How Civil Engineers and Land Surveyors Work Together
If you have hired crews to work on a construction project, such as building a new home or business, you might not necessarily know the difference between an engineer and a surveyor. Both of them will regularly be at the job site to check the progress of the work, and they’ll often be working on the same project and perhaps even at the same time.
However, while surveyors and engineers can often be found in the same place, they have very different jobs, and it can be difficult to delineate their responsibilities if you are not trained in surveying or engineering.
Here is some information from a longtime land surveyor in New Braunfels, TX about engineers and surveyors and how they work together.
The relationship between surveyors and engineers
Engineers can be trained in any number of types of construction, ranching from architectural to mechanical or structural. Every type of engineer works on specific types of construction projects or is used in particular steps of that project. In any circumstance, that engineer will work alongside a surveyor.
The surveyor provides important information about the site to architects and engineers, which helps them to list out the important site-specific details they need to take into account for a project. The surveyor can provide the engineer with information about where exactly the bridge footings should be located, and the civil engineer can then determine how much weight the bridge can hold and the specific building strategies that need to be used for it.
The surveyor will just about always be used for surveying the site before construction actually starts. This ensures the engineers will have an optimal location for the structure to be built. In addition, any drawings developed by an engineer must take into account how the land lies—the engineer can never just assume the land is perfectly flat and ready for construction. The surveyor provides information about the topography and helps the engineer develop plans for accounting for imperfections in the land.
The land surveyor will also usually be involved in the blueprint development phase of the project, offering information such as GPS coordinates and boundary information that will then be relayed to construction crews.
As construction proceeds, the surveyors are in charge of making sure the engineer’s plans are carried out, down to the letter. This often involves enforcing accuracy down to the centimeter or millimeter of the engineer’s plans and constantly performing checks to make sure the structure is aligned with the correct location on the property.
Today’s technology has made these processes easier than ever, but most projects still require a team of engineers and surveyors to make all the necessary calculations at a given site. For more information about how engineers and surveyors work together and the benefits of working with an experienced land surveyor in New Braunfels, TX, we encourage you to contact the team at Bettersworth & Associates, Inc. today and we will happily answer your questions. We look forward to assisting you!
Categorised in: Land Surveyor