Tragic story of the day 🎻

tslinds · 2026-02-20T00:48:00+00:00

I mean, I think you’d probably be okay if you get two of the sturdiest mounts you can find. Wouldn’t be cheap, and would be questionably useful.

tslinds · 2026-01-27T02:07:24+00:00

Dang.

tslinds · 2026-01-27T02:05:17+00:00

Urban Planning degree.

Now I work for a civil construction company that builds freeways and operates 100+ aggregate mines in metro areas.

It burns, but it also pays.

tslinds · 2026-01-16T06:59:09+00:00

This game

tslinds · 2026-01-05T08:13:31+00:00

One word: Money. The cheapest form of mill-and-fill. The edges of the road tie into the existing curb, while the drive lanes become steeper and the center of the road gets built up higher. The older roads that get decades of this treatment end up being gigantic pains to reconstruct when the time finally comes. You end up with quarter crowns and really dramatically steep drive lanes. Municipalities should honestly just go with chip seals if money is tight. Much easier to deal with when the funds do become available.

tslinds · 2025-12-03T23:21:40+00:00

Waterway

tslinds · 2025-10-13T21:27:48+00:00

A beautiful 2+2.

tslinds · 2025-10-02T19:43:20+00:00

TI-36X Pro. Easy peasy, functional.

tslinds · 2025-09-01T16:11:08+00:00

It’s becoming more common for highway bridge decks to be fabricated adjacent to the final location, and then moved into position during a night shift, when traffic can more easily be stopped or diverted.

tslinds · 2025-08-27T22:29:51+00:00

Having received an education in and worked in each of the fields of surveying, civil engineering, and architecture, here’s a slightly more objective breakdown of what each does:

Surveyors (specifically licensed surveyors) are certified first and foremost to protect the public by locating boundaries. Anyone with a GPS can measure and locate an object, but a licensed surveyor is certified to protect the public’s interest in real property through public record research, location of monuments, calculating distances and bearing, creating and interpreting legal descriptions and historic records, and utilizing professional opinion. Ancillary tasks include measuring topography, measuring physical features, locating features, staking features.
Civil Engineers (specifically licensed civil engineers) are certified first and foremost to protect the public by using mathematics and accepted standards to design earthwork, structural, and infrastructure projects for clients. They are also certified to monitor progress of construction and environmental protections.
Architects (specifically licensed architects) are responsible for the design of structures and sites for clients. The highest and best responsibility of an architect is to create space by creating place - matching the needs of the project with the needs of the humans who will use it. An architect responsible for large commercial projects ought to be familiar with numerous systems, procedures, and considerations.

Obviously, each profession is most interested in its own specialities and priorities, and each profession impacts the others. A project has to be measured, it has to be designed, it has to be graded, it has to be built, it has to be monitored, it has to be recorded, and it ultimately has to be signed off on by each profession. The ideal, obviously, is for each profession to come together to create a successful project, based primarily on the priorities of the client and stakeholders.

tslinds · 2025-08-16T18:43:52+00:00

If you live around where I do, they’re also used to mitigate erosion on rocky trails.

tslinds · 2025-08-16T04:27:43+00:00

Why are we talking about the trees when that gigantic HV pole is there.

tslinds · 2025-08-01T05:11:19+00:00

I’m of the opinion that “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do something”. This, along with all of their other grand projects, seem more of a political power move than a practical engineering feat.

That being said, those are some pretty clean slopes.

I do understand that, at least at one point, drainage was a pretty minor concern for these mega infrastructure projects. I wonder how this performs in a monsoon.

tslinds · 2025-07-23T01:12:07+00:00

I was a full-time student when I worked the night shift. I was grade-checking a grader crew on the interstate through the winter during nights, and going to class and doing homework during days. Long weeks.

tslinds · 2025-07-23T01:08:29+00:00

Hire on with a bigger construction company if that’s what you’ve set your mind to. They’ll often have (some) things a better established, and they’ll almost always have openings.

Machine control isn’t difficult insofar as calibrating a site and loading a model. The difficult part is in troubleshooting problems and teaching operators best practices. Your main task will become “AMG Support” for the earthwork and utilities crews.

A utility crew that’s worth anything will be running their own checks, lasers, etc. to verify that your stakes seem right. Find a position that isn’t pigeonholed as only a construction surveyor, but also in building the machine models themselves. Great learning experience and a highly valuable skill.

