PLSO The Oregon Surveyor May June 2020

14 The Oregon Surveyor  | Vol. 43, No. 3 Featured Article I t’s been almost 11 months since I traveled to Switzerland with six other United States licensed land survey- ors. Although I’m just getting around to writing about the experience, the trip has had me thinking, this whole time, about how we can improve our property boundary line system here in the United States. Considering that Switzerland is the size of Connecti- cut, it’s daunting to try to project their system onto the entire United States. Therefore, I’ve decided to set my sights on systematizing at a more local level. Ideally, this system will be scalable so it can be implemented in other areas. In no way am I suggesting we start small... I believe we can implement such a sys- tem in the greatest city in the world: New York. After all, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, as the song goes. Some back story In the spring of 2018, I got an email from Rich Leaver, a licensed land sur- veyor in Wisconsin. Rich had done some great and useful research comparing the property line systems of the Unit- ed States to other countries. Rich’s research pointed to the U.S. as being one of the worst systems in the world, and Switzerland being one of the best, for managing real property boundary lines (https://www.xyht.com/surveying/ contrasting-cadastral-systems-us-swi/) . I have a lot of respect for Rich and the way he has gone out of his way to improve the land surveying profession. He is at the end of his career and he wants to set up a system that makes sense for the future. He contacted me because I was listed as a younger member delegate for NSPS. I believe Rich tried contacting hundreds of land surveyors all over the U.S. I took in- terest in his correspondence because it sounded familiar. You see, my business partner and mentor, Greg de Bruin, had been touting for years this crazy idea he called “The One Last Survey.” TheOne Last Survey was his idea to survey all property lines in the state plane coor- dinate system, and record the geometry and coordinates in a GIS with metadata about how the boundary lines were estab- lished. Greg had been talking about this for years, and even had written on the subject. He liked making it the subject of conversation at meetings and events held by the New York State Association of Pro- fessional Land Surveyors (NYSAPLS). Then when Greg became president of NYSAP- LS, he submitted the profound article you just read on page 12 to the association’s publication, Empire State Surveyor . So Rich contacted me about the same crap Greg’s been touting, and he further drew me in with the idea of actually trav- eling to Switzerland. I’ve been wanting to travel to Europe, and here was my opportunity. I definitely take my role se - riously, as a young professional, to work towards making improvements to our system and the profession, and at the very least, help spread the word about what we could be doing even if I can’t find the time to do it myself (remem - ber, it took me 11 months to write this). Switzerland, The One Last Survey, and The Repository Christine Gayron, PLS I’ve decided to set my sights on systematizing at a more local level... In no way am I suggesting we start small... I believe we can implement such a system in the greatest city in the world: New York. After all, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, as the song goes.