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How Safe is Your long-term disagreement with the client. The greatest on-site sur-
prise came after we were finally permitted to setup on our control
Spatial Control? for work and began to perform spatial check-in procedures. We
quickly determined that out newly established control, paid for by
our client, had been seriously compromised.
By: Timothy Wolf, 2004 President, Nevada Apparent motive; impede or damage work progress with latency
Association of Land Surveyors or errors so as to provide additional delay time and motivation
to resolve the disagreement. Outcome: negative - client lost
time and financial resources reestablishing control and despite
all, the replacement firm won the entire remaining contract.
Early Internet Theft

The next time the author was introduced to Control Protection
issues was sometime later when intellectual property theft was
gaining momentum as a global problem. We were engaged in a
100-acre start-up mine in southern Nevada and worked with the
client for over five years to get their operations up and running
from patented claims to water rights, right of way, etc. The client
had reached the point of construction of a small mill wherein they
negotiated with a General Contractor that apparently favored
their own selection of surveyor, latter hereinafter to as SS, short
for Serpent Surveying. SS may or may not represent the same firm
Those who are LinkedIn™ may have recently noticed a query- in each example provided herein.
ing post entitled “How do you protect your control?” This is a topic
that should be of concern to every geospatial surveyor and one Since we performed the boundary, base mapping and managed
that represents a history of overcoming adversity to the author. the aerial control for the owner; we expected and awaited an RFI
It’s our unfortunate experience that at times it’s important to requesting the coordinate values for our primary site control. But,
share some of our history in hopes to spark a discussion and/or an RFI never surfaced despite that SS was on the job staking the
aspire to elevate the reader’s assessment of the risks involved project in less than 24-hours. Perplexed, we inspected our FTP
so that they may consider what may be done, and/or share server to find SS’s static IP address as a source for multiple un-
their solutions with others for the benefit of the profession. Too successful and ungranted login attempts and attacks, followed
often we’ve only considered degradation and loss of control due by many unsuccessful login attempts. Astonishingly, they chose
to natural causes. Yet unfortunately, there are also intentional to task multiple automated hack attempts over a 48-hour time
causes. As to the latter, it’s our experience that paying attention period when all they had to do is produce and RFI through formal
to the apparent motives may provide otherwise subdued clues to channels! Yet, they chose to steal the data instead.
potential source. Apparent motive: to get on the job as quickly as possible with-

Many of the specifics and company names will remain nameless out revealing the need for help orassistance from another sur-
in this article. Those interested in higher detail are encouraged to veyor thereby falsely elevating their status. Outcome: nega-
contact the author. Not unlike other professional spatial measure- tive - reduction of trust and professional respect for this firm’s
ment firms; it’s our goal to establish a rigorous, repeatable and management and employees. The original firm still retained the
defensible geodetic reference framework on every project. Among contract design and support contract with the damaged owner
other benefits; we consider geodetic referencing to be an integral (e.g. no long-term gain for the evil involved).
part of our legacy and a service of extended life-cycle value. These Control Destruction Replaced with Inferior Substitute
initiatives and technique not only offer the utmost assurance and
protection in spatial measurement defensibility; they offer the The most recent example concerns a project on an approximate
added values of spatial awareness and advantage of the statisti- 160-acre parcel we originally performed a Static GPS Boundary
cal tools that are therein afforded such as metrics, geodetic ref- and filed a Record of Survey in a remote area of the western U.S.
erencing, geospatial mapping, and subsequent use in similar or to help facilitate a sale. Apparently the new owner (not our original
newly established projections. This approach offers the highest client) had subsequently opted to use another surveying company
potential for downstream value, subject to location-dependent to assist them with their purchase and reconveyance transaction,
periodic validation for deformational change. Once the techniques which is clearly reasonable. What better way to truly and inde-
and field procedures are common place, the extra expense be- pendently perform due diligence and quell possible perception of
comes minimized and serves a greater service area. any seller/buyer conflict of interest. However, due to the owner’s
urgent need to plant and harvest a crop their first season we were
Work Force Strike asked to step in and assist with construction staking services. We
The author’s first introduction to the problem of protecting es- were happy to have the opportunity to work on the project again
tablished survey control started to surface around 1989. We were which is in close proximity to one of our remote offices, and to
working for a medium-sized engineering and surveying firm on use our previously established control as an intended savings to
a fairly large project in the southwestern U.S. We were tasked to the client. Familiarity with the land, and proximity to the project
continue construction staking for blasting and earth moving for made logical sense. However, upon inspection of the project we
a major arterial roadway. The crew soon realized the reason we found that our primary static control was completely obliterated
were all recently hired - the prior surveying service firms were in a (e.g. intentionally destroyed). CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE u

The Nevada Traverse Vol.50, No.4, 2023 17