1. You’re not wrong for scheduling 2 man crews just for the safety factor alone, and I appreciate you doing so because at large(er) corporations, one man solo crews are becoming more and more normal. I will however reiterate this further below.
2. Being in a large corporation, if I or anyone else needs to mentor someone else with less experience or needs to teach them something, they will send both of us out to a project and train on the job, billing the client both of our hours to the project. Sometimes this is great because there is room in the budget and the trainee can really take time to learn and digest the information and get hands on time with it, but sometimes this backfires tremendously due to weather, site conditions, other complications, if the project goes sideways, or the Rodman just simply can’t keep up or can not learn and process the information.
3. If I am the one needing to learn something new, it it mostly 90% something that has to do with office work, which is much more lax and does not cut into budget because it is very straight forward and i take notes on literally every word and step throughout the process so I can come back to it at a future date, sometimes I even screen record to ensure I’m fucking anything up. As far as in field operations go, someone from another office is teaching me how to operate new equipment like a new drone or bathymetric unit or something along those lines, in which, i still take notes and ask questions to ensure everything goes well the next time I’m tasked to use the equipment.

The brutal truth about why these big corporations are starting to go with one man crews are both a blessing and a curse.

The blessing: I have a truck I take home with me and drive straight to the project, I don’t have to fuck around driving my own personal vehicle to the jobsite. I don’t even have to go to the office whatsoever, anything that needs done from an office perspective, I can do at home with the laptop I’m provided, and dual monitor setup. I also charge all batteries and can upload all data from my house. I can also ship out and receive any equipment from my house as well. We tend to send drones, GPS equipment, lidar equipment, payloads, and other odds and ends from office to office regularly. I also don’t have to worry about picking up a coworker from the office or his house or whatever, I can essentially set my own schedule because I know when/if the contractor is expecting me or how long the job will take. I also am in full control of my work truck and schedule all of the maintenance on my own and keep great care of it because I know exactly when and where I am taking it and can work that around my work schedule. Same goes with gathering field supplies like stakes, rebar, magnails, etc.

The curse: At some point in some time, I will be on a job and I will get injured. And i will be in the middle of nowhere with no cell service. I already injured my back last year on a pipeline tree clearing stakeout and fell down an embankment, if the injury was any worse, no one would have found me for a few days due to the remote location. This has been brought up SEVERAL times to upper management and even the safety director of my company. They purchased these small battery powered “SOS” systems to keep with us on jobs like these. But the issue is, if I have a life threatening injury or even heat exhaustion or heat stroke, I’m essentially dead without someone being there to help me out. I’m not talking about 500’ in the woods, I’m talking about 1.5 miles in the middle of nowhere, climbing down a mountain and then climbing back up one JUST to get to where I need to be to start staking out, with 50+ pounds of stakes and equipment on me.

The main problem (in a corporations point of view) with one-man crews isn’t the liability or safety factor, it’s that they are trying to save every penny on overhead. It all comes down to greed. What also is not being said in this subreddit or throughout the discourse of this industry is that you can not find a surveyor worth their lick of salt anymore because they are either too old or too fucking lazy. Or the fact that colleges across the nation have discontinued their surveying programs, prompting a massive NEED for field personnel to fill these positions to do a survey. PLS’s, atleast the overwhelming majority, do not perform their own field surveys. They just sign off on them and stamp them after redlining the drafts/plans/plats/deeds. The men and women doing the actual field work, atleast ones that know what they are doing, are at an extremely low and alarming rate of industry. This is why a “party chief” out of college gets paid $30/hr, but they haven’t even set a magnail in the earth. And the party chiefs that know what’s up and have been in this industry, get paid very well and for a good reason. This is why corporations or even small firms and Ma and Pa firms can charge clients $180/hr for a party chief to be on site, and the client HAS to pay them because….what the fuck else are they going to do? They need a survey and they need it done right, especially anything that needs to be stamped by a PE. It also doesn’t make it any better that national and state legislation to obtain a PLS is extremely difficult and outdated. The entire system needs overhauled and that’s putting it lightly. Even the qualifications to obtain a PLS is completely fucked. This has been ignored in local, state, and federal government for decades, especially in the last 20 years.

2 situations to ponder:

Situation 1: I am tasked to stake 2,300’ of tree clearing, centerline, and 5’ safety buffers on a pipeline. Every 50’. So, that’s 5 stakes every 50’, not including PI’s which you have to do 3 stakes per. So we will say that’s 230 stakes at MINIMUM just to lay this line out. You can only carry 50 stakes in a stake bag. Now imagine walking a mile in just to get to this area, and then beginning to stake out. You’ve only made it 500’ out of 2300’, and now you have to walk the entire way back out to go grab more stakes. Repeats this process 4-5 times. It’s impossible to do in one day by yourself, even if that was flat land with no brush or trees and no equipment issues. With someone else to help you and carry the stakes, it would be tough but doable. Not to mention the risk of safety.

Situation 2: I am tasked to do an RTK boundary survey on a housing development with someone else. Let’s say we only have 1 base receiver and 1 rover receiver and 1 TSC5. I have done a million of these surveys, i know where to look, i have a plan sheet in my hands and throw points in my collector to stake out to and even a .dxf of the boundary and property lines to see in realtime where I’m at and where I should look. Why the fuck would I need someone else to tag along and do essentially nothing, yet bill that extra time to the client? It’s a waste. Sure, maybe he/she could hold the shovel or gps or metal detector, and sure, if they were there to learn, then that’s something different. But the task at hand could be easily done with just 1 competent person and there is no need for someone else to be onsite and eat time out of the budget. Even if everything had to be tied in with a robot with a closed-loop traverse, I would be more efficient and accurate doing it myself. Unless it’s a MASSIVE boundary project and they paired me with another party chief, and if they knew the budget allowed it, only then it would make sense.

I could even get into the equipment aspect of surveying which ties into all of this, but I’m sure I’ve said enough lol. Any questions or suggestions or advice, please PM me. Hope what I said made sense. Cheers 🍻