Thank you! What other areas of industry knowledge do you think would be helpful at the beginner level?

Sounds like an amazing project- good luck!

I’ve seen the two stakes method as well, as you say, there are many different methods. The nails provide a nice solid surface from which to measure grades rather than measuring from dirt, they also provide a more precise horizontal location to pull a line through (roughly a 1/2” circle) IF you are looking for more positional precision. For utilities, 1/2” horizontal accuracy could be overkill, and the lath would be all the precision you need. You mentioned you provide marks at a solid foot to measure from vertically, seems like a decent method to be sure. Thank you for sharing it with us out loud!

Thats not too dissimilar to here. Nails used to be common for setting culverts and offsetting the line like you said there as witness, but guys typically ignore it and try to get me to either set it on the inlet and outlet sides (why boys they'll get knocked out when you swing it in) so I get a bit creative. I'll put a nail at the invert but without flagging, usually a 6 or 8 inch spike. Then I'll put a lath about an inch behind it. My offsets are dependant on a few things: if I know if they'll be cutting an excessively long culvert, or if by some weird engineering decision (happend on my last job where using HDPE they didn't want to cut it) I'd math out how man culvert pieces they'd need, and set the distance of the offset based on centering the extra long pieces. Eg: plan calls for 21.05m culvert. They only have 6.03m section pieces. So they will need 4 pieces since they're not allowed to cut it. At 6.03m x4 their actual length of culvert will end up being 24.12m. That means I'll set a stake on both sides at 10.52m from centerline/midpoint of culvert line to show where the design location was supposed to go. At 12.06m I'll set an unflagged spike on both sides. Then at 13.06m from Centreline on both sides I'll set another lath. I'll set grades somewhere with the percent grade (since the grade is also supposed to be extended completely disregarding how that ties into the ditch I might add) and a fill (usually I do this after I asbuilt the excavation for it). I'll get a phonecard asking for me to put underside grades on lath with ribbons. I tell them no, they have to use a laser level or pipe laser or they're gonna need to wait for me to setup a total station (they'll use a laser level or call a different surveyor). When they "call me back to help them set it" I'll keep my GPS in the truck, and grab a 4' level and plumb it up on my nail and tell them to push it forward until it hits. And tell them it's good and I'll asbuilt it before their inspection, and that their grading better be good (since they wiped out any stakes that had grades on them). They'll ask me how I know, and I'll show them that my stakes are exactly 1m away from the invert now. They'll see that I used my spikes and 4' spirit, say "that's a good idea, I'll just do that next time" and then never bring one with them (even though my 4' spirit is checked out from their vast wall in their own tool crib)...hahah

Thanks tons, we aim to truly be informative!

I agree with you, I’ve laid out my fair share of highway and that was how we delineated “thence” as well, and fortunately those we worked alongside were great at identifying and interpreting the fact that they were indeed looking at a slope stake. Slope staking rarely appears on commercial, municipal or multi family construction sites (save the occasional large retention), and even then needs to be thoroughly explained to the excavation contractors. Outside of that a double slash or a slash that CLEARLY goes edge to edge is best. The primary point of these marks is creating a 100% clear delineation and not having anyone mistake your slashes for additional letters on numbers- especially when the stake gets cramped for space.

Reach out to Lean Survey on LinkedIn and we can chat!

Ain’t that the truth Jenny! And if you have ever heard of “slope staking” those lath will ruin your whole day. This is just an absolute “guideline” of the components found on most construction layout stakes. They may look, or even be placed differently, but if you are exposed to “what and why” things are labeled on a stake, the next one you see won’t look totally foreign!

What type of work are you doing that doesn’t utilize offsets? Often you can’t stake out ‘actual’ locations because then the nail or hub would be destroyed during the course of construction. When the nail or stake remains, it can actually be used to QC the in-place work. Hub and tack are still utilized by field engineers here in the Phoenix area- in fact, its that group which sparked creation of this video. Presently, I set most things using a 60D nail, but they aren’t as accurate as an X on concrete or a tack when precision is key. I always consider the end-user and the precision required when selecting the object I use to mark a point, and it may vary from task to task. Beware any ‘one size fits all’ attitude in the Survey industry.

Also, “Nobody” is a big word.. there all kinds out there in the wild wild frontier of survey.

