Survey StatementofWork FINAL 2011TN TECHNICALSPECS.doc

NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE

TENNESSEE SPECIFIC

SCOPE OF WORK AND TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

LAND SURVEYS, INCLUDING BOUNDARY LINE MARKING AND GEOREFERENCING OF CORNER MONUMENTS ON PROGRAM EASEMENTS

1. SCOPE

The work shall consist of performing land surveys to 1) establish and locate the boundaries of the program easement area including the route of ingress and egress, if applicable, 2) install monuments and markers, and 3) prepare survey reports, plat maps and land descriptions for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Easement Programs in the State of Tennessee.

The contractor shall furnish all labor, materials (except Government-furnished material), transportation, equipment, tools, operating supplies, and other incidentals needed to complete the work as specified.

The Contracting Officer may at their discretion designate a Contracting Officer’s Representative, a Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative and/or a Contract Inspector to assist with the preparation, award, administration, inspection and acceptance of this professional land surveying services contract.

2. PERSONNEL

All work shall be performed by, or under the direct supervision of, a person licensed to practice land surveying in the State of Tennessee. Other support personnel shall have the training and experience to perform the work competently.

3. EQUIPMENT AND METHODS

Equipment for surveys shall be of the quality and condition to provide the accuracy required. Equipment shall be in good condition and in proper adjustment at all times. The Contractor shall keep a record of all adjustments and provide records as requested. The Contractor shall select the methods and instruments to be used for field data collection and boundary location. Methods such as traverse, triangulation, satellite and inertial positioning systems may be used.

All work shall be performed in accordance with the Tennessee State Effective Rules Chapter 0820 ("Rules of Tennessee State Board of Examiners for Land Surveyors”), hereinafter referred to as the Manual, and the NRCS specifications defined herein. In the case of a discrepancy between the requirements of the NRCS specifications and the Manual, the more stringent requirements shall govern.

4. COORDINATION OF SURVEY ACTIVITIES

Prior to the start of survey field work the NRCS will schedule a pre-survey site visit. Attending should be the Surveyor, Contracting Officer's Representative, District Conservationist and the landowner or the landowner’s representative. During the pre-survey site visit the proposed easement boundaries will be reviewed, as will the ingress and egress easement access route (if the easement is not adjacent to a publicly dedicated right-of-way). In those instances where an easement boundary is located in proximity to, adjoining, or in a water body, the land surveyor will depict and describe the easement boundary in sufficient detail to clearly identify the intent to include, or exclude, the riparian interests of the adjoining upland area being placed under the conservation easement. Riparian rights and water rights vary significantly by individual state law, the land surveyor shall consult with the landowner and an NRCS to determine the intent to include or exclude riparian rights and/or water rights on the upland area being placed in the easement. The work and data presented shall be in accordance with the appropriate state minimum standards for the practice of rural land surveying.

To the extent practicable the easement area boundaries will have been delineated and flagged on the ground by an NRCS Representative. In the event that the easement boundary coincides with a property line, such marking is intended to only approximate the boundary.

The Contracting Officer's Representative or the District Conservationist will provide the Surveyor with a preliminary title search and location map or aerial photograph of the proposed easement area. The map will include the area to be surveyed, the ingress/egress route(s) or point of access and any other applicable descriptive information.

The Surveyor shall notify the District Conservationist and the landowner of the date and time for conducting any surveying fieldwork prior to beginning. If the work is not started on the planned date, the surveyor shall notify the District Conservationist and landowner of the revised date and time that work will begin. Notification shall be provided a minimum of 72 hours prior to beginning any surveying fieldwork.

5. SURVEYS

The minimum standard of accuracy for the work shall be a category “III” survey as defined by the Manual. The land surveyor shall locate the easement area boundary corner points using bearings and distances as referenced to the National Spatial Reference System. The boundary survey shall be a complete perimeter metes and bounds description of the area tied to two monumented corners of a recorded deed or survey plat.

The contractor shall inspect documents provided by the NRCS and recorded documents in the County Register’s Office for the purpose of retrieving ownership information, recorded plat maps, and deeds of record for the subject and adjoining properties.

The contractor shall show latitude and longitude along with Tennessee State Plane Coordinates (NAD83) for 1) the Point of Beginning for the program easement area, 2) the Point of Beginning for the ingress and egress easement area, if applicable, and 3) at least four other corners of the program easement area. All coordinate values shown will reflect the accuracy for the category of the survey preformed.

