If you have ever thought about becoming a surveyor, then this article is for you. You'll learn everything you ever wanted to know about becoming a surveyor, where surveyors work, how much they get paid, what kind of additional in-service training they need, how you can become a surveyor, some of the dangers involved in the job, when you can expect to retire and how you can make difference in the lives of the people you serve.
Being a surveyor involves a mix of outdoor fieldwork and office analysis, blending high-tech data collection (drones, 3D laser scanners, GPS) with historical research and legal boundary law.
Surveyors measure and map the land, property, and terrain to establish accurate legal boundaries, elevations, features for construction, real estate, and legal purposes.
A typical day for a surveyor is a mix of outdoor fieldwork and indoor office work, focusing on measuring, mapping, and analyzing land or structures.
Surveyors can work anywhere. They can work in an office, out on the city street, out in the forest or even in a mine.
Here in Quebec to become a surveyor you can either go to CÉGEP, or do a DEP. If, you take the CÉGEP route it takes about 3 years to be able to become a surveyor, but you also get a collegiate education diploma but, if you don't care about all of that you can do a DEP that takes you 2 years.
Surveyors can make anywhere between $50 000 a year up to $100 000 dollars a year.
Surveyors often need security training to be able to access job sites.
The job itself isn't very dangerous, but you will often be working on job sites that have a lot of dangers around you. Like moving vehicles, people not paying attention and stuff that can trip you up or make you fall.
A surveyors job is already very robotic but the hard par of the job is getting the machines to where they need to be and pointing them and what they need to be pointed at. which is pretty much impossible to do with today's technology.
Surveyors retire around 55-60 years old on average depending on how much they have been able to save over the years.
I am currently in CÉGEP and once I graduate I would like to be working as a surveyor in a mine. Eventually I would like to become a supervisor of some sort.