#24 – Michael Daoud and Aleksandar Jevremovic

#24 – Michael Daoud and Aleksandar Jevremovic

December 15th, 2025

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ANGUS STOCKING (00:10.124)

Alexander Yevremovich is the County Surveyor for Santa Barbara County, a role he has held since 2012. Under his leadership, the Surveyor’s office has undergone a significant digital transformation, eliminating cumbersome paper-based processes in favor of a streamlined web-based project intake and management system. Michael Daoud is the founder and CEO of VISUS, a leading enterprise software development firm specializing in custom business solutions. And VISUS was a big part of Santa Barbara County’s digital transformation. Good morning. And if we could start with, we revere county surveyors around here. Alexander, we’re a podcast intended for the readers of American Surveyor Magazine and surveyors and GIS people and other highly coordinated infrastructure folk. If we could start with you, Alexander, what was the state of the surveyor’s office before you came into power, we might say, and why did it need a digital transformation? What was the pain points that drove you to making a big change?

ALEXANDER YEVREMOVICH (02:28.142)

Well, a couple of things. The times were changing, the technology was rolling in and the expectations of our customers were that we would be traveling along with the technology and provide the services that customers expect. If we focus only on our business with map and project reviews and recording, the process was all paper based with the submittals and mail based as well with the submittals that customers would either drop at the counter or more likely mail to us. And then they would mail us two copies of a map if it is a map review for compliance with the state law. Then we would mark up the one copy of the map and mail it back to the surveyor. So that was back in probably 20 years ago or 15 years ago, until maybe five years ago—that was the process.

Customers were inquiring about how we were going to transition into the digital world basically. Are we going to accept email submittals? And we were thinking of basically improving the process, but the way the customers were requesting it was to just mail us the submittals and email us the submittals and then mail parts of the projects. We would get like a mixture of mailed paper-based stuff and then we would get some emails. And in our estimate, that would increase the cost of doing business on our side while we would be helping our customers.

The most logical solution was to provide a portal for submittal and communication and payments. And that was our goal.

ANGUS STOCKING (04:23.084)

Alexander, if I could just break in with a couple of questions before we get into that. What sort of volume are we talking about? Santa Barbara’s not a huge county, but it’s a big California county. How many, for example, subdivision maps would be submitted pre-digital transformation?

ALEXANDER YEVREMOVICH (04:23.084)

Yeah, the scale was never that huge because Santa Barbara itself—we would think of a couple of dozens of maps in a year. And if we put together subdivision maps and if we add the records to survey and corner records, that brings it into hundreds a year, different types of projects. Several hundred, I would say, that typically would be mailed and each project would have one or more than one review. So the communication would go back and forth a few times before the project is completed and recorded. So it’s a pretty nice volume for the county of our size, but it’s not something that you would see in LA County or Orange County or some bigger, more populated counties in the state.

ANGUS STOCKING (06:10.286)

Okay, and were you kind of working on the output side of this too? Is survey research been moved online as well? Can surveyors look up what they need from your office?

ALEXANDER YEVREMOVICH (06:10.286)

Yes, in general, we are going through the digital transformation on multiple fronts. GIS was also introduced like 15 years ago. We went online with our GIS interactive map search and the scans of the recorded maps. We also have maps that are only filed with the county surveyor—a huge collection of maps that we still are in process of scanning and spatially indexing through GIS. But all the recorded maps are scanned and there are just a few more books to complete that process of spatial indexing those maps and providing them for the customers.

It’s a free service basically. You can search by location, by assessor’s number, by street name, by area, and then get all the layers of different types of maps that we have in our collection. We do subdivision maps, records and surveys, corner records, but we also do special districts and local agency formation maps for cities or other districts that are formed. We maintain that collection of maps in our GIS system.

ANGUS STOCKING (08:14.806)

It sounds amazing. Michael, let’s get you in the game here. How did you come into this process and what’s your assessment of where they were at and what had to change and how you helped with that, and what it’s looking like now?