Any conflicts or encroachments discovered by the contractor in the course of the work shall be reported to the Contracting Officer’s Representative by the most expeditious means, followed by notification in writing within five (5) working days. The contractor, will not be required to resolve title or possession conflicts, but shall be required to report facts and any professional opinions that may be relative to the conflict. The contractor shall cease work in the area of conflict until further directed by the COR.

Any significant (more than 5 percent) variation in the acres surveyed should be reported to the Contracting Officer’s Representative immediately. The surveyor will not modify the easement area surveyed at the direction of the landowner. The boundary of the easement area must not be changed from what is indicated. Only the NRCS Contracting Officer may authorize a modification to the easement area boundary. Any variations in the number of acres surveyed should be reported to the Contracting Officer immediately. Any questions regarding the easement area should be directed to the Contracting Officer’s Representative.

The land description shall include a delineated route of ingress/egress. The ingress/egress route to the program easement area will be described in the survey, shown on the survey plat, and recorded with the Warranty Easement Deed.

6. BOUNDARY LINE MARKING

The boundary line shall be marked with visible monuments, witness post with signs, painted tree blazing, and/or signs as appropriate. The markings shall be visible from one marking to the next. All signs, markers, or blazing shall face away from the easement area.

Monuments and witness posts with signs shall be installed by the Surveyor at the time the survey is completed. Monuments and witness posts with signs shall be installed at each corner, angle point, road crossing, intersection of property lines and approximately every 500 feet along a tangent. All monuments must be thoroughly described and specifically identified as set or found, whenever shown on maps or referred to in documents prepared by the Surveyor. Descriptions of monuments must be sufficient in detail to readily facilitate future recovery by other Surveyors and to enable positive identification.

All corners shall be established, and shall be metal. The minimum diameter for a monument will be 1/2”. The minimum length for the monument will be 24 inches long. The monument shall be driven just below the ground surface in open areas. Caps (approved by NRCS) shall be placed on each marker. Monuments set in wooded areas shall not be driven below the ground surface. If there is a reason that such a monument cannot be established, the reason for a deviation for the NRCS specifications will be noted on the face of the plat of survey.

The Surveyor shall provide witness posts, sign bolts and nuts. Sign bolts shall have a minimum length so as to protrude at least one inch past the firmly tightened nut. Witness posts shall be a steel “U” channel post at least seventy-eight (78) inches in length and have a minimum weight of 1.25 lbs per foot. Posts shall be of a natural color, preferably green. NRCS will provide the signs. The Surveyor will be required to pick up the signs at the local NRCS office. The Contractor is required to attach a NRCS boundary sign, to the top of each witness post using a galvanized nut and bolt. A wire attachment is not acceptable. The protruding sign bolts shall be bent after attachment to the signs and posts to prevent the nuts from separating from the bolts. The NRCS easement signs have two 3/8 inch drilled holes.

Some easement boundaries may be a river, creek, bayou, or lake. In those cases, the easement boundary will be determined on a case by case basis after discussion and clarification of intent with NRCS and the landowner and in compliance with appropriate state law on water boundaries. An on-site clarification of this boundary shall be determined by the surveyor, Contracting Officer’s Representative, District Conservationist, and landowner. A description point shall be included for the boundary intersection points. An offset point may need to be established on each boundary line intersecting river, creek, bayou or lake boundary. The offset point shall have a permanent marker, whereas the river, creek, bayou, or lake boundary intersection point may not. The offset and the permanent markers allow for a visual marker on the ground for use in maintaining the boundary integrity. Visibility, potential stream bank changes, encroachment and recreational use in the area shall be factors in locating the witness corner for corner locations actually located in the water body. Witness corners offset from the actual corner location in the water body shall be set in whole feet along both the incoming and outgoing boundary line segments if possible. Witness corner locations and bearings and distances to the witness corners shall be clearly documented on the survey plat of the easement area. In those instances where the desired easement boundary is located in a water body, care should be exercised to insure public and private use of the water body is not inconsistent with the intent of the easement area. The land surveyor shall report to the Contracting Officer, or the designated Contracting Officers Representative, any such encumbrances discovered within the easement area.

Excluded areas within the main boundary area shall be surveyed as described above. All private/ public roads (and associated roadway easement) should be excluded from the main WRP boundary area. The net program easement area shall be reported by the surveyor and computed by subtracting the excluded areas from the main boundary area. The net program easement area shall be computed to the nearest hundredth of an acre.

In wooded areas, the contractor shall blaze 6 inch minimum diameter (DBH) trees that lie completely or partially within three feet of the easement boundary line. Trees shall be blazed with two parallel horizontal marks facing the easement boundary. Trees intersecting the easement boundary line shall be blazed with one vertical mark at both points where the easement boundary line penetrates the tree. The blazed marks shall be painted with white tree marking paint.

