Eric D. Colburn, PLS

PROFESSIONAL LAND SURVEYOR SURVEY

In this week’s Professional Land Surveyor Survey, I’m asking for your assessment of:

Business Conditions Survey for August 2010?

Are you seeing any improvements in the business climate, no change at a all, or is the business climate worsening.

I’ll be posting an update to this Business Conditions Survey monthly, and hopefully we’ll see continual improvements in the future.

It would be very helpful, too, if after you take the survey you also leave a comment explaining your answer and tell us the general location of where you are, which could give us some insights into where things are looking up, or not.

What do you think?

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ACSM

ACSM Lobby Day Webinar Rebroadcast

Join the American Congress on Surveying & Mapping (ACSM) for a Webinar on August 3, 2010. This Lobby Day Webinar, originally broadcast on June 22, discusses useful tips for ACSM members in securing and attending meetings with your Members of Congress.

You may or may not be aware that ACSM is not having a Lobby Day on Capitol Hill this year, and instead is asking ACSM members to visit their Representatives and Senators during summer recess, from August 9 to September 9. In addition to the tips found in this Webinar, you will also find the following three issues that ACSM would like you to specifically discuss with your Representatives and Senators during the recess:

1. Preservation of Railroad Monumentation.
2. Repeal of the 3% Withholding Tax on Government Contracts.
3. Federal Funding for Trig-Star.

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Professional Land Surveyor News

FEMA Announces That eLOMA Is Available Again

The other day I told you FEMA announced that the eLOMA process was temporarily unavailable. Also, FEMA would not be issuing Letters of Map Amendment (LOMA).

This was because Congress did not reauthorize funding for FEMA, along with other programs such as extension of the current highway bill and funding for extending federal unemployment benefits, the National Flood Insurance Program’s authorities expired on February 28, 2010.

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Professional Land Surveyor News

FEMA Announces That eLOMA Is Temporarily Unavailable

Yesterday, as a registered user of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Mapping Information Platform (MIP), I received an email notice that the eLOMA process is temporarily unavailable. Also, FEMA will not be issuing Letters of Map Amendment (LOMA).

Because Congress did not reauthorize funding for FEMA, along with other programs such as extension of the current highway bill and funding for extending federal unemployment benefits, the National Flood Insurance Program’s authorities expired on February 28, 2010.

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Cost of Business?

I just finished reading an interesting post on another Civil 3D blog concerning the one year release cycle and Autodesk subscription plan as it relates to Civil 3D users. In large part, the post and conversation centered around: backwards compatibility, reliability and cost, among other things.

What I Said

I left a comment, too, which was inspiration for this post. My comment was as follows:

In general I like the annual upgrades with the following exceptions and issues kept in mind:

1. The 1 year subscription program benefits Autodesk monetarily more than users benefit by any increase functionality and usability. Autodesk would be better served if it separated the versioning issue from the payment/cost/budgeting issue. They are not related at all and if the next issue is taken into account they can be divorced and the yearly upgrade will make better sense from a payment/cost/budgeting standpoint.
2. It’s old-fashioned, but, don’t release a product unless it works 100 percent. Users did not pay top dollar for the opportunity to be guinea pigs. Then to force them to pay more after one year for another less than 100 percent piece of software is a bitter pill to swallow.
3. Backwards/forward compatibility is a complex issue with serious business and financial ramifications. First, alienating your paying customer who paid for a so-called “older version” (a year, really?) is a questionable practice. Second, it can be a trap for those who are “early adopters’, if you will, when trying to work in the real world where due to the yearly upgrades, cost, stability issues, and integration of those upgrades, many organizations don’t implement upgrades (perhaps smartly) concurrently, if at all. This creates more work and cost money for the person using the “latest and the greatest” when delivering or sharing a digital work product. Third, even within the smallest of organizations, backwards incompatibility can be burdensome.
4. It seems counterintuitive but I think Autodesk would get a lot less flak about annual renewal if they allowed, and even encouraged, monthly payments throughout the year. Then, they could concentrate on producing a flawless software solution with long-term purposeful improvements to functionality and usability making their software a better business and technical tool.

Just a few thoughts.

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Professional Land Surveyor News

Builder Confidence Improves in February

February 16, 2010 – Builder confidence in the market for newly built, single-family homes rose two points to 17 in February as favorable home buying conditions and signs of healing in the job market helped boost the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI), released today.

