referenced by or under the direction of a licensed land
surveyor or licensed civil engineer legally authorized to practice
land surveying, prior to the time when any streets, highways, other
rights-of-way, or easements are improved, constructed, reconstructed,
maintained, resurfaced, or relocated, and a corner record or record
of survey of the references shall be filed with the county surveyor. (emphasis mine)

Would a slurry seal count as resurfacing and if so does that mean the monuments that are in the street require them to be located and referenced (perpetuation), prior to the surfacing activities taking place?

Is placing a piece of tape over the monument lid satisfactory preservation?

Does a monument that is below the AC surface required to be perpetuated prior to the resurfacing?

Can a construction inspector or a post 82 civil engineer identify the monuments to be located and referenced under 8771?

Would a pavement overlay count as resurfacing?

Thank you,
Larry Stevens

My best estimate:

Yes.
Possibly, if the tape and chip seal over the mon. can be removed after the chipseal placement, thereby leaving the mon. exposed.
Yes, solely in keeping with the spirit of the law.
No for boundary mons, for post 82 PE's maybe no, maybe yes for horiz and vert control mons.
Yes

I'm pretty much in agreement with Wm. Magee, as I find is normally the case.

The exception is for the post-82 comment, because 8771(b) states: "by or under the direction of a licensed land surveyor or licensed civil engineer legally authorized to practice land surveying." As we all know, post-82s are not "legally authorized to practice land surveying" although they do have some additional authority as described in 6731.1.

An important qualifying phrase in 8771(c) is: "...if any monument could be destroyed, damaged, covered, disturbed, or otherwise obliterated..."

Key tie-in codes to 8771(b) & (c) include B&P 6730.2(c) and 8771(d):
6730.2(c) The designated person in responsible charge of professional civil engineering work of any department or agency of the state, city, county, city and county, district, or special district pursuant to this section is responsible for compliance with subdivisions (b) and (c) of Section 8771.
8771 (d) The governmental agency performing or permitting construction or maintenance work is responsible for ensuring that either the governmental agency or landowner performing the construction or maintenance work provides for monument perpetuation required by this section.

Not to disagree with Rob, but simply to clarify my "maybe no maybe yes" statement, I note that 6731 (g) appropriately states that pre-82 CE's are licensed "to pracice ALL land surveying". It could be undersood the word "all" is in recognition of the fact that post-82 CE's are licensed to perform SOME land surveying. Perhaps including tieing out and referencing horiz and vert control? Maybe not. Maybe yes if it is within the individual licencee's area of competence. Maybe not a bad thing and maybe something to encourage with hope for increased monument perpetuation?

I think the profession needs to be careful how far it pushes this issue. Lets fight for egregious monument destruction and take it easy on monuments stained with tack coat. Education works better than the hammer sometimes. My 2 cents, Jp

A Post 82 RCE can offer to practice, procure and offer to procure, land surveying work that is incidental to their design activities but it must still be performed by or under the direction of a PLS or RCE authorized to practice. PE Act 6731.2

pls7809 wrote:A Post 82 RCE can offer to practice, procure and offer to procure, land surveying work that is incidental to their design activities but it must still be performed by or under the direction of a PLS or RCE authorized to practice. PE Act 6731.2

Ryan,

I think it is important to quote the entire section of the law, not just those portions which you feel support your interpretation.
In this instance you left out the portion of the sentence which states: ", even though he or she is not authorized to perform that work, ".
In the case of post-82 CE's Section 6731.1 clearly authorizes their ability to perform certain types of land surveying. For topo, transferring elevations, construction staking etc etc, Post 82 CE's are authorized.


The section of the PE Act you quote is for those situations where the PE is not authorized, i.e. Post-82 CE's doing boundary work or those types of horizontal/vertical control surveys covered under 8726(g) as being solely under land surveyors and Pre-82 CE's.

If a Post 82 CE set 2 RP's, and made horiz and vert measurements to an H/V control monument prior to it being destroyed, I could see how someone might interpret that as being fully within the authorities granted by the PE Act as long as he/she didn't try to claim CCS coordinates on said RP's.

Then again, maybe not. Me personally, I see more benefit than harm and I believe the argument for would have a better chance of prevailing before a judge than not.

Would a slurry seal count as resurfacing and if so does that mean the monuments that are in the street require them to be located and referenced (perpetuation), prior to the surfacing activities taking place?

A slurry seal, and even a single layer of chip seal doesn't significantly raise the road surface to the point that the lids for mon wells, water valve boxes, and MHs need to be adjusted. Nor does that process involve any demolition of the existing road surface. In such a case, I don't think that the reason for the requirement to "bring to the surface" exists.

If the city or county regularly maintains the road by placing a new layer of chip seal every couple of years, then after a few successive layers, lids will need to be raised.


Is placing a piece of tape over the monument lid satisfactory preservation?

If the tape prevents the tar from getting between the lid and the walls of the mon well, and the tape can be removed later without too much difficulty, then yes, that seems like a reasonable means of preservation.


Does a monument that is below the AC surface required to be perpetuated prior to the resurfacing?

Yes. It should have been done with the paving project that covered it in the first place.


Can a construction inspector or a post 82 civil engineer identify the monuments to be located and referenced under 8771?

§8771 doesn't say anything about making assessments about assessing whether the monument properly marks whatever point it is purported to mark. It simply requires that the position be preserved. As long as someone who knows how to properly and precisely reference a point sufficiently to place a new monument at precisely the same location from those references, and the work is done under the direction of a LS or CE, then I believe the intent of the law is met.

