Long time no blog, but some interesting little tidbits have drawn me out of the wood work.

Firstly, the new Surveying and Spatial Information Regs for both DPs and SPs have finally arrived.  Some of the main changes include new Admin Sheets for any survey done after the 1st September 2012 and the big one, new deposited plans have to show street addresses. What do you think of that??

I suppose the relevant committees have stopped the  to-ing and fro-ing and finally put the foot down, feeling that the benefit for emergency services, mapping authorities and the general land-buying-public outweighed the negatives for surveyors and their increased liability if an address is wrong. But really, the best place to give a lot a street address is when it is created, even though wringing that sort of information out of councils when your client is breathing down your neck might prove interesting, to say the least.

See the LPI info sheet here.

The second little tidbit is from my old workmates in the Cadastral Integrity Unit (CIU) at the LPI.

You may or may not know, but the CIU has been conducting audits of surveyors and their DPs (registered and unregistered) for something like 7 years (don’t quote me on that!). They came about as way to improve surveys and the plans created from them and to add extra ummf to the examination process. An audit survey can include just an office check, a simple field check without using equipment, or the whole box and dice where measurements are actually checked in the field.

Over those years, the audit team found many surveys and plans were perfectly fine, but also found some real shockers. Warnings were issued to those surveyors, and if things were corrected everyone was happy. Problems began though, as warnings weren’t heeded (i.e. ignored) and the CIU had no real avenue to pursue a reluctant surveyor beyond letters of warning. They aren’t BOSSI or the survey police after all, and complaints against a surveyor to BOSSI have to come from a member of the general public, no matter how many times a repeat offender came across the audit surveyor’s jigga crosshairs. It was also a problem for the private surveyors as well, as there were no guidelines or procedures specific to the audit process, and they often felt the system was too sporadic, subjective and open to possible misuse by the CIU if they had something against a particular surveyor.

But in August all that has changed, with the publication of the CIU Audit Survey Procedures. There is no need to give you a thorough summary here, as the objectives of the procedures and the audit process are quite succinctly stated in the opening pages of the publication. What needs to be said though, is this document finally puts a framework in place for the audit system, which will help the CIU and private surveyors cooperate and read from the same page to create better plans of survey, rather than be constantly at odds and confused with each other regarding audits and what is required.

Audit Survey Procedures, a thumbs up in my fieldbook!

Check out the Cadastral Integrity Unit Audit Survey Procedures and let me know what you think.