MICHAEL DAOUD (08:14.806)

We’ve been doing work with the County of Santa Barbara for many years. We were introduced to Alex through another customer that we have at the County. Originally, we sat down with Alex to understand their process. One of the things that we love doing is these digital transformations where you have paper-based processes that require a lot of human intervention—determining how to digitize those processes.

We sat with Alex and his team early on to understand what all those manual processes were. Then we converted these manual processes to digital or digitized processes, I should say, and started building the solution based on those technical specs, requirements, and their workflow specifically. We decided from the onset that this needed to be a cloud-based solution. So we based it on Microsoft Azure’s cloud, specifically the platform as a service, which does not require IT intervention, maintenance, or continued maintenance because it’s purely cloud-based.

We worked closely with them to understand not only their manual process, but what are the things that would be helpful to customers to make their lives easier as well. From the onset, having that kind of vision allowed us to design and tailor the solution for them. This allowed their customers—who sometimes have more than one project—to be able to submit more than one project online so that it could be reviewed under one account. More importantly, each project may have a different owner and different payer. So that person who has the account can then submit a link to that project’s owner to pay for the fees as well. That’s what I love about the solution. We looked at it from multiple angles to make not only Alex and his team’s life better and easier, but also the customers’ lives better, to automate their experience.

ANGUS STOCKING (10:15.042)

So, if I’m hearing you correctly, a land surveyor who’s got a small shop, but he’s got several projects going and several clients—via your portal, there is a way to essentially send the bill to a client for fees occurring from your office. Do I have that correctly?

MICHAEL DAOUD (10:15.042)

Yes, that’s exactly it.

ANGUS STOCKING (10:15.042)

That is pretty cool. I’m curious—where does this rank in terms of digitalness and transformation among California counties and nationwide? Are you all pushing the envelope here? Are you consolidating along well-known lines? How innovative is this? Is this just solid and working well for everybody, or is there some daring stuff that nobody’s tried before?

MICHAEL DAOUD (11:54.958)

I can speak to it from a technical point of view, and Alex, I’m sure, can jump in more from a government point of view, since he has a lot of colleagues in this sector. From a technical point of view, I would say we push the envelope in ways to automate as much of the processes as possible in a very cost-effective way, right? Even letters that go out to clients—Alex’s team could just create a letter, drop it in Azure, and there’s an agent that will sit there and send out the letter to the project owner or the account holder automatically. So a lot of that communication is also automated in such a way that they don’t have to be using their personal emails to communicate with the customers.

I think that ability to tie all that stuff together—from the beginning of uploading a map, to Alex’s team downloading and reviewing it, submitting it digitally to the customer, the customer paying online, and sending it to the owners—I think there are some nice innovations there. And I think at the end of the day, while we’re focused on Alex’s team, there have been some great benefits. They’ve reclaimed over 200 hours of staff time annually. They’re able to deliver projects 15% faster. And they’re saving, I think, about $30,000 a year in storage costs. So it’s nice to see how technology can impact some actual real budget and real physical things that would cost time and money as well. And then it reduces the carbon footprint for those customers who used to drive to the office. So we’re helping their lives and saving time for them.

ANGUS STOCKING (13:17.686)

Alex, I’ll turn it over to you from your perspective.

ALEXANDER YEVREMOVICH (13:17.686)

Yeah, I just want to jump back in on what Michael was talking about. The storage was one of the choke points that we haven’t mentioned before. Because the county surveyor is supposed to keep all the project files forever. It’s not that you can reduce them to a certain amount, but you have to keep—and we keep project files that are over a hundred years old in the basement. People in the past were very economical with space and creating papers, but the paper volume escalated once the printers and plotters showed up. So the files just started getting bigger and bigger, and we were losing the space down in the basement.

What Michael mentioned, we were investigating—hey, can we hire or rent some space for keeping these files if we continue to escalate the volume? At this moment, we are paperless as far as the project review process, which is a huge achievement. You must have been wondering whether you’re a county surveyor or a warehouse manager.

ANGUS STOCKING (15:13.784)

That’s quite a predicament. And I’m curious—you must go to state surveyors’ conventions. Do you get quizzed about what you’ve done or have you given presentations on your work here?

