Author: Steve

What Survey Plat Really Represents

Post author By Steve
Post date November 1, 2016

Some people see a survey plat as an overpriced piece of paper but it’s not just a pretty picture. It represents hours spent reading moldy court records and digging through centuries of legal documents about a piece of land two people transferred back and forth….and back and forth. It represents the blood and sweat shed during days spent in the field in a seemingly endless search for property corners of the distant and not so distant past. Let’s not forget the hours spent compiling data, grumbling at field crew for busting a traverse (which mine never do by the way), interpreting deeds, head scratching, pencil throwing, and rants of profanity that all go into painting that “picture”.

You could compare a land surveyor’s plat to Joanna’s pieces of “Flair” in the movie Office Space. Do you just want to do the bare minimum, is it too much to ask for a few more pieces of “Flair” on your survey plat? A tie line to an adjoining monument used to help establish a boundary line, a crooked junky old fence that wiggles in and out along a boundary line, a creek, a witness marker to help me find a ½” tall iron rod in 2′ of leaf debris in the middle of the woods. Something!

Now I’m not saying that I’m the Rembrandt of the cartography world nor am I the Peter Messier of the land surveying profession, but I’d like to think that I paint a pretty good picture of what we find during the preparation of a survey. I do this not just for our clients benefit but also for the benefit of the “ME’s” of the future. To help the next poor guy that aspires to be a land surveyor find that ½” iron rod that was set in that pile of fence wire that just happens to be where the property corner was. Help them understand through your “art work” how in the world you came up with the opinion that you developed and felt comfortable enough to hang your professional hat on.

If you are a property owner and a surveyor is handing you the final product, take that plat, study it, reeeaaaaally look at it because if the picture is painted good enough you don’t have to be a surveyor or some attorney to understand it. And at the end of the day, this is in fact what you pay good money for. If you are new to the land surveying profession or a veteran in the game, paint that picture as complete as you can, channel that inner Bob Ross, and be proud of what you deliver. You may decide to wear just the bare minimum pieces of flair on your survey plats. Careful…you are just likely to get the same response that the Chotchkie’s manager got in Office space when the surveyors of the future are looking at your plats….

3 Ways to Save on Roadway Maintenance

Post author By Steve
Post date October 2, 2016

The P3 approach includes preventive, lifecycle maintenance for the asset and avoids the problems associated with deferred maintenance. Simply put, deferred maintenance is the practice of postponing infrastructure maintenance activities, usually due to lack of available funding. Lack of proper and timely maintenance leads to early deterioration that costs more to repair later on or shortens the lifespan of the asset. Both of these situations will cost extra over the long term as the asset will have to be replaced well before it was planned, resulting in unanticipated capital costs.

What is the remedy?

Government agencies can participate in a P3 project delivery structure that involves the agency partnering with a private entity to design, build, finance, operate and maintain an infrastructure project. A P3 allows a government agency to mitigate the risks and costs associated with maintenance activities by requiring the builder to maintain the project for the long term drawing funding from a fixed, known payment structure negotiated before the job is even started.

How exactly does this solve deferred maintenance?

Annual vs. lifecycle budgets

Public agencies generally budget on an annual cycle. A private company utilizes longer term budgets and can “roll over” cost savings into later years. Snow removal is a good example: Savings in a “light” year will be sequestered and used in later years during an inevitable “heavy” year.
Annual budgeting usually means that savings is “lost” in that year and the money is used for other priorities which may not be related to the subject asset. More importantly when the “heavy” year causes the budget to be expended, other repairs will likely be deferred resulting in an asset in poor condition and likely higher repair cost later as the asset continues to deteriorate.

Resource leveling

Aside from a basic level of manpower and equipment for day-to-day tasks such as litter removal and incident management, many specialist tasks will be outsourced.
Typically, government agencies will procure equipment and sometimes manpower that only has limited usage, for example tractors for mowing or bucket trucks for lighting repairs and their associated crews. The equipment is expensive but may only be used a few times per year. An outsourced contractor will perform the work, then move on to other unrelated projects. The asset only pays for what is used at the time and avoids expensive capital expenditures for equipment that sits idle.

