Decision Maker

Decision Maker

The main thing about being a surveyor and a planner is that you rarely start projects yourself.

Once in a while, as with Fairmont, we are brought in on the early stages of a new initiative and

play a major role in conceptualizing the project. More often, we are technicians, asked to

implement an idea that an owner or developer has come up with.

This simple truth means that I had the opportunity, over many years, to engage with some of the

most creative, entrepreneurial, and unusual people in southeast British Columbia. Some of the

projects worked exceptionally well. Others crashed and burned, often at the approval or design

stage. But what a life it was, being at the starting line of literally hundreds of roads, bridges,

subdivisions, resort developments, community planning processes, and recreational

developments.

Every time I drove or flew around the Kootenays, I told myself how lucky I was to be involved

in so much. I knew the backstory of almost every development, and I had a hand in most of

them. The greatest professional joy of my life was watching my home territory evolve in front of

my eyes. This is a remarkable part of the country, and I honestly believe we made it even better.

Consider a small example. I was hired to split a resort near Premier Lake. Originally, it was a

ranch, but it had become a kind of resort with ranching on the side. The person who hired me had

just acquired the land and had decided he did not want to ranch anymore.

The owners decided to subdivide the resort. The original owners had some funny agreements,

and the property was disputed. The original owners laid claim to a large part of the property. I

was hired to review it all and come up with a compromise. The new owners found out that they

did not, in fact, own the whole property. They had to let the original owner have a part of it.

So here I was, a surveyor, acting almost like a judge. I did a pretty good job, I guess. A while

later, a lawyer told me that I should have officially become an arbitrator. I would have been in a

good position to intervene when there was a boundary or a property dispute.

He said I should do more of that work. But I did not want to take it on. These situations are like a

divorce. They get testy at times, and it is no fun really to try to work things out. If it works out

the way you think it should, then it is a feather in your cap, but these matters did not always work

out the way they should have.

In my work, conflict was common—between property owners, buyers and sellers, governments

and developers and, from time to time, professionals and customers. A lot of court cases never

come out the way they really should have. In my experience, the lawyers twisted things around.

An interesting case came up in Kimberley. Somebody noticed that a survey was not done

properly and challenged the work that was done. I was hired by our association to assess the

quality of the work and redo the survey if necessary, which I did because it was necessary. The

surveyor who signed off on the original work was from Alberta. He had not even come to the

worksite to oversee the job. The work he supervised was not done adequately or professionally. I

filed a report on it, and he was suspended. He was no longer allowed to do legal surveys in BC.

The province has always been strict in their assessment of the professional quality of surveyors’

work.

It is important that people understand the rigour of professional reviews. Currently in BC, every

year, one or two pieces of work by any registered surveyor is reviewed and reported on. Every

second year, the people working for the professional association physically check the surveying

work. The professional surveyor always gets a report from an inspector. The inspector always

finds something that is not quite up to standard or not quite adequate. I have fond memories of

the fellow from the association complimenting me on the quality of my marker posts, which

were metal ones, driven in so that you could not pull them out. He thought that our crew’s work

was superlative.

Our association never officially adopted a quality standard for the posts. The metal marker posts

began to be used when I was working with a federal surveyor up north. We designed a marker

plate that was bolted onto angle iron posts, which would tell ordinary people the meaning of the

stake. The stakes also contained the words “Do not disturb.”

I was part of the survey posts committee that designed the metal posts. To this day, these are the

only galvanized iron bars used by the British Columbia Land Surveyors. The posts must be at

least thirty inches or two and a half feet long, but I made lots of them five feet long and even

eight feet long. This meant I could hammer them in when there was soft ground. To me, these

things matter. You did your job right or not at all.