2020 National Surveyors Week
National Surveyors Week is an annual week-long celebration of the surveying profession that takes place in March. Education of the public is the number one goal of National Surveyors Week. The work surveyors perform for the benefit of the public often goes unrecognized and surveyors need to share their knowledge with them.
Rani is very proud to have a talented survey team with up to 47 years of experience. The group was asked the following questions:
- What do you love about your job and what you do?
- What or who motivated you to choose your career?
- What’s the most interesting project you have worked on and why?
Along with answering the questions above, each individual has shared a photo from one of their favorite projects.
Jason Howard, PLS
What do you love about your job and what you do?
I enjoy being an integral part of improvements to local infrastructure and seeing projects I’ve worked on come to fruition.
What or who motivated you to choose your career?
I stumbled upon Surveying as an engineering intern and found that I really enjoyed the work.
What’s the most interesting project you have worked on and why?
I was contracted to survey 6 km of runway at the Melbourne Airport (AUS) mostly overnight and having to breakdown my equipment often for planes landing and taking off. Often I would only get 10 minute windows of time, I was able to complete the project a week under schedule and secured a full time position.
Mark Viestenz, LSIT
What do you love about your job and what you do?
I very much enjoy working outdoors and my colleagues are some of the best in the business.
What or who motivated you to choose your career?
I just kind of fell into it. My grandfather owned a civil engineering company in Bemidji and suggested I try a few things in that field. Got put on a survey crew one summer and just stuck with it.
What’s the most interesting project you have worked on and why?
The Watford City Bypass because it was a brand new highway (not many new ones being built these days, just repairing or expanding existing ones). It was also the first time I was running the show, so a lot of responsibility and stress, but again, my colleagues helped a great deal.
Rich Winden, LSIT
What do you love about your job and what you do?
Surveyors laid out the US Rectangular System over the United States in the 1800’s to evaluate our Country to see what resources were available. The US Rectangular system is also the basis of all Legal Description. Everyone that owns property has a Legal Description within their Deed. A surveyor was involved in that process. Surveyors gather the existing conditions, boundary and topographic information for engineers to design their projects. Surveyors then take that information and stake the proposed improvements so the Contractor can build it. With that said, surveyors are the backbone of most everything you see that has an improvement. I’m proud to be part of that process. Surveyors are the first on the job the last on the job and sometimes first to get blamed and the last to get paid.
I have worked with a lot of very good Surveyors and Engineers. Next month I will be entering my 41’s year in Land Surveying. If I had to go back and start over, I wouldn’t change a thing. I love the challenges we encounter and love working with my co-workers to find solutions to the issues and problems we deal with on a daily basis.
What or who motivated you to choose your career?
My Father.
What’s the most interesting project you have worked on and why?
Too many to list, but one that sticks out in my mind was the company I worked for in 1986 was involved in the construction of St. Paul Winter Carnival Ice Castle. My Crew Chief and I monitored if for movement on a daily basis and also measured the official height of 128 feet which was the highest Ice Castle built to date.
Dave Qualy
What do you love about your job and what you do?
Surveying is a unique and challenging career with excellent prospects and opportunities for advancement. It is a job that requires a wide variety of skills and knowledge, both physically and mentally, and provides a broad spectrum of different working environments.
What or who motivated you to choose your career?
I worked for three years as a conductor on the Canadian Pacific Railway, that spawned an interest in the transportation discipline of civil engineering. I started school in 2013 soon after leaving the railroad, originally working towards a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering, but decided in 2015 to transition to an Associate’s Degree in Civil Engineering Technology. While in tech school, I was exposed to surveying for the first time, and found out about the Bachelor’s Degree in Land Surveying at St. Cloud State. I decided to take that program on, starting in the fall of 2017, and graduated in December of 2019. Three months later, here I am!
What’s the most interesting project you have worked on and why?
I worked part-time for the Hennepin County Surveyor’s Office while going to school at St. Cloud State, and the lion’s share of my time there was devoted to a project that I was given the freedom to individually plan and execute. The project was a comprehensive analysis, inventory, and digitization of around 450 historic railroad plats in Hennepin County’s possession for use by the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s online Right-of-Way Mapping and Management application. The project was a big success and began paying dividends in the surveying community immediately. The project was interesting because it was a first-of-its-kind for the office I was working in, so it had to be built from the ground up.
Walt Gregory, PLS
What do you love about your job and what you do?
I love having a variety of different project, solving problems, analyzing data and meeting a lot of interesting people. Detective work to find lost treasures and old irons.
What or who motivated you to choose your career?
I had a strong interest in math and engineering but didn’t really understand how to apply it until I got started in surveying. I landed a job quite by chance as an engineering technician at an engineering company. The owner took an interest in me and encouraged me to learn the career and business. I was excited to learn all I could under his tutelage and with self study. I was able to pass the 16 hour exam to become a licensed surveyor in less than four years.
What’s the most interesting project you have worked on and why?
The construction staking for the Central Corridor Operation and Maintenance Facility in downtown St. Paul. This project involved remodeling an existing building to function as an operation and maintenance facility on the east end of the Central Corridor. The roof had to be raised to accommodate new roof trusses. We used a rented lift to help us measure between the existing walls to determine the length of the new trusses. The measurements were complicated by the fact that the old trusses occupied the actual location and all our measurements were offsets that had to be converted to actual locations. The project was going to use the existing floor in parts of the building, however when the floor was cut it collapsed because the supporting wood piles had rotted away. As a result there was surveying for many helical piles to support the new floor. In addition there were two tracks coming into the facility and nine storage rails that had to be laid out all with connecting curves and switches. Lots of details and precision work was required.