ALEXANDER YEVREMOVICH (15:13.784)

Yes, we are obviously part of the surveyors’ organizations across the state. There are a couple of organizations that I was personally, or still am personally involved with. There’s the League of California Land-Surveying Organizations, which is one organization that I’m part of. And then the other one is CEAC—the California County Engineers Association—where we have a surveyor policy group or committee that meets several times a year. There’s a meeting in August that I will attend. I was chair of that policy committee for several years. I did present with Michael a few years ago. We presented the solution basically what we just completed. And there were several surveyors who were asking questions.

I think where this solution fits in the market is with smaller to mid-size counties with limited budgets. To answer your question about where we fit in the state as far as technology—this is one of the few customized solutions that we made with Michael’s help, and it is kind of well complete and well-rounded for all the steps in the process. There were solutions in the past where you would do the submittal and communication through a portal, but then you would send a check or pay through some other means for review costs. We kind of rounded that out, and it’s very complete. As Michael said, the big hurdle was the small businesses. Obviously, they don’t want to pay out of pocket—there are some big large subdivision maps where the deposit would be over $10,000 or $15,000. So the surveyor who is submitting the work doesn’t want to pay out of their checkbook.

We developed that communication with the payer who would be basically assigned through the process. And there’s another very well-designed system where basically the submittal—so when the surveyor or customer submits the project, it’s already pre-sorted or sorted into the way we already keep our projects online for the review, like for submittal records or the reviews. Everything is kind of designed the way we already do it. So we just grab that from Azure, pull it into our local network drive and it’s already there. So you don’t need to go create projects and enter much data.

We do have another part that we are developing—it’s the database management. The old Access database that we have used for over 20 years is getting out of commission. It’s too old. So we are developing with Accela software the project management database. The idea is to integrate all these systems together, including the GIS, so that we would get a more rounded and more comprehensive system where the parts talk to each other and connect.

ANGUS STOCKING (19:19.342)

It sounds like I want to compliment you. It seems as if you’ve taken on the minute, mundane details of running a surveyor’s office—and some would say boring details—and you’ve made them, by deep research and innovation, kind of glorious and serving the lands of air and the public. It’s admirable. I just want to comment on what a fine job you have done in Santa Barbara.

ALEXANDER YEVREMOVICH (19:19.342)

Yeah, I still enjoy doing the survey part of the business. Considering how everybody is limited with budgets, we try to get the most out of the budget we have. So that was the motivation.

ANGUS STOCKING (19:19.342)

That’s the kind of work that nobody’s really going to go crazy about now, but in 10 years, everyone will be pretty happy that Alex is around. Michael, what’s the feedback been from you? Are you getting inquiries from other agencies to help them out? Or are you seeing innovation statewide or across the nation as a result of what you’ve done here?

MICHAEL DAOUD (21:07.362)

Great question. I think we’re just doing outreach right now to let people know through your podcast. We also got recognized by Microsoft for this work of transformation. They highlighted us on their website, which was nice. And so I think, you know, we’d love to be able to tailor similar solutions for other counties and cities across the nation as well. I think it’s exciting, and we’re excited about the way we can help. But most importantly, the impact that we are able to have both on the department and on the public that uses that portal to make things easier.

ANGUS STOCKING (21:07.362)

You know, the most interesting thing I’ve heard throughout this interview is that you and Alex both started with an intense survey of actual surveyor needs. Surveyors often feel as if we’re the redheaded stepchildren of the professions, that we don’t often get a lot of focus on our needs or recognition of the importance of that base mapping layer. What was it like for you, Michael, working with land surveyors in particular and adapting your software and solutions specifically to a survey office and county surveyors’ needs?

MICHAEL DAOUD (21:07.362)

What it was like for me is fun—for our team too. I think one of the things that we thrive on is working with people like you and Alex. You’re a very fun people and you’re intelligent and well-spoken and charismatic, and you don’t get enough credit for that.

ANGUS STOCKING (21:07.362)

I would agree.

