BC171011 – Issue 4
October 2011
Supervision
The Board has been concerned for some time about the level of supervision that is currently being provided to registered persons who are carrying out Cadastral surveys without a Cadastral endorsement under Section 75 of the Surveyors Act 2003.
The Board’s policy is comprehensive and explicit. It was designed to provide practitioners with sufficient discretion to vary the level of supervision provided, to reflect the level of competence of the registered surveyor being supervised. The policy in some cases is not being complied with and the level of discretion has been stretched far beyond what was originally envisaged. It is inappropriate for supervising surveyors not to have regular face-to-face contact with the surveyor being supervised, whatever the level of assumed competence he or she has.
In order to reinforce the requirement for contact between the supervising and supervised surveyor, the following paragraph has been added to the policy. The Board considers supervision to include: “frequent face to face meetings with the supervised registered person. In the event that there are issues with surveys carried out by a registered person, the supervising surveyor can be requested to produce the records that this policy requires and to demonstrate and justify the level of supervision provided.”
It is recommended that all surveyors make themselves familiar with the contents of the policy and the responsibilities attached thereto.
Cadastral Survey
The Board takes this opportunity to again inform surveyors of the board’s interpretation of section 75 of the Surveyors Act 2003 (Act).
For your reference the Act, s75 states:
75 Carrying out a cadastral survey
(1) A person must not carry out a cadastral survey unless the person is –
(a) A cadastral surveyor; or
(b) A surveyor, surveying graduate or surveying associate carrying out the survey under the supervision of a cadastral surveyor who, expressly or impliedly, accepts responsibility for the survey’s survey quality.
Maximum penalty – 100 penalty units.
(2) A person must not charge a fee for carrying out a cadastral survey unless the person is a consulting cadastral surveyor.
Maximum penalty – 50 penalty units.
A penalty unit is equivalent to $100.00.
To assist registered persons to assess if they meet the requirements of the Act, at the Board Meeting held on 23 July 2009, the Board approved the following definitions.
Cadastral Survey
“A cadastral survey is any activity that uses or generates cadastral evidence to produce an outcome whose primary purpose is boundary determination. The products of a boundary determination can be plans, certificates or digital data. This does not include the representation of cadastral data.”
Carry Out
A person is carrying out a cadastral survey if they are present at the site of the survey and directing the field activity.
Under the above definitions, the following practices would not comply with Section 75:
- sending an unregistered technician into the field to measure the location of existing cadastral survey marks, so that a cadastral surveyor can work out the reinstatement in the office;
- loading the locations of new corners in an estate into the data recorder, and sending an unregistered technician into the field to place the pegs and reference marks.
The Board encourages all registered cadastral surveyors to assess the compliance of their practice with the Act as soon as possible.