I don't see the pre-82/post-81 CE licensing as being an issue since there is no need to make a qualitative assessment of the monuments being preserved or replaced. It's purely locative.

The problem I would have with a construction inspector doing the identification and fieldwork is that most have had only a little exposure to surveying and measuring procedures at some point in the past when they occasionally helped out the survey crew when the crew was down a body. They maybe learned how to hold a rod, recognized that the surveyor used the steel tape rather than the cloth or fiberglas one when a more precise shorter measurement was to be made, and might have even learned which knobs to turn and which buttons to push on the TS to turn an angle and shoot a distance. But they likely learned very little about proper procedures to ensure quality measurements.

More effective would be for a survey crew, either led by or under the direction of a competent licensed surveyor to identify and locate all record and other visible or known of monuments within the project area prior to construction, work with the inspector to place the locations on the inspector's plan set, and then have the inspector keep track of the condition of those monuments throughout the project. When and if any need to be replaced at the end of the project, the inspector provides a list of them to the survey crew, who does the replacing.

If to "bring to the surface" only involves raising already existing monument wells and the monument below remains undisturbed, an inspector should be able to handle that without the need for a qualified survey crew.


Would a pavement overlay count as resurfacing?

A pavement overlay is a bit more substantial than slurry or chip & seal. An overlay is going to be a minimum of 1" and more commonly, it will be 2". That's more than enough to effectively visibly conceal the existence of monuments or monument wells at the old surface. It's also enough to require several minutes of work for a surveyor to chisel it out at some future date when traffic is running on the road and the AC has had more time to harden. Of all the tasks a surveyor has, chipping out a monument on an road that's open to traffic is the most hazardous. He will likely be on his hands and knees (providing a very low profile for drivers to spot) with his attention is on a small spot of pavement right below his face. He is trying to ascertain just where and how large to make the hole, paying attention to doing that effectively and also determining how deep to make the hole. The whole time he is doing this, he is also concentrating on not smashing the hand holding the chisel with the sledge, and occasionally glancing up to check oncoming traffic.

Even if he has cones all around him, cones won't yell "Watch Out!" when some knucklehead looks like he's going to run them over because he's paying more attention to posting a tweet than to what's on the road ahead. Hopefully in this situation, someone else on the crew is there to watch traffic and holler out warnings, but that's still just one (or maybe one and a quarter since the guy digging glances up once in a while) watching traffic from 2 or more directions.

The requirement to bring monuments to the surface is more about safety and preventing future road damage that we necessarily cause to dig up monuments than it is about convenience. It only takes a few seconds of not paying attention to traffic for something really bad to happen. Even if the overlay is just 1" or 2" thick, it takes quite a bit more than a few seconds to dig/cut through it to uncover a monument underneath.

I agree with Proud7191 that we need to consider what reasonable compliance with 8771 is and not expect that anytime an agency does anything to a road surface that any and all monuments will have shiny new caps or mon well lids that are polished and perfectly flush with the new surface. You might be able to argue the letter of the law that way, but as long as the positions are preserved and are readily and safely accessible, then I believe the spirit of the law has been met, and that's what we should expect.

Post15 Jul 2016 13:05

Going back to the original post regarding the question "Would a slurry seal count as resurfacing and if so does that mean the monuments that are in the street require them to be located and referenced (perpetuation), prior to the surfacing activities taking place?"
I dug a little deeper into the memory banks and recall that technically, slurry seals, micro seals, chip seals, fog seals, seal coats, etc., etc., would be better termed as being surface treatments falling under the category of surface maintenance activities. (as a side note, it used to be that maintenance surface treatments didn't trigger ADA upgrades, but I've noted that exemption to statutory mandate is being modified by some agency's internal policies).
However, regardless of whether a slurry seal is defined as resurfacing or maintenance surface treatment, please note that 8771 includes both.
I personally would advocate any project engineer's/surveyors/managers include the effort to tie out and file CR's for monuments falling within the paved area of a surface treatment. This would serve to ensure perpetuation in the case any digouts are performed in advance of the surface treatment, and would also provide for easily recoverable reference monuments in the case where the monument is covered by the surface treatment disallowing for easy recovery by the future retracing surveyor. I would speculate that the reason for pre-construction operation (or maintenance operation) CR's is solely to ensure perpetuation in the likelihood that post construction monument rehabilitation efforts and CRs are not undertaken. Case in point is a recent recovery effort I undertook for a section corner in a monument well that was covered by a seal coat a number of years prior. I couldn't find it until I broke out the total station and metal detector. If RP's had been set and a CR filed prior to the seal coat, my life would have been a heck of a lot simpler. Finding and getting the lid off of that mon well was a bugger. RP's and a CR prior to seal coats will ensure perpetuation if the perpetuations aren't made afterwards. I believe this is the reason the authors of the changes to 8771 required both pre and post CR's.

getting the lid off of that mon well was a bugger

Wait, you're supposed to take the lid *off*? I guess I did it all wrong yesterday...

We were doing a survey in Mission Beach, on the boardwalk. We broke the lid opening it (the installation of these along the waterfront was pretty foolish as everyone is frozen shut). When we opened it, the monument was at the bottom of a five-foot deep cave. It is about ten feet wide. It is large enough someone could live in there. We reported it half a dozen times. I will have to see if the sidewalk system collapses.

See how we do it in the North State

LA Stevens wrote:Can a construction inspector or a post 82 civil engineer identify the monuments to be located and referenced under 8771

I'd welcome their assistance and awareness of the issue. A PLS should be the responsible person, but adding a note on civil plans "protect existing street survey monument" is not the practice of land surveying.