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I have measured lots of bridges to be widened, to make sure they were built in a way that they matched to original plans. Most did but some did not and changes were made that never got recorded on the plans. I was told back in 1967 that only Whores and carpenters dealt in inches. Bridges are built by one of them so we had to measure the bridge using inches, but the bridge ends which were on the highway, was in feet and tenths and hundreths. You talk about confusing the new guys on a crew. miles

Things tend to get more complicated whenever Gubmint gets involved, and that includes local Gubment.
Consider how they went about building the Alcan highway for example and how long it took to get it up and running.
How long do you think that project would take today?

The Arizona DOTs were on a metric mode back in the late 80s. That got confusing!

I know a retired DOT PLS fella. He should chime in soon.

I got into that too. At one time I had tapes, level rods and all of the equipment, in my trucks to do all three. Feet and inches, feet and tenths, and metric. miles

I are one. Arkansas DOT is what they call themselves now. They were called Arkansas Highway and Transportation Dept. when I was working. miles

Seward Highway bridges around Turnagain Arm are in the middle of some serious upgrades. A couple years ago the project manager allowed a bridge to go in that missed grade height and center by a couple feet. Driving over it was a weird sensation. They had to replace it.

Project Manager got to find a new job.

Which bridge?

Some very serious realignment going on there too!

Two houses down from us is a seven acre property purchased almost twenty years ago, and a new house put on sometime later. Their property was divided off of a farm East of them, which adjoins a road on the North end. But the previous owner did reserve an easement over the North end of the seven acres.

These dummies placed their home directly atop of this easement. Because "It is my property, and besides, no one has crossed here for years!"

Well, the 70 acre farm behind has sold. And is being subdivided into city lot home sites, about 250 or 300 of them. The owners of the seven acres have been informed they WILL move their house. As an access road to the South end of the subdivision will go on that easement.

And then there was the case of a local farm family which bought 100 acres of inaccessible land. They then bought a one acre lot which sat right beside their 100 acres. And resold the lot with an easement to access their property behind.

It was five or six years later that they got ready to start building on that 100 acres. The family had about ten kids, and the intention was to build homes for kids on the property. I later met the new owner of that lot, with the easement. He had tried to stop the family from crossing "his property" when the time came.

He cussed the original owners as "Evil Bastards who used every possible legal maneuver to screw him over".

What the Hell is with people? The words are right there on their deed. Do they not read the deed? Do they think because the easement is not presently exercised, that they can prevent it being so in perpetuity?

Where does the liability sit if an engineer uses a 10 year old design and makes the assumption that everything was built exactly per plan?

The answer to why things get resurveyed is that it is cheap insurance considering the liability that comes with multi million dollar projects.

the fun part for a land owner is going out and trying to find spikes in the ground as survey markers using those "SE Corner" directions from a survey done when the land was divided up in 1986

On tough jobs I used to tell my crew "If it was easy, the engineers would do it themselves".

I respect good civil engineers, and a lot of them are good survey techs. But too many engineers consider survey types people who couldn't make it through engineering school.

Above answers clarify a few things. Thanks guys. I did figure it was a cheap insurance base-line kind of thing pearthquake, slide, settling changes.

Old time engineers weren't all sloppy, apparently. When my oldest was in HS, he attended a career day. A surveyor there told him about a project he had had back east, re-surveying an original, that had never been updated. Finding the corners proved difficult. He had one good starting point. One of the problematics was an "oak tree". He found that by excavating down aways and finding red soil, indicative of decayed oak wood. From there, he had to find a big white rock- which he also found underground. The original survey proved to be spot on.

George Washington was just that good, tho he might have chosen better reference markers.

Some of us have both Professional Licenses.👍

And by experience and testing, not a "grandfathered " license.

^^^Correct^^^

Somebody once stole a metric grade rod out of my work truck. Funny thing about it was I noticed about a week later, they’d put it back.

I always wondered what all they fugged up before they realized the problem.

Survey bastards are SCAM ARTIST!

That's the best kind.

Most states have gotten away from just handing out licenses now.

I know NM gave a good many RPLS licenses out to their highway dept surveyors after they'd put in so many years.. I've seen the fruit from those trees quite a bit there. One did many subdivisions back in the 60's and 70's... I swear, not one lot would close in those. Created problems for decades.

Texas used to give licensed engineers a survey license for an additional $25. Most of the engineers didn't try to practice "surveying" with them though, but a few did, and the Board stopped that nonsense.

Was it metric or in hundreds? Elevations are in hundreds like 100.58 which is 100 feet 7”. I’m at 270.00 feet above sea level here.

Also a PE and PLS. I acquired the Land Surveying license about 10 years after my PE primarily for convenience doing more complex projects. It made things easier when there was a gray area between 'land' surveying and 'engineering' surveying. In Alabama, as in most states, the two professions can get rather defensive and belligerent when they think their 'territory' is being encroached upon.

Although I'd done quite a bit of field surveying, I let the full time surveyors do the work whenever possible. They could truly run circles around me so I let them do what they did best and stuck mostly to my engineering design and associated tasks. I never had issues dealing with them and like to think they thought the same in dealing with me.