California Surveyors Forums

In recent months, on this forum, I have detailed large scale encroachments into the practice of land surveying. There are folks providing construction staking, site plans, topography using drones, LiDAR (both airborne and terrestrial), and large-scale production of legal descriptions and plats by an inappropriate application of Business and Professions Code 8730.

On the other side of the coin, I find land surveyors that are not familiar with; the California Public Resource Code requirements when showing state plane coordinates, Subdivision Map Act limitations (mergers of more than 4 lots without filing a parcel map), the requirements to set monuments on subdivision maps, the limitations of RTN GPS. Many site plans provided by land surveyors are indistinguishable from those provided by unlicensed practitioners. Also, it is not uncommon to find land surveyors overlooking the destruction of monuments by not pushing their clients to comply with Business and Professions Code 8771. It is my experience, a land surveyor is most likely to bristle at compliance and/or will offer "I have never had to do that in the past" (regardless of the black letter laws).

Lastly, we have organized labor i.e. carpenters, laborers, and operating engineers writing land surveying – as defined by Business and Professions Code 8726 – into their Master Labor Agreements as work covered and provided by the respective unions. This means the “land surveying” work is being claimed and provided by the trade unions. Trade unions self-preforming land surveying is becoming the rule rather than the exception. I have detailed more than a billion dollars in construction projects that have contractors self-performing land surveying work.

I believe the “public protection” is no argument if it cannot be demonstrated by actual damages or land surveyor competencies (simply passing the test and practicing in a wayward manner is not competency). Restated, the land surveying community cannot perform the same work in the same manner and expect their license to sanction the work i.e. site plans, construction staking, drone photogrammetry.

My question to the readers is, does anyone have any thoughts or ideas as to what we can or should do about the practice/market loss?

My last question is, do land surveyors have an ethical obligation to society to not use a license to hold the public captive and possibly, initiate the deregulation of the practice (or portions thereof)?

DWoolley

This is a tough one for any professional PLS to answer. I personally have been trained by head chainmen/instrumentmen on a 3-4 man crew. Until later in my career, party chiefs (unlicensed) would not take the time to help with your training. I watched the technology take jobs away from the office and the field in the last 30-40 years and have also personally witnessed the work being taken away from surveyors (e.g. GPS in construction, lasers, and now drones). Even AutoCad has nopt really been a friend to the survey community, they gravitate toward the majority of the need (e.g. Architects and Civil Engineers). I would not like to be negative on the subject, but it boils down to the supply and demand and money. We (as a profession) have never had enough volume to make much of a change, and, with that,unless things change drastically, I don't think we ever will. Based on my opinion as stated above, regarding your first question, although I have thoughts about it, I think it is a mute point. In reference to your second question, Yes, we should have an ethical obligation, but, only to ourselves as profession but not take away further tasks which "should be in the relm of Land Surveying Activities".

This forum is not very representative cross section of surveyors at large.
Who are you trying to reach?

Quick definition review:
According to https://www.britannica.com/story/whats- ... and-ethics
"Many people think of morality as something that’s personal and normative, whereas ethics is the standards of “good and bad” distinguished by a certain community or social setting."

Those definitions jive with your use it seems and will be used below.

Regarding our ethical obligations to society, I fall back to the original reason we were licensed. IE harms to the public. My personal views are that when the actions of a person primarily effect that person or their immediate neighbors, and the problem will be discovered in a shortish timespan, there is little harm to the public at large, so there is little nexus with our ethical obligations.

Example 1: A contractor stakes their own project. If they mess it up, it only hurts them or their clients who hired them, and they will quickly find out that the road doesn't match the hill, or the foundation is in the wrong spot. So there is no ethical issue for us as surveyors, rather it is a financial issue for the surveyor for lost work. This means that we shouldn't call foul, but instead figure out a way to offer a competitive service, or find a niche that supports each person/company's business model, or accept that we are no longer needed as much.

Example 2. Homeowner building a fence. If they mess it up, it hurts not just them, but their neighbor. This is where we start having a stake in the game, since we as a profession can ensure that the innocent bystander is not hurt. In this case the "public" is pretty limited, likely only 1 or 2 "innocents", so the harms lever is pretty short, and in theory the effected "public" will likely see the new fence pretty soon and be able to take action. I don't think we should call foul per se, but rather we should work to educate folks about when it is worthwhile to put the fence on the actual boundary, and market ourselves to those that care about quality, like a luxury brand.