Handback requirements

To avoid having to rebuild or replace an asset prematurely (or at all), preventive maintenance is performed at optimum intervals to ensure the structure meets or exceeds its expected service life. The cost to clean, paint or repair assets periodically is far less than replacement cost if the asset doesn’t last as long as planned.

Conclusion

Using the P3 procurement method allows a private company to construct, service and maintain the asset which allows the government agency to save money through private company efficiencies, risk and responsibility allocation, and a firm funded budget.

Save Lives

Work Safety Regulations 2016 Update

Post author By Steve
Post date September 2, 2016

Most folks would rather endure a root canal procedure than attend a safety meeting. And that’s perfectly fine, as long as you are confident that you know all there is to know about doing a job safely. Admittedly, most safety meetings are mind-numbingly boring. That’s largely the fault of the safety community. We need to change that failing.

Safety is boring, unless and until, of course, you’re sitting in the ER Waiting Room. Now THAT can be the definition of boring. By the way, those ridiculous highway signs bragging about ER wait time in minutes are total fiction. You’re going to be there for hours. Minimum.

All of which is to emphasize that there is no middle ground on most of this safety stuff. You are either committed to it and a true believer, or you are comfortably in denial and planning to remain there.

In July the Virginia Safety Police (VOSH) issued a press release about an alarming spike in workplace fatalities. We are about 18% ahead of this time last year. That’s a big jump in funerals. All preventable. No particular industry is to blame, they cover the waterfront. Industrial, construction, educational, agricultural. No one is immune.

Antidote: Make sure you are saying the word “Safety” to your people at least daily. More often if the work is high hazard, i.e. fall protection. Rub their noses in it for emphasis. The message needs to come from the most senior people in your organization; in other words, show commitment and leadership. The more detailed the message, the better.

Telling a worker to ‘Be Safe’ is pretty lame. Telling them to ‘Buckle Up’ and burn daytime running lights is better. Telling then to leave a lot of space to the guy in front of them is better still. Putting a dash board camera and GPS on their rig is really sending the message.

Hispanic worker populations? Make absolutely sure the safety instructions they hear are translated, comprehensible and meaningful to them. Inclusivity is the goal. For extra credit, start pushing for basic English as a common language.

Ideally, your safety process will include the concepts of empowerment, enabling, self-directed ownership of the process, contributing, and participation. Safety Committees are an important organization-building formative step. If you plan on being in business five years from now, these concepts need to be on your agenda – short and mid-term.

OSHA, the federal Safety Police, has been busy lately as well. They recently increased their penalty structure by a lot. And they are on the way to require electronic reporting of all Recordable Cases. Meaning: your clients can easily check on your safety record. Along with your Workers Comp insurance Mod (EMF). No place to hide now.

These are all pretty good reasons to ramp up your safety mantra. The most compelling reason is to put those Emergency Rooms out of business.

Save Face Save Money

Are you counting pennies or benjamins?

Post author By Steve
Post date August 2, 2016

As an engineer, I am very analytical and linear in my thought process. This is natural and almost expected as I deal with equations following specific procedures to arrive at design solutions. After all, there is no gray in engineering – it is either black or white. I refer to this thought process as counting pennies – that is examining every detail down to the smallest one to make sure everything is accounted. Because of my ethical obligations to protect the public with my designs, I, as an engineer, have to count and take into account these pennies to avoid potentially disastrous situations.

As the leader of PILLAR, my thought process is different. I can’t get bogged down with all the little details; otherwise nothing moves forward at the pace it needs to because people are waiting on me. I need to think bigger and broader and count the Benjamins. That doesn’t mean the details aren’t important. On the contrary, they are very important and can’t be ignored. Here is where leadership comes into play. As I don’t have the resources to examine all the little details, I have to responsibly delegate them by providing a clear vision with enough direction to my employees.

