Local engineering, land surveying companies disagree over impact of state draft proposalA DRAFT PROPOSAL on the surveying of property has become a bone of contention between some of New Jersey’s engineers and land surveyors. Engineers say the proposed rule change could impede their ability to make essential measurements, and would jeopardize small firms. But surveyors argue that the change would keep engineers from doing surveys that they aren’t trained and licensed to perform, and would avoid unnecessary time and cost.

The controversy centers on a draft proposal for revisions to the New Jersey Statutes Annotated (N.J.S.A.) Title 45, which describes the functions engineers can perform when working on projects. The proposal was made by the State Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors at the request of the New Jersey Society of Professional Engineers (NJSPE).

In October, the Trenton-based trade association asked the board to clarify New Jersey rules that, since 1992, have stated that engineers could not prepare topographic surveys—documents showing the location, distance and elevation of existing features on a property. However, the rules allow engineers to make certain surveying measurements that are necessary for the design or construction of an engineering project, as long as the measurements are not related to property boundary lines.

Under proposed new rules that the board issued last November in response to the NJSPE request, engineering measurements pertain only to features and structures shown on an existing boundary and topographic survey that has been prepared by a land surveyor. Engineers cannot depict existing features, structures, contours or lines on a site plan if those features are not shown on an existing survey.

The board is currently reviewing more than 200 comments on the draft proposal and will decide if the statute will be revised.

The state’s land surveyors assert that the language of the proposal is straightforward. “Surveyors show existing features, engineers show what’s going to be designed,” says Al Faraldi, a land surveyor at Faraldi Group, a surveying and planning company in Secaucus. “It’s very clear that an engineer can’t do topography because that’s existing, that’s already out there.”

But some local engineers say the proposed rules still leave some questions unanswered. “The way it sits now, the proposed ruling isn’t up to snuff yet,” says NJSPE President John Rhodes. The main issue, he says, is that the definition of “topographic survey” remains unclear. Many measurements that engineers currently make as part of their work could be interpreted as “topographic,” he says. For example, for sewer projects, engineers often go out to the field during construction to check elevations on the site and make needed design modifications, he says.

Andres Roda, president of the New Jersey Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), says that “a lot of the measurements that engineers perform as part of their duties would come into question if the proposed rule change remains as it stands. The importance of being able to make measurements is it allows us to efficiently perform our work.”

If the rule changes go through, everything an engineer puts on a site plan would have to be based on an existing survey, according to Andrew Feranda, project manager at Shropshire Associates, a Lumberton-based firm that specializes in traffic and transportation engineering. If an existing feature or structure is missing on a survey, he says, engineers would not be able to make the measurement of that feature or structure by themselves, but would need to call in a surveyor to do the work.

For engineering firms that have their own surveyors, the requirement would not be an issue. But smaller engineering companies without in-house survey departments, such as Shropshire Associates, might face problems. “Previously, our expertise and experience in making measurements would allow us to get the job quickly and accurately done,” says Feranda, who estimates that 20 to 25 percent of engineering firms in the state are small ones without surveying departments. However, having to contract out survey work would add time and cost to a project.

This puts small engineering firms without survey crews at a disadvantage, Feranda says. “Potentially if a developer wanted a one-stop shop, they would go with a larger firm that had a department for surveying,” he says. “They may get contracts that smaller specialty companies wouldn’t get because of the cost and time efficiencies that a larger company would offer.”

Surveyor Faraldi disputes that the proposed rules could ruin some small engineering firms. Under state rules, such companies are not legally authorized to perform the survey work that they do, says Faraldi. “You’re taking away work that has been traditionally and by law the livelihood of one-man surveying shops,” he says.

Unlike surveyors, civil engineers are no longer taught surveying in school, Faraldi says. For this reason, some engineers run the risk of preparing incorrect topographic surveys, which can cause problems during or after construction of a project, says Faraldi.

He says the reason some engineering companies oppose the draft proposal is that they want to get more business by doing topographic surveys themselves. “This is a pure way to make more money for an engineer and less money for a land surveyor,” says Faraldi. “The surveyors are battling to save what they have.”

But NJSPE President Rhodes says engineers just want to understand what is permissible and what is not in their work. “What we’d like to do with the rule is to clarify those things that are inappropriate for a professional engineer by training to do,” he says. Engineers want to “keep the whole thing out of a turf war where people are trying to increase their area of business,” he says.

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