Reviving the Surveying Profession One Surveyor’s thoughts on the destination of surveying Pat Gaylord, PLS 11 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org As many of you who attended the recent PLSO annual conference may have witnessed, the fact that we have a tremendous amount of expertise about to leave the profession is very real. For those of you who weren’t there, a very informal poll at a lunch with approximately 200 people in attendance revealed that nearly half were either retired or were going to retire in the next ve years. e same poll of the room on the entry level side of the profession, through the rst ve years of licensure, revealed that we have very few following in our footsteps. Because of the venue and the informal nature of the data, this could be attributed to the fact that very few associates attended the conference or that maybe many of the older members of the organization place more value on attending. Whichever the case, the simple fact of the matter is that this dichotomy is well known nationwide and that we have a serious problem. I have heard estimates as high as 60+ for the average age of surveyors in the United States and around the world. Some estimates indicate as high as 10-12% of the surveying population is retiring each year. Many of these retirements may mean the closing of small surveying businesses that have served our communities for many, many years. Without eager young licensees who have an entrepreneurial spirit these businesses will close and the community will suer. e coming losses of our knowledge base ranges from business practices to local knowledge of records and problem boundary areas, not to mention all the little nuances of everything we do on a day to day basis. Paramount to boundary surveying is the loss of a true understanding of how to “follow in the footsteps” for work completed before the advent of lasers and data collectors. e question is, what are we going to do about it and what are you doing to replace yourself? e aging of our profession has been a persistent issue for at least the last 10 years. While we banter it around the average age of surveyors continues to mount. I truly believe we are reaching critical mass on this topic. In the words of Albert Einstein, the denition of insanity is “to continue to do the same thing over and over again and expect dierent results”. at my friends is us as a profession. ere is no one other than us who is going to bring more surveyors into the profession and for as long as I can remember we have been recruiting in the same way and expecting a dierent result. at dierent result would be a ood of new faces coming into the profession. Plain and simple, it’s not working and at the very least it’s not working well enough. While we can sponsor TrigStar contests, TwiST, career fairs, surveying merit badges and all the other things we’ve been doing until we are blue in the face, these are obviously not enough. It should be clear by now that to really make a dierence in the number of people entering the profession and to create a sustainable supply of replacements we need many more. Without a signicant inux of new faces college programs will continue to close and jobs will go unlled. Don’t get me wrong, I believe all of these things we currently do are very valuable and we should continue them, however, they just are not achieving our goals. We need to ask ourselves why and where did we go o track when it comes to creating surveyors. My personal opinion with regards to the rapid decline of LICENSED surveyors entering the profession is the trend towards a four year degree requirement to pass the license exam. I say trend because according to the NCEES webpage for Oregon, the requirements still allow a person to enter the Fundamentals of Surveying exam without a two or four year degree aer eight years of experience which equates to 12 years before a person can sit for the LS exam. First of all, twelve years is an absolute eternity in today’s workplace. e likelihood of a potential candidate sticking with it all the way to licensure seems extremely small. For one thing, the nancial reward is not enough to justify a twelve year investment when you can make as much or more in less time with a four year degree of another kind or investing your skills and eorts in one of the trades. I am the rst to defend that you absolutely can make a living in surveying, however, a plumber, electrician or carpenter can make just as much if not more in that same 12 year time period. Furthermore, while the door may be cracked open on the experience track the reality is that without a four year degree a person has little chance of passing the exam regardless of their experience. e myth, or maybe » continues on page 12
PLSO Issue 1 2016 January February
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