In short, I have to lead not do.

When I focus on the Benjamins – the big picture or total package – and let other employees count the pennies, I have to provide the tools and atmosphere of collaboration and teamwork to maximize individual strengths in order to achieve maximum performance in a timely fashion to either meet deadlines, exceed expectations, or act quickly enough to stay ahead of the competition. I also have to know my employees well enough to put them in a place where they can confidently work the details and excel at what they are good at. When my employees take a portion of the bigger picture, they accept responsibility for taking care of and focusing on their stack of pennies.

All this dialog of pennies and Benjamins is not a discussion on revenue or profit. Rather it is a discussion on short-term versus long-term thinking. As a leader, focusing on pennies is short-term thinking dealing with an event happening now or in the immediate near future. Focusing on Benjamins is long-term thinking dealing with the future or the direction of the firm. Dealing with pennies is like a horse with blinders. You can only see what is in front of you with a very limited and narrow view of the scene. You cannot get stuck in one pile of details for any length of time, lest some of the other piles get either too enormous to overcome or dwindle away to nothing from lack of attention. If you’re focusing on Benjamins, you’re gazing on the wider view of the horizon.

As a by-product of focusing on the Benjamins and relinquishing control of the pennies, I have fostered a cultural shift of accountability and responsibility while simultaneously empowering those who can make it happen. When you empower others, growth occurs exponentially not linearly. Empowerment comes in several forms. Simply put, it is removing roadblocks thereby building an atmosphere of collaboration and teamwork. Empowerment also fosters an environment that nurtures a positive spirit, pride, and loyalty.

Focusing on Benjamins allows me the time to reflect on our firm’s vision and purpose and formulate a path on how to fulfill them. It is easy to get caught up in working a pile of pennies as problems arise. I call this putting out brush fires. Unfortunately, this leads one to scramble with no sense of direction or purpose and eventually reflects and resonates with employees by stagnating any growth, duty, or loyalty.

I’ll admit focusing on the Benjamins is a continuous work in progress and there are still times I get stuck in the piles of pennies. As the firm grows and I mature, I like to think I am getting better at looking at Benjamins.

How about you? Are you focusing on pennies or Benjamins?

Save Face Save Money Save Time

What PILLAR Asset Management Means For Your Company

Post author By Steve
Post date January 28, 2016

Is “asset management” more than a buzz-word to you and your organization? Are regulations and costs leading you to question whether you need a better understanding of your assets and their future value, risks, and needs?

You may find yourself wondering “How can we boost asset life-span?” or “Has the cost of this asset been justified?” PILLAR provides asset management to help you with the entire process of properly planning, building, operating, maintaining, upgrading and decommissioning assets.

This is big-picture thinking and long-term strategizing. For assets to be sustainable and cost-effective, you need a broad analysis of engineering, economics, risk management and user needs.

With appropriate asset management methods, you can answer key questions about:

FINANCES

Long-term funding, including grants and loans
Potential budget fluctuations
Total cost of ownership

DECISION-MAKING

Current state of assets
Maintenance scheduling
Rehabilitation vs. replacement
Risk analysis
Gaps in institutional knowledge
Internal and external communication

REQUIREMENTS

Technological and material life-spans
Current and future regulations
User demands

Asset management results in better business practices and a more proactive mindset. It allows your organization to identify strengths as well as weaknesses, creating a better foundation for decision-making.

With systematic and coordinated asset management techniques, PILLAR will provide your organization with the tools to succeed now and in the future.

Save Lives

Safety Summit 2016

Post author By Steve
Post date January 27, 2016

Hello friends, colleagues, and clients,

I am pleased to announce that I will be presenting at the 3rd Annual BLR Safety Summit, held April 4-6, 2016 in Austin, Texas.

I will kick off the Summit with a Preconference Workshop on job hazard analysis and risk management, explaining how you can go beyond basic hazard identification to examine your workplace’s biggest safety and health hazards.