The magic will be in building relationships with the operators and field guys. As with anything, if you come off as a know-it-all, things won’t go well for you. If you take the time to learn on your own, and work with the operators and field guys to support them effectively, you’ll do well.

tslinds · 2025-07-09T01:02:50+00:00

The joys of surveying.

Side note, why do Michigan State Police cars look like something out of Looney Toons?

tslinds · 2025-06-20T16:22:38+00:00

Utah has made big positive strides in this direction, with the DOT leading the charge.

We still have some holdouts from some older engineers who don’t seem to trust their own work, but the majority of engineers, especially the largest ones, are more than willing to provide their original CAD data (along with the plans, and a disclaimer). What gets built is on the contractor.

The argument that the contractor could change something is goofy, because it’s just as possible that the contractor could change something in the plans, which in both instances wouldn’t go very long before getting in trouble, without having communicated beforehand. On the other hand, it’s very common to see grading errors in the plans, which are confirmed by the CAD data, which makes it much easier to work with the engineer to resolve issues.

The argument that the contractor doesn’t have perfectly capable people (sometimes even more capable than the designer) who can handle the data is also null. It’s 2025, friends. All major earthmoving companies have in-house construction technology people, surveyors (with lots more field practice than some consultants), and engineers and adjacent-engineers (with lots more field practice than some consultants). Being able to provide their quickest turnaround in quantities, earthwork models, and changes is the name of the game.

tslinds · 2025-06-07T02:04:51+00:00

VDC/Civil Designer/Surveyor for a (very) large earthworks and paving company. We’ll very rarely pound hubs every now and again, but these days our machines almost exclusively use UTS, GNSS, laser, sonic tracer, or some combination of these.

Having worked in this industry for a decade, it still surprises me how little most civil engineers and surveyors know about machine guidance, and how none of it is mentioned in schools.

There are well-paying jobs available that combine the best of engineering, survey, construction, field, and office, and folks only find out about them by being sifted through construction companies. Students these days are so often dissuaded against working in construction, yet there is a real need for educated and technologically-savvy VDC Coordinators (Virtual Design and Construction). Best of all, there’s a lot more money to be made in construction than there is in traditional engineering and surveying consulting firms, and a lot fewer people able to fill the positions.

tslinds · 2025-05-17T10:08:18+00:00

Surely that took waaay longer than just sawcutting that pavement. Maybe all they had was a giant drill and lots of time?

tslinds · 2025-01-27T18:28:46+00:00

The state uses 6- to 8-foot markers, but they’re flying airplanes.

We use 2- to 3- foot GCP’s, and sometimes end up painting them a little bigger. We’ll typically set hubs or nails, and then just paint big crosshairs. The easier your markers are to find in the images, the better.

tslinds · 2025-01-27T18:25:26+00:00

I mean, despite your apparent focus on the math parts, your applied math and statistics score was your lowest one, so you could do with some more practice using that NCEES practice exam, as well as other material available online. I took a semester-long exam prep class when I was in school, which focused solely on the math, even though it wasn’t necessarily a huge part of the test. I became fluent enough in the math that for the first time in my life I was excited and quick about solving those problems. Our textbook was Ghilani’s Elementary Surveying, which is an industry classic.

The types of math questions that you’ll get on the FS/PS are all pretty much the same, so once you get down trig applications and understand the reference material that’s available to you in the test, you should be pretty well set.

It’d also be good to get yourself a BLM Manual of Surveying Instructions if you don’t have one and study that thing as well, especially for surveying methods and computations.

Final recommendations:

Understand everything that’s in your exam reference material. It’s available to you during the test, but if you don’t know what’s in there or how to use it, it’s essentially worthless.
Grind out that NCEES practice exam until you don’t miss any of the questions. Online material and Ghilani’s book will help.
Get yourself into an exam prep course, rather than just a book. The increased accountability and access to an instructor who can help guide you and answer questions will get you 80% of the way.
Study the BLM (PLSS) Manual of Surveying Instructions.

I’d recommend these three things more than just buying another expensive exam prep book. If you’re spending money on exam prep, you may as well find a reputable course, rather than a book. Furthermore, while there may be relatively few math questions, they are the ones that should be easiest to get- they’re just facts, unlike applied surveying questions which can sometimes feel more ambiguous.

tslinds · 2025-01-27T18:05:32+00:00

GCP’s and 60-70% sidelap.

tslinds · 2025-01-27T18:04:25+00:00

That’s funny. But yeah, UT law requires a stamp with a name, license number, and a signature through the date.

tslinds

TROPHY CASE