@leansurvey8212 no I think it's great that you guys still do that. Its literally a case of "we did that 15 years ago" and nobody uses it anymore, or feels confident pulling their own offset to it. They'll just "call the Surveyor to work with x trade to Example is industrial pipe fitting. I'll give paint lines on banks and offset stakes with distances, nobody will tape it. They can visually see where I'd extend lines and just eyeball it. If I were to offset it parallel and not on the line itself, they'd just end up digging or putting the thing directly on my offset line and it it would be out by that amount. It really is that bad. Take even using gridlines to layout anchorbolts. In Industrial, it's the same concept. Carpenters will have me mark up batterboards with the gridlines to set up their templates, but obviously they won't be set at a specific or square offset to each other. Instead of stringing out their line/intersections, they'll run tape off the batterboard nail with an assumption that they're both square and putting forms in the wrong place. Anchorbolts used to be just helping set templates if they can't use the gridlines for whatever reason. I'd set up on the gridline itself, use a gammon reel for setting alignment and a peanut for getting the distance right. Check rotation again with the gammon reel and call it good. Now, it doesn't even matter. "The templates could be wrong" and engineers want pre-pour asbuilts of the bolts themselves with a tolerance of under 3mm horizontal and 0 to +9mm on the projection. We're working with carpenters setting every bolt. That's industrial anyways. The irony of it here, is that they want to use us as grades man and layout guys too, but they don't want to spend money on us having assistants. So it's a very strange world. It has its pros and cons for sure. I feel more apart of the group building things and I get to interact more with the different trades than how things would have worked 15 years ago...but it also means more often than not I feel as much a carpenter Forman, civil foreman or pipefitter foreman as I do a Surveyor. But it would be really nice to not need to be 100% aware of everything all the time. QC on these projects only care about delta reports. They want one for everything, and don't even have enough time to actually catch the mistakes I do. To give you an idea on "QC" here: I've had a pipe inspector who was watching my work for almost a year ask me what a "pipe invert is" , and another ask me if the rebar was good and in spec. You'd be driven insane up here, but I know work in the cities is still more typical to what you're doing.

It so interesting to see all the ways people shift and work around the issue of tolerance. In the GC world, grid line layout is being done so poorly even by third party surveyors (utilizing GPS sadly) that they have opted to completely cut the surveyor out of the process and are using their internal on site field engineers. Not that they are better at the task or at layout, but because they are more invested in tolerance construction from a cost perspective and to avoid rework. It’s an interesting time. Great to know there are still folks invested in what they put their name on, right?!

@leansurvey8212 oh absolutely. That is definitely interesting. A guy I worked with here is taking over a 5km conveyor belt job because the previous surveyor set the anchorbolts with GPS...and that wasn't even his greatest foul. He also brought out the total station when he saw it wasn't working, used scale factor 1 without doing any sort of scaling to his grid coordinate job that was done in UTM (a scale factor of .9996 at the central meridian, secant projection with 6 degree zones). Massive problem that could have been caught doing a single checkshot. Didn't bother asking the engineers for a scalefactor 1 version of the plans and doing a localization, or even the old fashioned finding a mean combined scale factor to work off instead... But in his defense, they were ordering steel and conveyor parts off the grid distances shown in the plans (they were not converted to ground) anyways. I figured by this year, this would no longer be a problem, but I keep seeing it happen. All that doom and gloom aside, about 8 or 9 years ago, I decided to enjoy what I'm doing, and really focused on improving. I haven't met a person yet who knows Trimble access as well as I do (but I definitely know they exist), and I always strive to get better and improve. That's why I love your videos. You've got skills that I remember seeing and learning from the older boys back when I was an instrument man. The basics seem to be gone and the things that require skill getting pushed to the side...but those are the enjoyable things, and they still have value. Like I forgot how to buck in a level, been ages since I've done it. Your 3 wire notes: learned it in school, but the equipment and tolerances were never so tight (and my eye was never so bad) that I'd concern myself with that tolerance, but now that I'm seeing the advantages of it, I'll definitely be adding it to my toolkit. Honestly, everyone else is doing really basic survey videos, that I mostly stay away form them, but yours has lots of meaning. Truth be told, I've watched more carpentry videos to help improve my surveying than I have anything survey related...just because it's too basic. Keep doing what you're doing! I really enjoy it, and glad to have stumbled upon your stuff! If you find topics where you're think "a junior would struggle with this", it's right up my alley...even if something like 3 wire notes is something you'd expect all juniors to have (I do the standard STN/BS/HI/IFS/FS/ELEV notes) . I'd especially love tips for working in imperial too that you give to young guys. (I'm mostly metric, but earthworks guys often like switching to inches when under 3 feet, carpenters here are metric for elevations, mostly metric for horizontal, but often go into feet and inches - but never decimal feet, pipefitters like metric and inches, and millwrights seem to work in mm then swap to thousands of inches (to tight for my gear) when things get really close. So although it may have limited use up here, it's still interesting learn how others do stuff!