field crew sizes-future employment

Crews are getting smaller, equipment and processes are improving. You will need to know how to integrate these aspects throughout an entire project.

Invest in an education in whatever profession you find intriguing. It usually comes down to a simple choice;  Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Watch this one year old video and imagine the future http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoyn32iyELs

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From what I have seen, it's still a trade off because the price of the equipment for solo operation will pay for an additional crew member.

There are some jobs where a two man crew is more productive than 1 man and a robot or GPS.  Those are typically on tasks where the guy at the rod needs to carry a lot of other gear and/or material, such as staking jobs, or on mapping projects where there is sufficient time for the instrument to shoot one target while the other is on the move.

I agree with Mr. Samuel with respect to large construction jobs.  Much of that work will be taken over by machine guidance, although if there is more precise staking associated with a project, that will be around for a while.  Smaller construction jobs, even if not requiring a high level of precision, will still need to be staked by field crews for a few years until the technology appears to alleviate that need.  I don't know what that technology will look like, but you can bet it will come before most of us retire.

And those mapping projects which may be more efficient with two rods now, or which require the accuracies afforded by standard methods won't last long either.  As remote sensing methods(ground based and aerial LiDAR) are improved for accuracy and made more affordable, the need to "take shots" will fade away.  along with the need for that type of data will go the need for the position known as "rodman" or "chainman", depending upon where your from.

One man crews, except where safety dictates otherwise, are going to become the new standard.  Those of us who are saying that may be wrong.  Over some amount of time we may find that except for a few particularly driven introverts, two average field people can more than double a lone crewman's work.  But where technology is removing the percentage of human effort compared to the amount of machine effort, the working psychological effect of teamwork may not have much effect.

My advice for anyone wanting to stay with surveying would be to keep up with the technology.  Better yet, get a degree and keep up with the technology.  Whether or not you need to be fully familiar with the operation or only familiar with the capabilities will depend upon whether you are operating at a technical (field, calcs, & CAD) or at a professional (porject management and above) level.  If you are a solo practitioner or in a small company, you probably operate at both levels.

 

I went robotic in the mid 90's, mainly due to the ridiculous tax policy by the U.K government. I was paying nearly as much in tax and national insurance (health service) per employee as I was paying them in wages. Add into that holiday and sick pay, pension schemes etc. And then after two years of training they waltz into the office and demand a rise, if you said "no way" they were out of the door to another job that would pay more. The only thing I would add is that the surveyor using a robotic has to work damn hard and earns his money. If you have a 5 or 6 hundred metre traverse loop to observe that's a lot of walking and carrying of tripods.  I have to just add, and I know I’ll sound like an old timer here, but from a U.K perspective (don’t know about the U.S) but when I was training I accepted I had to do all the crap menial jobs until I knew enough to do the nicer more interesting jobs. These days if I asked a junior to get a machete and start hacking down a patch of undergrowth I’d get answered with two words.   No, my Trimble never answers back.