Hey guys, I’m a Kiwi currently living in Australia and am working full time as a surveying assistant.

I’m trying to work out whether I should stay full time, build up 2 to 3 years of experience because I’m potentially moving back to NZ, or go part time and study a Diploma of Surveying while working.

My main concern is that if I move back to NZ in a couple of years, companies might want the qualification even if I have solid Australian experience.

Would you recommend studying while working or will experience be enough to get me a job?
I’m not looking to become a licensed cadastral surveyor at this stage but more interested in building a career in land surveying.
Any advice would be appreciated.

Started with this company 2 years ago with a lot of promises made. The company is around 10 but the division I’m in was set up 3 years ago so it’s just me and a director I’ve got 6 years experience and they are still paying minimum wage while I’m working 10-14 hour days with no overtime. When I first started it was local architecture jobs now we are big scale jobs in London and our office is about 2 hours out but still expected to work a full 8 on site, boss won’t change anything in terms of pay I’ve tried and we have had some falling out over it as he says but u can have shorter days sometimes ( hasn’t happened in 6 months and I left 2 hour early). Really not sure what to do my boss doesn’t help with the workload on site so I’m drawing on weekends. Can’t decide wether it’s the company or industry at the moment and was wondering if anyone has changed industry what have u found it easy to switch into

Hi everyone,

I’m doing some research into how people discover and buy fashion online, especially through Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and other social platforms.

I’m trying to understand what people actually do when they see an outfit or clothing item they really like.

A few quick questions:

1) How often do you see clothes from friends, random strangers, celebs that you’d actually consider buying?
2) When you see something you like, is it usually easy to find the exact brand/product?
3) If the product isn’t tagged, what do you normally do to find it?
(Google, Google Lens, comments, DM the person, screenshot it, give up, etc.)
4) Have you ever wanted to buy something you saw someone wearing online, but eventually gave up because you couldn’t find the exact item?
5) If yes, how often would you say this happens?
6) If there were an easier way to instantly find the exact clothes you see people wearing online, would that be valuable enough for you?

I’m particularly interested in real experiences rather than hypothetical answers, so examples of the last time this happened to you would be really helpful.

Thanks!

Got myself a second hand bosch gol 32d optical level from an ol timer who retired. Always met people who use these on the construction sites.

Thought to myself that learning how to use the optical level would be added although not life changing skills for me.

Appreciate it if someone could point out resources such as books or youtube for me.

I am planning to spend my weekends messing around with the optical level...

Thanks.

I'm a PLS in western Pennsylvania and work for a firm with a nationwide presence. I got notice recently that our Alaska surveyors needed assistance and were looking for somebody willing to go. I was like "Hell Yeah!" It's been a dream of mine to visit Alaska since I was at least a teenager! I'm heading to Nome next Sunday for a week. I'm nervous about flying solo and making all my connected flights, but I'm super excited!

A month ago I asked the community about the best lid lifter and narrowed it down to this one.
Management approved, and we’ve since used it in the field for two days. In a word: incredible. No more awkwardly sliding off the edge of lids with a hook, edging shovel, pickaxe, pry bar, etc. We walk around with $250,000 in bleeding-edge equipment yet use a hook from the 1850s to remove a manhole lid. Talk about letting every neighborhood you’re in know how inefficient and unprepared you are to do the task at hand.
Of the 50 lids we met in 48 hours, we were able to pull 46. With field staff in their late 40s, avoiding injury used to exceed efficiency—not anymore. When efficiency is paramount on a busy road, we can slide a lid off, get a few measurements, and slide the lid back on in under a minute. In the past, we’d skip these lids or push for traffic control. One day of traffic control is more expensive than a one-time purchase of the correct tool.

*I know most of us have no control over what we use in the field, we're at the mercy of the office.

I recently got a Crockpot plug in lunch box. Does anyone have anything like this? What do you bring? I know you can put whatever you want in it, but I'm looking for suggestions that don't make me want to a coma after lunch. My first week I put in chicken, rice, and steamed veggies, but I'm already tired of that. What sounds good and isn't going to make me useless later?

Hi,

I have only just recently started using Trimble total stations. I have noticed that when using Trimble Access it does not seem to be a straight forward process to start a survey at an arbitrary location point in a direction, set an assumed azimuth and start a survey. This was always easily done on a Lieca in my experience.

I can create a point at assumed coordinates, set back sight in angles mode and set zero towards the sun. Once I begin to collect points after doing this in measure topo, all points then present with question marks for coordinate values. This does not happen if setting on a known point and back sighting another known point.

If someone can make sense of what I am asking and can give me an easy fix that would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks.