During the main conference’s Strategic Safety Management breakout, my session will focus on developing a behavior-reinforcement plan to identify key outcomes and position workers for success.

The Summit will also feature EHS metrics, safety culture construct, job hazard analysis, emergency planning, OSHA’s new rapid response investigations, mobile technologies, and so much more! This powerful conference is crafted for safety and risk managers, consultants, and HR professionals who need to stay up-to-date on the latest workplace safety management and compliance strategies.

I’d like to extend an exclusive discount on conference registration. Use coupon code SPEAKER50 to get an instant $50 off. (And if you register before February 1, you can also take advantage of the $100 early bird discount!)

Visit the Safety Summit website to register or learn more!

I hope you’ll join me and the most progressive leaders in occupational health and safety at this unmatched event.

Sincerely,

John J. Meola CSP, ARM
PILLAR Inc.

Save Face

Choosing a commercial surveyor

Post author By Steve
Post date January 19, 2016

Surveying is a vital step in commercial property development and construction. Land surveyors are licensed professionals who are knowledgeable about local, state and federal requirements. They also provide important information for your attorney, banker, realtor, architect and builder.

An experienced surveyor will advise you on what type of survey—boundary, topographic, land title, or mortgage inspection—should be performed. As a basis for contracts, resale, subdividing and engineering, surveying provides a foundation for many key decisions in property transactions and development. The surveyor can be a valuable resource in environmental analysis and land disputes.

Training, expertise and technical resources are key considerations when choosing a surveyor. Their understanding of existing records and property descriptions as well as their skills in mapping, identifying defects and setting monuments, as well as documentation and communicating with other parties, are essential to a job well done.

Technical aspects of surveying include advanced data, measuring and reporting methods. The modern theodolite or total station is an expensive, highly specialized piece of equipment that can save data into internal registering units or external storage. Photogrammetric scanning, satellite navigation systems, airborne LIDAR and GIS data application have greatly expanded the accuracy and effectiveness of modern surveying.

Therefore, the cost of surveying is only one factor when comparing service providers. Recommendations, resources and experience must be considered as well. Expertise, skills and judgment—all part of the high quality, problem solving approach used by our staff—come standard with PILLAR surveying services.

Save Face Save Time

Keeping and Maintaining Inventory for Roadway Infrastructure

Post author By Steve
Post date December 31, 2015

“Now where did I put that (insert item here)?” This is a question I ask myself more than I should. Usually I’m looking for some sort of tool around my house that doesn’t get used very often, but, when I need it I need it now. The wrench to remove the element in my water heater is a good example. When an element goes out it’s usually at the worst possible time.

So the quicker I can find the wrench the quicker I can get the heater fixed. I have gotten better about keeping tools, etc. organized and one thing that has helped me with this is to actually bring home skills that I’ve learned at from work. While keeping track of tools around the house and maintaining incredible volumes of infrastructure are vastly different, there is a commonality in that the core of managing both of these is to know what you have and where it is located.

A drainage pipe can be similar to that missing household wrench in that it is an asset that you may lose track of. The original maintenance crew moves on, retires, etc. and they forgot to tell the new crew about it, the maintenance crew doesn’t have access to the original plans, or the area gets overgrown with brush, etc. Then all of a sudden it rains one day and water is backed into the road. Just like that when you need it you can’t find it.

One of the areas PILLAR helps our infrastructure clients is keeping and maintaining an infrastructure inventory. The roadway infrastructure we deal with was mostly built in the mid1900s with some dating back ever further. Most of these roads had design drawings or plans but not always follow up drawings or asbuilts to show field changes made to plans.

