Minimal Standards in Land Surveying

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Minimal Standards in Land Surveying

Land surveyors are used to make accurate measurements of your land. You could have a land survey done before you purchase the house or as you choose to build on it. Clearly, you should have a professional land surveyor working on the survey. A land surveyor's accuracy requires that minimum standards must be met, in order to ensure that the survey is correct. The minimal standards for land surveying vary across states and countries. In the U.S., land surveyors are licensed on a state-by-state basis, and therefore the minimal standards may actually vary greatly.

Most states' minimal standards for surveying require that the surveyor offers a complete and unequivocal definition of land boundaries with enough information to allow the description to be plotted. Generally, this legal description must follow one of several surveying standards, including the Public Land Survey System, or the metes and bounds system, which describes how such measurements are to be taken and described. Between states, there is very little variation in relation to how this information is to be presented.

Ahead of beginning a survey, it is standard for a land surveyor to analyze background data, such as property deeds or old surveys, to find out what's already known about the property. The surveyor must utilize this information when determining the logical procedure for conducting a survey of the land.


Although these are general rules for conducting a survey, the guidelines established by many states go into much more detail. Most state requirements outline the minimal standards for conducting the actual land survey, aswell. These may include searching thoroughly for past surveying monuments, cooperating with appropriate public officials, and making sufficient measurements to be able to verify that the work is accurate. Throughout the survey, a surveyor must often set monuments to record the boundaries on the physical property. Other requirements may outline exactly what material should be used for the monuments.

Click for more info  go so far as to stipulate just how the maps should be drawn, in order to standardize the procedure. These specific rules help ensure that land surveys done by two separate surveyors should be as identical as possible.

Most states require land surveyors to record their notes because they work, in a fashion that would be intelligible to another surveyor. When the current surveyor disagrees with a previous survey, the present surveyor should contact the previous surveyor and attempt to resolve the issue.

Land surveyors must be licensed in the state where they work. The licensing requirements generally add a test, which will require understanding of minimal standards of land surveying because they are set out in the laws for that particular state. These guidelines often include ethical statements, such as for example stipulations that the minimal requirements shouldn't be accepted as the only standard for the practice of land surveying. Other professional conduct standards written for land surveyors may address issues such as conflict of interest or knowingly signing off on a survey that does follow minimum standards.