Lavelle & Associates did an incredible job on my not so regular sized lot! Once I requested service…read moreonline through Yelp! I received an immediate email explaining how the survey process works and the full transparent costs were presented at the time. Definitely contact Lavelle & Assc for any surveying needs. For me it helped establish the property line between me and my neighbor, before any construction was to begin.

I recently needed to find a surveyor to perform a complete survey of a ~4 acre forested…read moremountainside property on which I live in a rural mountainous area, in large part because the landowner and I had realized that it had apparently been over 70 years since a really good/thorough professional survey had been done on the property, and also due to the fact that there are lots of ambiguities about the exact location of some of the property boundaries, which is not at all unusual for heavily-forested mountainside properties in rural areas. This company, Lavelle & Associates, was one of two local survey companies that I called in the hopes of finding a very good surveyor willing and able to do the job (the other company that I called never did call me back...). When I first called Lavelle, my call was routed to the phone of Dustin Lavelle, who, I had been told by a receptionist, was in charge of the survey division of the company (I learned a couple of days later, well after Dustin's return call, that he is the president of the company). My call to Dustin's extension on that first call rolled to voicemail b/c Dustin was not available, and I left him a brief VM introducing myself, explaining what I was looking for, and leaving my contact phone number. Dustin Lavelle called me back about 20 minutes later, and, after basic introductions both ways, he encouraged me to tell him more about the property and about the goals that the landowner and I had for the survey, a task which took at least five minutes. When I was done answering all of Dustin's questions and providing basic information, which means that we were already at least 6 minutes into the call, he then proceeded to take at least 47 additional minutes of his time to explain to me a number of things about the task at hand, including the following: -- he revealed to me that during the early minutes of our call, he had brought up on his computer screen some of the survey maps and other info about the property accrued in county and state records over the past 100+ years, and shared with me some of that information as needed. -- he then explained to me the various challenges that I would face in getting from the prospective survey all of the information that the landowner and I were seeking, simply due to the limitations of surveying rural heavily-forested mountainside properties, and also due to the known deficiencies of the reference points used in earlier surveys done on the property over the past 130+ years. -- he also explained the various challenges and problems that any good surveyor would face in performing a full survey of this type, and in delivering the various deliverables (new markers at all corners, markers at intervals along perimeters, a survey map showing the property lines with respect to a nearby road and creek, as well as depictions of the locations of driveway, house, well house, outhouse, and other key human-made structures/ infrastructure, etc.). -- he then gave me a ballpark range for the fee that any good surveyor would likely charge for the job, an estimate that was quite close to what I had predicted would be the fee range. -- he then proceeded to tell me -- and this is after having spent almost an hour of his time giving me what amounted to a very-high-quality graduate-school-level crash course (and I should know; I spent almost a decade of my life in grad school studying the sciences, and four years studying engineering at the university level...) in rural forested mountainside property surveying and the challenges thereof -- that while he was willing to remain in the background as my resource person, and while he would be willing to do the survey if no one else would do it, he wished to decline the job for now because he felt that he was not the most qualified person to do it. -- He instead referred me to a much smaller survey company in a small rural mountain town located in the same mountain range in which I live, telling me that they had far more experience with surveying this unique type of property than he had. (BTW, I called that company a few hours later, and within an hour of calling I hired that survey company that Dustin had so kindly recommended.) After Dusin's customized mini-graduate-level tele-course in mountainside surveying, along with recommendations, had ended, I was speechless with graditude and appreciation. I asked him if he would allow me to reimburse him by paying a consulting fee of at least $200 for all of the time and excellent advice that he had just given to me, but he absolutely refused my offer, telling me that what he had just done was simply part of his job as a professional, and it was all free of charge. Well, I am a professional myself (multi-disciplinary consulting & R&D scientist-engineer) and I can tell you that Dustin went well beyond the call of duty in assisting me, a prospective customer, and in ensuring that I would have only the best possible outcome! Amazing! Beyond 5 stars!