We have incorporated a number of methods and technologies to help our clients collect their inventory, and continuously and easily update what is added and removed. We have used everything from;

“Boots on the ground” location where we visually identify an asset location using metal detectors, brush axes, shovels, and an iPad loaded with a specialized application InfraTrak®. This allows us to add inventory, edit and remove inventory as well as log inventory conditions and generate work orders from the field. InfraTrak® works disconnected from the internet with information synced to the cloud where the collected field data is shared with office personnel.
Mobile LiDAR which generates a digital 3D model of the roadway with corresponding spherical photos taken at specified intervals.
Digitizing 5060 year old roadway plans.
Survey and GIS grade asset inventory mapping utilizing traditional GPS and survey equipment.
Development of a specialized department to explore the use of our cutting edge drone for the generation of digital 3D models, high resolution digital orthophotography, videos, and thermal imaging.

These methods have allowed us to inventory municipal utilities as well as hundreds of miles of roadway for our clients to help them know what they have and where it is located.

Pillar, Inc.’s staff has been involved with highway maintenance and incident response on many different projects with 40+ years of combined experience. We can generate, collect, and maintain digital asset inventories for your existing infrastructure. Please do not hesitate to contact us!

Save Face

Land Surveying: Is what I found what was set?

Post author By Steve
Post date November 30, 2015

“IP”… I don’t know how many times I’ve looked at a survey plat (mostly older ones) and cringed when I saw those two little letters at the change in direction of a boundary line.

Over the last almost 20 years of being a Land Surveyor, I think that I have come across almost everything imaginable at a corner of a parcel of land. Let me elaborate. A piece of iron rebar, iron rod, threaded rod, pipe, 6″ nail, 8” nail, a 16 penny nail, a railroad spike, a steering knuckle of (insert your junk car name here), an axle, a roof bolt, a section of drill steel, an actual wooden stake or a pinch pipe. I could continue on but I think you get the idea. But is what I found in the field what the original surveyor actually set or found as a corner monument or just some random piece of junk? Or what I like to call “the rod du jour.”

Virginia Code 18VAC1020370 (section 4) mandates that “as a requisite for completion of the work product, each land boundary survey of a tract or parcel of land shall be monumented with objects made of permanent material at all corners and changes of direction on the land boundary”. This section of code itself leaves a lot of latitude for a choice of monument at a property corner. While other sections of the code place a minimum standard on the procedures and practices of land surveying, why hasn’t there been a standard set for boundary monuments other than “shall be made of permanent material?”

I know that all of the items that I stated as discovered while performing a boundary survey are in fact “made of permanent material” and technically they have satisfied the Virginia standards. But there is a great deal of merit placed on a corner marker that is specially described on a survey plat. “IP” doesn’t give me much description when I’m out there on the job. All it takes is a few other characters on a plat like “1/2″ iron rod or 1” pipe or even a steering knuckle of (insert your junk car name here) and all of the sudden, voila, I found what the last surveyor set or found 50 years ago. There is a legal term that we use for items we find near a property corner that don’t include these little adjectives: “Prima Facie” or face value. In other words “I have found something near the property corner; if it works then it just happens to work,” not because it was specifically placed there. But is there something else there?

All I can say is that I know 50 years from now some Land surveyor will be looking at my maps while in the field and says “yep here it is, a ½” iron rod set at the corner”. Not standing there scratching their head looking for an “IP.”

Pillar, Inc.’s staff has been involved with highway maintenance and incident response on many different projects with 40+ years of combined experience. We can help write an O&M plan including Snow and Ice Control procedures for your next project. Please do not hesitate to contact us!

Click here to download the PILLAR Talk November 2015 PDF.

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Snow and Ice Control: Roadway Winter Preparations

Post author By Steve
Post date November 10, 2015

Pillar, Inc. offers consulting services to Public Private Partnerships, specifically regarding the many different Operations and Maintenance services these specialized procurements include.

In order to better educate our partners, as part of our Continuous Improvement philosophy, Pillar periodically provides these informational O&M fact sheets to interested parties.

NOW is the season to order your stockpiles of salt, abrasives, and pre-treatment liquids. Actually, this order should have been placed back in July, but we’ll bring you up to speed just the same.

Asset Managers are tasked with taking care of infrastructure, such as roadways and related facilities. This includes budget, cash flow, finance, credit, etc. Basically, here is some advice from our school of experience to help you manage cash flow with a minimum of pain and a few easy to execute tips.