7. INGRESS AND EGRESS ROUTE (if applicable) Unless otherwise specified the ingress and egress route shall be twenty (20) feet in width.

The contractor shall tie the ingress and egress route to the easement boundary and to the designated public road. Monuments shall be set at the Point of Beginning and the point at which the ingress and egress route intersects either a property line or the program easement line. Points along this route which require monumentation will also require witness posts and will be referenced on the plat of survey as monuments set and will show latitude, longitude and state plane coordinate values.

If an ingress/egress easement is not being delineated, the method of access will be stated on the face of the plat of survey. In the case of the program easement adjoining a public roadway, a note on the face of the plat of survey stating that the program easement will be accessible in a manner that will be acceptable. If the program easement being surveyed is adjoining an existing program easement and will use the delineated route of ingress/egress easement for that existing program easement, the recording information for the existing program easement will be shown on the face of the plat of survey if it is available. If the recording information is not yet available, the existing program easement will be labled with the landowner’s name and the NRCS Property Application Number.

8. RECORDING SURVEY DATA

All survey data obtained by the contractor shall be recorded and maintained in accordance with state standards of practice.

9. SUBMITTALS

The vendor shall submit an Adobe PDF file of the Survey Plat, Program Easement Descriptions, Ingress/Egress Description and Surveyors Report for review and comments, prior to shipping hardcopies of the documents. These files will be sent to the Contracting Officer, Contracting Officers Representative or Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative as determined by the work order. After the file has been reviewed by NRCS and the vendor address changes as needed the following will be submitted for approval.

The Surveyor shall prepare an appropriately scaled drawing of the survey. The Surveyor shall provide 5 original 24 X 36 plats and three 11 X 17 copies of the survey plat and three copies of all attachments which include the legal description and the ingress and egress easement to the Contracting Officers Representative. The Surveyor is not to provide a copy of the plat to others without the approval of the contracting officer.

The plat of survey shall, at a minimum, include the following items:

· The surveyor’s seal shall be affixed to the drawing, and shall be signed and dated by the surveyor in blue ink across the seal;

· Latitude and longitude for the point of beginning and other specified points;

· The record description of the property or the reference to the source of the recorded description on the property of which the easement is located on;

· The survey description of the easement area as Attachment A to the survey;

· The survey description of the route of ingress/egress to the subject property as Attachment B to the survey and shown on the survey plat;

· North arrow;

· Graphic Scale;

· The point of beginning of the easement boundary and the point of beginning of the ingress and egress easement, if applicable, shall be clearly identified and noted as such. If the point of commencement differs from the point of beginning it must be clearly identified and noted.

· The surveyor shall identify all lines on the plat of survey by line type or note. The surveyor must indicate and cite the source of all lines copied from previous surveys, copied from tax maps or plotted from deeds.

· The direction of courses shall be shown in bearings, or azimuths to whole seconds of arc, and the distances to hundredths of feet for all courses, course tables may be used on the survey plat;

· The central angles, length of curves, radius and the length and bearing of the long chords from the point of curvatures to the point of tangencies for each curve along the boundary line. In addition curves should be noted on the survey plat as either simple, compound or spiral ; and if they are railroad curves or highway curves, curve tables may be used on the survey plat;

· Basis of bearings or azimuth;

· Scale Factor and Geoid used for State Plane Coordinate Values;

· Monuments identified as set or found along with a detailed description of the monument;

· Area of the surveyed easement;

· Observed evidence of possession or use by others in the parcel or across any perimeter lines of the property;

· Recorded encumbrances, rights of way or other easements.

· Sufficient data to indicate the theory of location applied in formulating the opinions as to the probable location of the boundaries and corners of the property;

· Name, registration number, address and phone number of the Surveyor;

· Client name;

· Date survey completed;

· NRCS Contract number (in the legend of the survey plat);

· NRCS Property application number;

· Certification- The following statement must be include on each survey:

· “THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT THIS SURVEY, DONE BY THE UNDERSIGNED, WAS DONE ON THE GROUND IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE MOST RECENT MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR PROPERTY BOUNDARY SUVEYS- AS SET FORTH BY THE (insert name of state agency responsible for licensing surveyors). THE ACCURACY AND POSITION TOLERANCE ARE ALSO IN ACCORDANCE WITH CATEGORY III SURVEYS.

