A 46Kb PDF of this article as it appeared in the magazine—complete with images—is available by clicking HERE
Florida Surveyor Rewrites Job Description
Just read your article on Florida Surveyor Rewrites Job Description. That is the type of working out of the back of your pickup truck mentality that is a detriment to the survey profession. What other licensed professionals office is their pickup truck? That article was a disgrace to every Licensed Professional Surveyor that maintains an office and employs long term quality staff and is exactly the image that many people have worked for many years to try to change about Professional Surveyors. Professional Surveyors don’t go to day labor to fill their needs for field personnel. To glorify that business model in an article in your magazine just goes to show that as a profession we still have a long way to go.
Marcus N Hall Jr, PS
Brooksville, FL
Martin responds:
The main idea of the article was to highlight the function of construction surveying as it relates to GPS machine control. Whether or not AngleRight Surveying employs two or two hundred surveyors is not the point of the article. Furthermore, at no time does the article mention `day labor’. The article states, "…we will bring in contract labor to help pound in stakes." We use part time payroll employees to handle this contract labor. Using part time payroll employees helps reduce overhead burdens that often sink new companies. AngleRight Surveying is led in the field by Project Managers that are either professional licensed surveyors or highly experienced surveyors, who while working for previous organizations were deemed `over qualified and over compensated’ to be in the field. I choose to use our experience in the field to directly assist our clients, rather than have it marooned behind a desk all day. Our clients have shown an extremely positive response to this approach. That is the business model that the article expresses. We use cutting edge technology and innovative thinking to reduce overhead burdens. This results in savings to our clients. The market has changed and so has our approach.
Dustin D Martin, PS
AngleRight Surveying
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The article "Florida Surveyor Rewriting Job Description" in the recent American Surveyor magazine contained this statement: "The beauty of creating models is that the technology knows no geographic boundary. We can do a model of a site in California without ever setting foot on it. It’s all just exchanging files so, as long as the client has email we can service a variety clients."
3D surface modeling falls under the purview of Professional Land Surveying in the state of California. I could not find either Dustin Martin or Jacob Amann on the State of California Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors and Geologists license lookup page. If indeed neither of them is licensed in the state of California this is disturbing to me, for even though technology may know no geographic boundaries, certainly the law does and they are running afoul of the Professional Land Surveyor Act. If this is the case, I would urge them to invest some of their shoestring budget to become licensed in California so as to avoid any entanglement with the Board.
Joel Riipinen, PS
Via the Internet
Martin responds:
You raise a very valid point, but I will say that California is one of the few states to require PS involvement for non-boundary surveying. Additionally, when interviewed for the article I arbitrarily chose California because it best illustrated the coast to coast potential for 3D Modeling. We have not done work in California. We appreciate your diligence in assuring that prior to doing work in California, we will obtain the proper licensing. –DM
Got some feedback?
You can contact us via our website at www.amerisurv.com, or send a letter to: The American Surveyor, P.O. Box 4162, Frederick, MD 21705-4162. We reserve the right to edit letters for clarity and length. Due to the variety of titles used by licensed surveyors throughout the U.S., we use the title PS after the name of any registered land surveyor.
A 46Kb PDF of this article as it appeared in the magazine—complete with images—is available by clicking HERE