MICHAEL DAOUD (21:07.362)

You know, for us, the fun part with every transformation that we make for an organization is that upfront discovery process—asking the right questions, right? Understanding the pain points. Because to design a proper solution, we can all go to the keyboard right away and start putting something together. But to make a solution truly lasting, you have to really understand the process well. And for us, that’s by working closely with Alex and his team. I think we worked on the initial blueprint over a two to three month period without writing a single line of code, right? And because our goal was it’s not just to deliver based on today’s pain points and tomorrow’s, but what about in a year? What would need to happen potentially in a year or two so that we have a robust foundation that’s flexible and extensible? And by those conversations and whiteboarding and mind mapping, all those things came together. For us, that process is a lot of fun, and that’s what makes our part enjoyable. It’s like solving a puzzle and coming up with a great solution.

ANGUS STOCKING (22:25.738)

Alex, if I can ask—you’ve obviously done an outstanding job managing throughput, the quantity of survey happening, and the metrics speak for themselves. You know, the savings that you can put a number on—congratulations. Do you have any sense that taking care of this administrative foundation is opening the way for better, higher-quality land surveying work? Are there better subdivisions coming through because the administrative part of it is somewhat easier? And I’m not sure what I’m asking there, but is surveying as a profession and surveys and land division in Santa Barbara County likely to improve from a quality point of view due to your work here?

ALEXANDER YEVREMOVICH (24:45.880)

I hope so, certainly. The major step or milestone in our business was to eliminate all the paper through the project review lifetime, and that’s what we achieved. I think the next steps in our business will be the integration of all these applications that we developed through digital transformation. There’s a lot of positive feedback from the private surveyors and the customers. This application particularly gets a lot of good reviews. There were hiccups at the beginning when we rolled this out, as you can imagine with every software. The first attempts to use it were frustrating on the customer’s side as well. But once you learn the ropes, I don’t hear any feedback, which is good. Once we got into this stable phase of the application, the benefits are huge.

There are a few larger firms in town, but there are many small firms in Santa Barbara—one man or two man survey firms. And this whole system makes their life easier. It’s more flexible. So they don’t need to go to the county at prime time when they’re actually doing business with their own customers. They can push that to the afternoon or early Saturday morning, weekends, to do business with us. I kind of miss those times when there was a lot of people at the counter and more communication, but I’m sure they definitely enjoyed the flexibility of our software. They can use that prime time for dealing with their customers and doing business in the field. We got pretty good feedback from all the customers about this.

ANGUS STOCKING (26:48.974)

Well, thank you for looking out for the mom and pop shops. That’s where I learned to survey, and where I surveyed almost exclusively for the first 10 years of my career, before I worked myself into the office and out of the field, as you have seemed to have done, Alex. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Alex. Any closing statements?

ALEXANDER YEVREMOVICH (26:48.974)

I just wanted to thank you for inviting us for this interview. It’s a pleasure, and I’m excited about being part of your podcast. I’m excited to see Michael. We haven’t seen each other for a while, but it was a pleasure talking to you guys.

MICHAEL DAOUD (26:48.974)

Thank you, Angus. Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you and to your audience and share with them the success that we’ve been able to have with the survey department. For us, our mission is always about turning complexity into clarity. And this is a great example of that—to make things simple for people’s lives using technology. It’s a great example of that. So appreciate you taking the time to learn more.

ANGUS STOCKING (27:21.614)

Thanks for listening to this 24th episode of Everything is Somewhere. If you found this description of the digital transformation at the Santa Barbara County Surveyor’s Office to be kind of fascinating, like I did, be sure to check out Michael’s company, VISUS, at visusllc.com. f you’ve been listening to Everything is Somewhere for a while now and haven’t subscribed yet, please, as a special favor, I ask that you do that today. We are picking up subscribers and listeners and having a really good time here at Everything is Somewhere, and we’d like to keep doing it at a larger and larger scale.

As always, I welcome feedback. You can send me feedback directly at angusstocking at gmail.com or anonymously at amerisurv.com slash podcast. You can follow me on X or Twitter at twitter.com/Surveying

Last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I hope that you will subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Spotify or rate the podcast or the episode. Finally, if LinkedIn is your thing, I hope that you will reach out and connect with me. I’m easy to find. There is only one Angus Stocking.

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