If you’ve ever ordered a land survey, you know the drill: you contact a surveying company, they quote you a price that seems surprisingly high, and they tell you it will take 2-3 weeks for a crew to get out to the site. Then another week or so to crunch the data and deliver an answer. For a property that might be only 5-10 acres in size, the length of time and expense of this process can seem hard to justify.
The annoyance is understandable. After all, so many things have become faster and cheaper with technology over the last decade. Why does measuring land still require weeks of waiting and thousands of dollars?
The On-the-Ground Process of a Traditional Survey
Land surveying is a labor intensive process that requires at least two crew members—often more—to physically walk across the entire property with specialized surveying equipment. But they’re not just measuring distances. They’re recording elevation changes, identifying features, marking corners, and collecting thousands of data points that will provide a comprehensive 3D map of the property.
It’s a process that takes time. Surveying crews use total stations or GPS equipment that has to be set up and calibrated multiple times as they traverse the property. Dense vegetation may require them to clear paths or hack through areas to reach specific points in the terrain. Steep land, bodies of water, or unstable areas may render parts of the property difficult or dangerous to traverse on foot.
Weather matters more than most people expect, too. Rain doesn’t just make conditions uncomfortable for surveying crews; it can make terrain dangerous. A survey that could have taken place on Tuesday may have been pushed to Thursday due to afternoon thunderstorms—and then again to the following Monday once the ground has had a chance to dry out.
Basic Economics of Surveying Costs
Surveying crews are not low-wage workers. Licensed surveyors typically undergo years of education and certification, and their expertise is valued accordingly. A typical crew costs a surveying company between $200-400 an hour in wages, before accounting for the costs of equipment and vehicles. And it doesn’t stop there. Much of that equipment is costly in its own right. A good total station costs anywhere from $15,000-30,000. GPS systems often cost even more. Surveying companies aren’t just responsible for these upfront costs; they also have to routinely maintain and eventually replace them.
How Much Time Does a Survey Take?
For an average 5-acre plot of land, a field crew could spend anywhere from 8-12 hours collecting the necessary measurements and data points. An office team may spend another 6-10 hours processing the data and preparing it in a manner required for legal documentation.
Timing also factors into this equation. An average survey can take anywhere from several days up to several weeks to complete. Some properties simply take longer than others due to their nature or location.
What makes a survey longer? For starters:
- Accessibility issues can double or even triple the cost of a survey. An easily-accessible 5-acre property? No big deal. That same size property covered in dense woods on a hillside? The crew might spend half of its time just getting to the places they need to measure.
- Some properties may only need one neighbor to open up for the surveying crew; others may require entire blocks of neighbors to cooperate.
- Wetlands are notoriously time-consuming as well. Many times they require permissions before anyone can even set foot in them.
- Other properties may be located in areas with no local access roads, requiring utility companies to mark underground utility lines before surveying crews can go onto the property.
Getting On with Modern Surveying Options
The surveying industry is undergoing major changes right now. Emerging technologies, such as drone-based aerial mapping and laser scanning (LiDAR), allow surveying firms to gather survey data often at 1/10th of the time it takes using ground-based crews. The savings in time and cost are transformative. What takes several days by a traditional surveying crew can often be accomplished by an aerial surveying crew in just a few hours.
Companies such as AeroViews offer aerial surveying services that remain comparably accurate to traditional methods for many projects but are far faster and cheaper.
The process is surprisingly effective. The aerial mapping process involves flying drones equipped with aerial surveying sensors over an area needing mapping. LiDAR systems bounce millions of laser pulses off the ground surface, vegetation, and other objects before storing the results for processing. This process collects detailed height data on vegetation types, buildings, ground surfaces, and more.
Want to know how accurate it is? The aerial data maps provide elevation change accuracy with centimeter-level precision.
The advantages go beyond just speed. Aerial mapping enables an accurate survey of dangerous areas that ground crews might find inaccessible (e.g., geological formations such as cliffs) or land where wildlife makes ground-access risky (such as mountainous areas or wetlands). The density of data can be higher too; where a crew on foot might collect thousands of data points for elevation changes, aerial crews might collect millions.
When Traditional Surveys Still Apply
Aerial surveying technology isn’t suitable for all surveying challenges, though. Traditional land surveys used to determine legal boundaries often still require ground-based survey measurements for verification. Some jurisdictions do not yet accept aerial mapping data for specific forms of legal documentation. Dense tree canopy can also make measuring elevations on foot difficult, though LiDAR aerial mapping technology penetrates vegetation more effectively than older photo mapping methods do.
However, one strategy that might work best is combining aerial and traditional approaches: conduct aerial mapping for more general topographic data and analysis but bring in ground crews when it’s time to finalize boundary verification and documentation.
Reducing Timelines and Costs
While reviewing these new surveying technologies can be helpful for surveying firms, their use should be particularly helpful for architects, engineers, construction project developers, and real estate managers who must deal with project delays caused by long surveying timelines.
Project development teams cannot begin any design work before receiving accurate site data from their surveyors. Once they receive these survey results, they can begin filing site design permit applications with local governments or other permit authorities; none of this work can happen until then.
For project managers working under tight timelines (e.g., contractors), receiving surveying results quickly is essential; every week waiting for survey results is a week lost for the entire project.
The cost implications do not end there; they can go well beyond the cost of paying the surveying company directly. Other indirect costs can include:
- Even if the project team is not working on anything while waiting for survey results, they still incur costs.
- If the cost of financing has been fixed, it may increase if enough time passes while waiting for survey results.
- Favorable financing arrangements (e.g., lower interest rates) may expire.
- Construction seasons have limits; they may prevent any work from taking place on-site until the next construction season arrives.
- Delays waiting for survey results can add costs that exceed those incurred by project managers and sponsors should have received for the surveying firms.
Faster surveying options reduce these project timelines quickly. A project that might take three weeks on average to receive results from traditional surveying firms might leave teams waiting only three days with aerial surveys.
Choosing Your Surveying Option
Owners of properties or developers have more options today than they did five years ago. Traditional surveying processes are still relevant for boundary surveys but aerial surveys make sense for topographic site surveys needing processing once completed; they create digital maps that satisfy end users while being much faster than foot-based measurements.
However, the new tech might not be relevant to all project types. Owners and developers should understand what type of mapping or surveying their property or project needs before ordering it from surveying firms.
For example:
- If you need boundary surveying measures related to legal documentation (like subdivision), traditional map surveys will be required.
- However, if you need volumetric calculations used for developing more complex projects (such as landfills), aerial mapping may be suitable.
Aerial mapping also works well for construction site progress surveys but traditional measurements may still be relevant for boundary surveys used for legal documents such as easements.
Surveying firms’ decades-long timelines and high prices made sense in an era when ground-based measurement technology was the only technology available. With advancing technologies producing comparable site data faster and cheaper, it’s time to examine those old justifications for long delays and expensive costs honestly — especially when multiple properties are being surveyed around similar project developments or areas in which those properties are located. Understanding what’s possible helps one decide whether the survey project is worth the expense.