Example 3. Large subdivision creating 50+ lots. If the boundaries are messed up then there are issues for many people, entailing costs and ramifications that likely exceed the cost of the individual lots, and the problem will likely fall on people not paying for the creation of the problem. The public harm is pretty large here which means our ethical responsibility is pretty high. This is our ethical hill to die on.

Example 4. A Non surveyor provides a "boundary survey" that is understood by the client to be definitive. I am torn on this one. I live by caveat emptor as I generally hope that my fellow citizens are decently educated/smart. To me this is like a patient getting upset when their crystal therapist doesn't cure their cancer.... Being hurt from bad decisions is how people learn to make better ones. So people will learn to get good work over time. However dying from cancer can be hard to learn from, so perhaps an ounce of prevention would be worth it here?

Takeway: We will be dwindling both as a percentage of GDP and as overall number of surveyors, however those that dwindle seem to be the 2-3 other people in PLS5528's original crews. I don't think that is an existential threat to our profession, but rather it is just a needed adjustment in a capitalist system that is supposed to prune in-efficient activities, like having a 3-4 person field crew, or drawing maps by hand. So our ethical obligation is to protect from deregulation large harm activities like parcel maps and final maps, maintain a distinction between our boundary work and others and to stay cost effective so we are available as measurement experts when someone wants to check that contractors work and sue them for damages.

Technology means that there will not be much work for people who can only measure. There will always (AI singularity aside) be work for people who know what a measurement means. Those folks just might not be called surveyors in the future. There are a lot of last names that correspond to professions we don't have much of anymore: Wainright, Cooper, Cobbler, Tanner, Miller (aka Mueller in german), Chandler, Faulkner. etc etc. If all of those professions had acted like the Luddites, just think of how much more we would all be paying for the basic items in our life. Plus, the Luddites lost... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite


Mikey Mueller, PLS 9076
Sonoma County

There is a sizeable presentation being developed on Ethics, within the framework of the Leadership Academy Committee, at the state level.

I would like to invite those of you who are concerned to participate in production of these materials. They will have a much greater reach than this forum offers. Those who wish will have a chance to present the materials as well.

This way, your input and effort can be places where it can actually be used and benefit a wide audience and help lift us out of the current state.

Mike Mueller wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:38 am....

Those are wonderful examples, I would love to have these kinds of examples in a presentation which could be given at conferences, put on Youtube, or on Linkedin and used in other educational materials... as we proceed with developing these.

This is almost EXACTLY the kind of input I am asking of committee members.

DWoolley wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 1:08 pm .....

This is what I think we are up against, among other things, in surveying"

a phenomenon that prevents a lot of efforts transforming from talk to action, and moving forward into cultural changes which can take root and grow and create impact.

It is an emotional intelligence related concept, called Diffusion of Responsibility.

Superficial google search will tell us that:
“Diffusion of responsibility occurs when people who need to make a decision wait for someone else to act instead. The more people involved, the more likely it is that each person will do nothing, believing someone else from the group will probably respond.”

Diffusion of responsibility can also be an ethical matter, as is discussed here: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glos ... onsibility

Most difficult part for any leader, and you as well Dave, is to get a sufficient number of people to buy into the concept so that it reaches sufficient mass to become trend or part of the culture. Most of that has nothing to do with the critical topic at hand, but with how to formulate our messaging so that it gains traction. How to formulate it and who to present it to.

Also, you are talking legislation and regulation to surveyors, who re struggling with just the most basic interpretation of laws they need to follow. For most people, the message is not really registering, and if it is, it is not landing very high on a priority list.

You and few other people spend hours and hours and days and years contemplating this, majority, maybe 3 minutes, if the messaging reaches them at all. How to dissect this for an average surveyor is a major hurdle, which, I like how Mark Counts described it recently, it requires a change of culture. That is a massive lift. To start with, people need to learn how to cope with change and not run away screaming back into comfort of avoidance and denial.