“Continued low interest rates, very attractive home prices that appear to have stabilized in many markets, and the availability of the home buyer tax credit make this an opportune time for potential purchasers,” said NAHB Chairman Bob Jones, a home builder from Bloomfield Hills, Mich. “As a result, builders are slightly more optimistic that the housing recovery is finally beginning to take root.”

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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT

President Proposes $1.1 Billion for BLM in Fiscal Year 2011 to Protect Resources and Manage Uses of Public Lands

With a focus on renewable energy development, climate change adaptation, and other key priorities, President Obama today requested $1.1 billion in appropriations for the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management in Fiscal Year 2011. This represents an $8.0 million increase from the BLM’s FY 2010 enacted funding level.  The President’s request reflects his continuing commitment to be prudent with taxpayer dollars while setting priorities for spending.

“Today’s budget proposal will advance the BLM’s mission of protecting the land’s resources while facilitating environmentally sound use of America’s public lands,” said BLM Director Bob Abbey. “Under this proposal, we can and will meet the challenges facing our agency in today’s fast-growing West.” Under the President’s proposed budget, the BLM will focus on the following priorities:

New Energy Frontier

The New Energy Frontier initiative recognizes the value of environmentally sound, scientifically grounded development of both renewable and conventional energy resources on the Nation’s public lands. To encourage and facilitate renewable energy development, the President’s FY 2011 BLM budget proposes a $3.0 million increase that builds on the $16.1 million increase for renewable energy provided in FY 2010. The funds would be used to complete environmental studies for solar energy projects in Nevada and potential wind energy zones in Oregon and Nevada. In the conventional energy program, the BLM will focus on implementing oil and gas leasing reforms put forward by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar while placing continued emphasis on oil and gas inspections, environmental enforcement, and production monitoring activities.  The budget includes a $2.0 million increase in BLM’s Soil, Water, and Air Management program for air quality monitoring that will be targeted to areas with current or anticipated intensive oil and gas development to help BLM ensure that the energy development complies with environmental requirements and minimizes or addresses potential litigation issues.
The Budget maintains BLM’s oil and gas management program capacity at current levels, with a $3.0 million decrease to reflect the completion of specific Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) studies. In addition, the Budget proposes new fees – estimated to generated $10 million annually – to help offset the cost of BLM’s oil and gas inspection and enforcement activities.

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RealtorsTV: National Association of Realtors-Existing Home Sales Down But Prices Rise

Professional Land Surveyor News

December Existing-Home Sales Down but Prices Rise; 2009 Sales Up

Washington, January 25, 2010

After a rising surge from September through November, existing-home sales fell as expected in December after first-time buyers rushed to complete sales before the original November deadline for the tax credit. However, prices rose from December 2008 and annual sales improved in 2009, according to the National Association of Realtors®.

Existing-home sales – including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – fell 16.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate1 of 5.45 million units in December from 6.54 million in November, but remain 15.0 percent above the 4.74 million-unit level in December 2008.

For all of 2009 there were 5,156,000 existing-home sales, which was 4.9 percent higher than the 4,913,000 transactions recorded in 2008; it was the first annual sales gain since 2005.

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said there were no surprises in the data. “It’s significant that home sales remain above year-ago levels, but the market is going through a period of swings driven by the tax credit,” he said. “We’ll likely have another surge in the spring as home buyers take advantage of the extended and expanded tax credit. By early summer the overall market should benefit from more balanced inventory, and sales are on track to rise again in 2010. However, the job market remains a concern and could dampen the housing recovery – job creation is key to a continued recovery in the second half of the year.”

An NAR practitioner survey2 shows first-time buyers purchased 43 percent of homes in December, down from 51 percent in November. Repeat buyers rose to 42 percent of transactions in December from 37 percent in November; the remaining sales were to investors.

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PROFESSIONAL LAND SURVEYOR SURVEY

In this week’s PROFESSIONAL LAND SURVEYOR SURVEY I’m asking the question:

Does Your Company Share Its Financial Data?

Is your firm one that has an open book policy and readily shares the financial health of the business? Or, perhaps, if they do share financial data, maybe it’s only a small portion or sanitized version or reality.

Open or Closed Book

I’ve worked at several companies, none of which shared much, if any, financial data. One reason why those companies kept closed books was because they didn’t want the employees to see the finances when times were good. In some respects, that’s understandable. I have been on both sides of the employee/employer paradigm. I now know that when I was an employee I didn’t understand what my bosses went through on a weekly basis to keep the ship moving in the right direction, to pay the employees and to pay all of the bills. As an employer, you fear that in keeping open books all an employee will see is revenue and not all the bills that chip away at those revenues, leaving little if any left over for you the boss.

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