Surveyors

Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. 13 rather than 17 because the traverse itself, robotic total station operation, drone flight lines, point-cloud registration and even preliminary deed plotting are already software-driven — what holds the score up is monument recovery, following footsteps of the original surveyor, and reconciling a fence line that contradicts the record, which no dataset supplies.

Hands-on in uncontrolled environments. 16 because you are locating pipes under blackberry thicket, chaining through wetland and snow, setting rebar and caps in frozen ground, and running control along live highway shoulders under MUTCD traffic setups — capped below 19 only because a growing share of hours are spent in the truck and at the CAD station rather than on the line.

Licensed human required and personally liable. 17 because a plat or ALTA/NSPS survey carries a PLS seal that binds one named individual under state board statute — a licence with a specific exam, four-year experience requirement, and revocation authority — and that seal is what makes the boundary admissible; short of 20 only because much crew work is legally delegable to unlicensed technicians.

Some relationship component. 10 because repeat title companies, civil engineers and developers pick a surveyor they know will not blow the closing date, and the neighbor dispute goes better if the landowners trust the person walking their line, but a subdivision plat is accepted on the seal and the record, not on who drew it.

Exists to be accountable for ambiguous calls. 16 because you weigh senior rights, ambiguous calls-and-distances, unrecorded occupation, and a found monument of uncertain origin to decide which of two overlapping deeds controls — a decision that moves property value, gets deposed, and cannot be appealed to a procedure manual.