CBarrett wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2023 8:47 am get a sufficient number of people to buy into the concept so that it reaches sufficient mass to become trend or part of the culture. Most of that has nothing to do with the critical topic at hand, but with how to formulate our messaging so that it gains traction. How to formulate it and who to present it to.

Also, you are talking legislation and regulation to surveyors, who re struggling with just the most basic interpretation of laws they need to follow. For most people, the message is not really registering, and if it is, it is not landing very high on a priority list.

You and few other people spend hours and hours and days and years contemplating this, majority, maybe 3 minutes, if the messaging reaches them at all. How to dissect this for an average surveyor is a major hurdle, which, I like how Mark Counts described it recently, it requires a change of culture. That is a massive lift. To start with, people need to learn how to cope with change and not run away screaming back into comfort of avoidance and denial.

I agree with these statements. I believe this is an urgent and important discussion but we clearly have a marketing challenge.

I know several people who will reject anything David Woolley suggests regardless of reasoning so you might want consider drafting another messenger to make your presentations

Mike Mueller wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:38 am My personal views are that when the actions of a person primarily effect that person or their immediate neighbors, and the problem will be discovered in a shortish timespan, there is little harm to the public at large, so there is little nexus with our ethical obligations.

I don't personally feel that it is ethical for me to judge the harm of my actions to another person without their knowledge and input. If someone else is perpetrating the harm then that is usually beyond my control and the best I can do is report it when I discover it.

I also struggle to rationalize the prior discussion on standard of practice based on property value (Jon Wheat) and I feel your reasoning falls under the same general umbrella. On the other hand I regularly survey to a different standard on urban/higher land value parcels than I do on rural parcels. Not necessarily better or worse, just different priorities and levels of precision so I suppose I am conflicted in this statement

David Kendall wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2023 9:24 am

CBarrett wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2023 8:47 am get a sufficient number of people to buy into the concept so that it reaches sufficient mass to become trend or part of the culture. Most of that has nothing to do with the critical topic at hand, but with how to formulate our messaging so that it gains traction. How to formulate it and who to present it to.

Also, you are talking legislation and regulation to surveyors, who re struggling with just the most basic interpretation of laws they need to follow. For most people, the message is not really registering, and if it is, it is not landing very high on a priority list.

You and few other people spend hours and hours and days and years contemplating this, majority, maybe 3 minutes, if the messaging reaches them at all. How to dissect this for an average surveyor is a major hurdle, which, I like how Mark Counts described it recently, it requires a change of culture. That is a massive lift. To start with, people need to learn how to cope with change and not run away screaming back into comfort of avoidance and denial.

I agree with these statements. I believe this is an urgent and important discussion but we clearly have a marketing challenge.

I know several people who will reject anything David Woolley suggests regardless of reasoning so you might want consider drafting another messenger to make your presentations

Even I went through the same phase.
Almost none of us surveyors are meant to be good at this, most of us never had a chance to learn. I am just starting to learn myself. I might know a tad more on the topic than the average surveyor, perhaps, I'm sure that too is debatable.... Compared to a lot other business people who specialize in this, I am just a newbie.

This is what the leadership academy is for as well, for those of us who want to lead, to also learn from each other, as we are figuring out how to lead the rest of the profession, away from "the old yeller fate".

We all need it, top, bottom, side players, regardless of where we see ourselves or where others see us.

Even people who are exponentially more skilled in these things than we are need constant reminders and checks... this is normal. Just like in surveying we have to constantly check our numbers, there are other business things that need deliberate attention, like focus, behaviors, efforts, audience, networking, motivations, stakeholders...

We need to learn how to play together.

By the way, there is a group of about 20 very interested an interesting people in the leadership academy right now... but these are broad topics, I am always open to additional assistance, ongoing or temporary.

The Leadership team might consider studying Arminius (Hermann) for ethical guidance. Short version, he chose the greater good by turning on his home team and in turn, decimated them - saving the people from Roman oppression.

DWoolley

Leadership team might consider studying Brett Dennen as well. That's my dog

https://youtu.be/106yI2pENSw

I bet this guy could kick the crap out of Napoleon Dynamite

Who among us has the courage to do the right thing, taking a leadership role in stopping the chiselers, to build the land surveyor deregulation abattoir?

We cannot compel land surveyors to survey.

DWoolley