SURVEYING

Chuck Salmon

Adapting in a Changing World

Technology continues to drive change within our existing professions.

Adapting and keeping up with this change can be difficult and require considerable training and time/effort. The profession of land surveying has undergone considerable change and the Association of BC Land Surveyors (Association) has made significant changes to keep pace.

An exception has been our General Survey Instruction Rules (Rules), originally a Government Regulation maintained by the Surveyor General. It was deregulated in 2004 and the Association has been responsible for the ongoing maintenance since then. The task has been daunting and has become quite complex when it comes to making changes.

When the Government passed the regulations to the Association, they indicated the Association should put a process in place to make the Rules more efficient and effective and ensure that an ongoing maintenance program was in place.

The Association has not done a major review of the Rules until now and has contracted me to undertake the review for completion by year end 2017.

When the Government passed the regulations to the Association, they indicated the Association should put a process in place to make the Rules more efficient and effective and ensure that an ongoing maintenance program was in place

Looking back in time, the Rules and the previous Regulation were produced as a document that all land surveyors used in a hardcopy format. Until recently, that has served us well but the time has come to consider other options. In keeping with the changing technology, it is more advantageous to have a working document that can be read online, searchable, and linked to other programs.

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For example, the Electronic Checklist Registry requires land surveyors to confirm that their surveys and plans comply with the Rules. The Registry does that through a series of electronic questions. But there is no way to link the questions to the Rules. It is hoped that this project will address that requirement.

A second efficiency would be to allow a land surveyor or staff member to query the Rules and find the pertinent Rules for the specific survey being done. If a land surveyor is conducting a Strata Property Act survey, then only the Rules appurtenant to that type of survey should be able to be queried. That creates another formatting challenge that needs to be addressed.

Taking efficiency to a more extreme level brings the world of smartphones and tablets into the equation. Instead of searching through a 100-page document to find a Rule, a land surveyor might be able to go online and query the Rules for the appropriate answer to address a concern or question while out in the field.

An efficient office must be able to have access to information in a timely manner. We are seeing that in many formats with access to legislation and Government regulation through the BC Law website.

Although the original intent is to transform the Rules from a prescriptive style of Rules to a more enabling style of Rules, the additional improvement in the technology base will address those other concerns as well as modernize and improve the usability of the Rules overall.

None of this is going to be simple. The rewriting of the Rules to make them more enabling will be a major challenge but will make the Rules more effective and adaptable to changing technology. The policies for changing the rules will also require revamping to ensure effective and efficient time management for all Rule changes. Having the Rules formatted to be available for linking and online query will enable more efficiency in the ongoing role of a land surveyor and his or her staff.

An efficient office must be able to have access to information in a timely manner. We are seeing that in many formats with access to legislation and Government regulation through the BC Laws website.

Efficiencies have been gained through the development of online programs within the Association, the improvements at the Land Title and Survey Authority with electronic filing and the development of ParcelMap BC, and other programs in provincial and local governments with access to approving officers. All those efficiencies lead to a more productive and efficient office. s Chuck Salmon, BCLS, is a Life Member of the Association of BC Land Surveyors, Retired.

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