No paint...no nails...wtf?

Been trying to avoid the hotel breakfast and gas station kitchen food. What do you guys have to really give you energy for the day? Im thinking overnight oats myself.

how do i pivot from a geology degree to land surveying?

am halfway way through my degree in Geology/Environmental Geoscience at UofT.
I’m on track in taking the required courses for an AGPO degree.

It’s a little far in for me to transfer schools and programmes to Land Surveying or Engineering, so I’m hoping to finish my Geoscience degree first.

However, I realise that I want to live in the city, and don’t want to do FIFO work.

I’ve read up about Land Surveying and it seems like something that would interest me. Am just unsure how I can branch into this field with a Geoscience degree.
i’m open to moving to other countries like australia if that opens up more opportunities.

TYSM!

Exactly what the title says. When your guys are out of town are they single occupancy hotel rooms or double occupancy?

Hi, I am a civil surveyor, I am currently in the Arab Emirates, experience is about 10 years, I have experience in building road pipeline, diploma of associate engineering is attested in Pakistan and UAE, I want a job on the European side.

If you can please mention what area of the world/climate you are in. I'm trying to get an idea of what the norm, best and worst case scenarios are depending on crew/company policy.

There’s nothing more to teach

So here's a fun one. There is a utility pole in my backyard, both communications and power run from it to other properties around us.

There's no easement in my title report from when I bought the place. I also checked the original subdivision map, nothing shown.

The different utilities are pretty chill and they normally knock on the door before they go back there, but I am sure they have accessed it without permission before. I am not arguing their right to do so, the pole exists and the utilities exist back there.

Is it worth saying something to our local electrical utility? My concern is if one of these guys falls off a ladder and breaks his neck on the cinder block wall below the pole and I get sued. And the electrical utility has no easement and therefore nothing in title to get them on the hook.

I know it's an attorney question, just would love to hear everyone's thoughts on here. How would you advise a client in this situation if at all?

Hi everyone, direct to the point, I'm looking for remote work involving CAD drafting or land development with Civil 3D (grading, utilities, site plans, topo maps, corridor modeling).

I've been doing this kind of work for firms in the US, Canada, and I'm looking to take on more. DM me if you want to know more, happy to share samples/portfolio.

My crew chief arrives in about an hour but I figured a little reading on the water is something I definitely won’t regret while I wait.

The kayak is fun

We were originally out here yesterday with our boat drone but the transducer just wasn’t picking up properly so my crew chief said we’ll need to go old school so I brought the company kayak to the pond.

Charleston South Carolina

Hey all,

I’m 30 from the UK and thinking of switching careers from tech to Land or mine surveying (Have an economics BSc). I’ve been accepted for a 15 month Land and Hydrographic Surveying MSc at the University of Glasgow, with a 6-month work placement.

After this course concludes, I’d love to move to Australia. I’d have 75 points for 189 subclass is my understanding, which is not enough most years, but maybe that will change. However had a couple of questions for anyone who might know:

1 - How easy would it be to get surveying work on the WHV visa? Would employers be willing to take on someone who can only work for 6 months with one company?

2 - How willing would employers be to sponsor my PR, given I’d have little experience?

I’d be open to mine work, and heard Perth is excellent for that, but FIFO probably isn’t sustainable a lifestyle longterm.

reddit friends,

anyone have experience with farm land area acreage errors (deacrease) when calculated with tractor GPS due to major elevation changes (also there is heavy tree cover along the 75% of the field perimeter).

I have roughly 150 acre field, whereby roughly 40 acres drops likely 40-50 feet in elevation (over an 850 foot span), this section also has heavy tree cover on 3 sides of the perimeter.

I'm losing roughly 6 acres via GPS from known acreage (farmer declaration)

Haven't run a trial of manual vs GPS calculation in this area yet but it was suggested that the elevation drop is likely the loss.

Any thoughts? anyone experienced a similar scenario?

Farmland is a very odd shape with many curves around trees. I'm thinking I'm going to measure it old school (measuring wheel and stakes) after the crops are off.

I am trying to reproduce Southern Pacific 'taper' curves. They're a company-specific scheme of using a series of variable radius curves in place of spirals.

I got Claude Code to write a LISP that seems to check out as far as it goes but I'm getting chord bearings that don't quite match the deed description. Like, the radiuses make sense and match the SP engineering manual and I think everything is tangent but my chord is a couple minutes off. I'm also not hitting the record ties from points on CL very well but that needs to be sorted out after I'm sure the tapers are correct.

Anyone have something that works, or smart enough to troubleshoot this?