· Compact disk containing an electronic copy of the easement survey shall include:

· AutoCAD, version 2000 or greater file of the survey in Tennessee State Plane Coordinate System (NAD83). The.dwg file will be referenced to the appropriate State Plane Coordinate System, North American Datum 1983, local zone, U.S. Survey Feet and basis of bearing to grid north. The perimeter of the easement should be attributed as a separate and extractable polyline layer or polygon feature component of the drawing for conversion to a geographic information system (GIS).

· MS Word or Text document containing the legal description of the easement boundary and if applicable the ingress and egress easement.

· Polygon Shape files of the survey with all points projected into the (NAD83 Tennessee State Plane) coordinate system in a (.shp, .dbf or .shx) format. Each polygon should contain three attributes

· NRCS assigned agreement number

· Easement Acres (value to the tenth of an acre)

· The method of data capture

· Each polygon should have the following Metadata:

· Date generated

· Software and version used to generate file

· Brief description of process used to generate files

· Provide ESRI ARC Info export/Info export (.e00) or shapefile (.shp, .dbf, .shx) Projection must be clearly defined. If no geographic projection, the following is required:

· Projection (NAD 83)

· Units

· Datum

· Spheroid

· Xshift

· Yshift

· Central meridian

· 1st standard parallel

· 2nd standard parallel

· Latitude of projection

· False easting

· False northing

· Geospatial/Data joining. Identify the data fields required to join the spatial data to the database.

· A computer generated tabulation of bearings, distances and coordinates around the easement area with a computer generated closure statement indicating the cited bearings and distances meet acceptable state standards for survey closure accuracies and the area of the easement. The survey plat, legal description and tabulation demonstrating acceptable survey closure shall all consistently traverse the perimeter of the easement area in the same direction with the same starting and ending points.

· A copy of the original source documents creating the subject parcel in which the easement is area is located.

· The contractor shall provide a surveyor’s report containing a narrative description of method used to locate points and theory of location applied in formulating the opinions as to the probable location of the boundaries and corners of the property (an example can be provided upon request);

· The plat and description shall be titled "Plat or Description of (Wetland Reserve, Flood Plain, Grassland Reserve) Program Easement No. * on lands of * prepared for USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service."

The contractor shall be responsible for ascertaining any special or particular requirements of the Register of Deeds in the county where the survey area(s) is (are) located as to the size of plat map required for recording, and furnishing plat maps of proper size for recording. Lettering shall be of sufficient size that it will remain legible after plat is reduced to the size required for recording.

10. INSPECTION AND ACCEPTANCE

The Contracting Officer, Contracting Officer’s Representative, or District Conservationist may make periodic inspections of any phase of the work as it progresses. The contractor shall, without charge, make available for inspection, originals or copies of such items as field notes, working plats and drawings, material obtained through research, computation sheets, computer printouts, correspondence to and from adjoining landowners, and any other item deemed necessary to ensure contract compliance and to verify accomplishments.

The contractor shall request an inspection upon completion of the field work and the District Conservationist and the landowner will ensure that: (1) the area delineated with permanent markers was the area that the landowner intended to place under easement and (2) permanent markers have been installed as required. If a discrepancy is identified, the surveyor will be required to meet with the District Conservationist and landowner to reconcile the difference.

Acceptance of the work will be made only after the NRCS has inspected the work, including all field work and submittals from the contractor and determined them to conform to the specifications, terms, and conditions of this contract.

11. MEASUREMENT AND PAYMENT

For items for which lump sum prices are established in the contract, payment will be made upon completion of the work as specified, and receipt by the contracting officer of the specified products. Payment of the lump sum contract price will constitute full compensation for completion of the work including all labor, materials, equipment and any other items necessary and incidental to the completion of the work.

12. CONFLICT OF INTEREST

A Surveyor will not survey a NRCS easement property for a spouse, child(ren), partner(s), or business associate(s), nor have a financial interest in the property to be covered by the proposed easement.

13. NON-DISCLOSURE

Work performance required by this SOW will involve access to potentially sensitive information about governmental and landowner issues. All Contractor personnel must comply with the terms of AGAR 452.224-70, Confidentiality of Information, as well as provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974, 5 U.S.C 552a. Additionally, the Contractor’s employees shall comply with privacy of personal information relating to Natural Resources Conservation Service programs in accordance with Section 1244 Title II of the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (P.L. 1078-171).

14. CIVIL RIGHTS AND PROGRAM DELIVERY

The Contractor will ensure that personnel prohibit discrimination in all aspects of programs and activities related to the Contract on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, or marital or family status.