CHAPTER 10ENGINEERING AND LAND SURVEYSThis chapter discusses important factors of engi-neering surveying and is presented from the viewpointof the party chief. Included in the discussion are de-sign-data surveys, such as route surveys; and con-struction surveys that include stakeout and as-builtsurveys.Also discussed in this chapter is land surveyingwhich is a special type of surveying performed forthe purpose of establishing or reestablishing landboundaries, preparing legal property descriptions, andsubdividing tracts of land. Although a complete cov-erage of land surveying is beyond the scope of thisTRAMAN, you will be acquainted with the proce-dures and some of the legal aspects involved.ENGINEERING SURVEYSIn the EA3 TRAMAN, you learned that engi-neering surveys are subdivided into design-data sur-veys and construction surveys. A design-data surveyis an orderly process of obtaining data that is neededfor the planning and design of an engineering project.The activities involved in design-data surveying varyaccording to the type and complexity of the engineer-ing or construction project; for example, the activitiesmight include simply obtaining topographic data for aproposed building site, or they may include extensiveroute surveying and soils investigation for a highway.Construction surveying is divided into (1) the layout,or stakeout, survey and (2) the as-built survey. Thelayout, or stakeout, survey consists of locatingand marking (staking) horizontal and vertical controlpoints to guide construction crews, and giving line andgrade as needed to establish additional control pointsand to reestablish disturbed stakes. The as-built surveyincludes making measurements to verify the locationsand dimensions of completed elements of a newstructure and to determine the amount of workaccomplished up to a given date.Let’s begin the subject of engineering surveyswith a discussion of route surveying.ROUTE SURVEYSA route survey, as the name implies, is a surveythat deals with the route or course that a highway,road, or utility line will follow. While the end productof a route survey for a highway certainly differs fromthat for a utility line, it may, nevertheless, be said thatthe purposes of any route survey are to1. select one or more tentative general routes forthe roadway or utility,2. gather enough information about the generalroute to make it possible for designers to select the finallocation of the route, and3. mark this final location.Consistent with these purposes, a route survey isusually broken down into reconnaissance, pre-liminary, and final-location survey phases thatsatisfy, respectively, each of the purposes givenabove. Sometimes, however, circumstances may pre-clude the requirement to perform all three phases; forexample, if a new road or utility line is to beconstructed on a military installation having well-marked vertical and horizontal control networks andup-to-date topographic maps and utility maps, thenperhaps the reconnaissance and preliminary surveyphases would not be required. Chapter 14 of the EA3TRAMAN discusses each phase of route surveying asapplied to roads and highways. That discussion ispresented in sufficient enough depth to preclude theneed to further discuss highway route surveying inthis TRAMAN. You should, however, review thatdiscussion and read other publications dealing withthe subject of route surveying.Aside from roads and highways, other uses ofroute surveys are for aboveground utility lines-mostcommonly power and communication lines—and forunderground utilities, such as power, communication,sewer, water, gas, and fuel lines. The character of theroute survey for a utility will vary, of course,with different circumstances; for example, a sanitarysewer, water distribution line, or an electricaldistribution line in an urban area will generally followthe streets on which the buildings it serves are located.Also, since these areas will, in all likelihood, have10-1
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