Salt. A simple chemical and relatively inexpensive, but in the quantities we use it, with prices from $75-$125 per ton, we need to manage our stockpiles carefully. Industry standards call for having at least 100% of your “worst case” winter inventory on hand before the season starts. While this is a good rule of thumb, it can be costly both in inventory holding costs as well as capital outlays to build a larger than necessary containment facility.

Consider the following operational tips:

If your project is located within a reasonable distance (1-2 hours) of the shipping point, consider ordering less salt at the beginning of the season and being very proactive in re-ordering salt. In order to do this, you must do it with forethought, not a guess.

Place a resupply order a day before the next event happens. You can estimate the salt you will use during the event and simply order that amount before it snows. Your project will be first in line to receive salt after the storm while other projects are ordering after the event and waiting longer.

If your project is too small to demand “first priority” delivery, negotiate this into your purchase agreements; it may cost more per ton but save you the corresponding outlay for facility and holding costs.

Delays in shipment are usually due to lack of trucking availability, especially at the rate negotiated by the salt supplier with their independent carriers. Consider an FOB price to provide flexibility and redundancy: You go pick up the salt with your own truck fleet rather than wait for non-guaranteed resupply by the vendor’s trucks.

Consider keeping the doors of your facility open at offhours or weekends. Many DOT’s will only receive salt between normal operating hours of 8am-4:30pm Monday-Friday, thus creating a bottleneck in the supply lines. If you tell the shipper “we’ll accept your salt 24-7” you’ll probably get it quicker.

The extra few dollars in staff overtime is minor compared to the cost of not having the salt.

At some point the shipper’s dispatch personnel will call you to confirm shipment. Have your on-call staff save this number into their phone. It is likely this trucking company will be your exclusive supplier. You can get more up-to-date delivery information from the shipper than going through your supplier, who is only going to contact the shipper and email you back. Short circuit the runaround.

Use less salt. This seems elementary, but you would be surprised at how much salt can be wasted by ineffective salting strategies or uncalibrated or out-of-adjustment equipment.

Salt at the right time.
Re-calibrate your equipment if usage seems excessive.
Use a well thought out and sufficiently detailed pre-treatment plan to minimize the usage of salt.
These are all standard procedures, probably already written into your O&M Plan, but is it really happening on the project?

What is the “right” time to apply salt? There are now rugged and accurate sensors available to measure the slickness of pavement in real time.

Instead of guessing when to put down salt, you can now accurately and remotely measure pavement friction and apply salt if needed, not when it “feels right”. Keep an eye on the temperatures. Salting at 9am at 31 degrees on a slushy road is not cost effective if the forecast is for sunny skies and a high temperature of 40 degrees.

“If we have it, let’s use it.” This mentality is a problem with oversized inventories of any material. It’s just human nature. If your client gave you their existing facility, remember that facility may have been sized to service more road network than you now have. Resist the urge to fill it up.

What is your real “worst case” winter scenario? Re-examine the assumptions used to calculate your annual usage. Is it a case of “that’s how we have always done it”? How much salt is left every year to sit all summer long? If it’s more than 1/3rd of your annual usage, you are probably buying too much. That’s a lot of money sitting there in a pile all summer.

While these ideas may sound counterintuitive to some readers, remember that we are managing the road, our crews and our materials and should be looking for efficiencies and improvements wherever they may exist. Because a lot of money goes into snow & ice control, it’s a good place to look for improvements. If you are satisfied with your current results and expenditures, then keep doing it. Our Asset Management philosophy at Pillar tells us to keep looking for improvements. We think there are methods and techniques to reduce or delay capital expenditures without affecting performance.

Control procedures for your next project. Please do not hesitate to contact us!

Dan Dennis, PE | Senior Project Manager / P3
Dan@Pillarens.com
8042401179
PILLAR, Inc.

To download a PDF version of PillarTalk 2015 please click here.