SURV499 Vacation Employment

Overview

Approved work experience.

The purpose of SURV 499 Vacation Employment is to enable students to gain further practical experience in the application of the theoretical knowledge and practical skills that they have learned from the course, so far as they have progressed. All students must complete 80 days of employment under the direction and supervision of an appropriate surveying or engineering professional. The specific nature of the work undertaken is not critical, but it must be related to surveying practice in some way.

About this paper

Limited to

BSurv, BSurv(Hons)

Schedule C

Science

Eligibility

SURV 499 Vacation Employment is a compulsory paper for the BSurv and BSurv(Hons) degrees.

SURV 499 must be completed before a Bachelor of Surveying degree can be awarded. There are no course fees, and no points are gained by completing it. However, without a 'completion' for this subject, graduation cannot take place.

Contact

fraser.jopson@otago.ac.nz

Teaching staff

Course Co-ordinator: Fraser Jopson

 

Paper Structure

The work is expected to be undertaken during the long vacations of the BSurv course, although credit may be given for work in shorter breaks during the year.

Twenty days may be credited to students who have undertaken extensive surveying work prior to entry into the BSurv first professional year and each claim will be evaluated individually.  Each claim must provide verification of an additional surveying qualification and the experience completed must be presented to the School in the form of a signed letter from the supervising surveyor or engineer who certifies the period worked, number of days worked and the type of work undertaken. It must be surveying- or engineering-related work.

Credits are generally calculated on the basis of complete days, assuming that if shorter days are worked on some occasions, these will be compensated for by longer days being worked at some other time. A day should be approximately eight hours. However, consistently long hours of work will be given appropriate credit.

To complete SURV 499, each student must submit a final written report. The report should cover the type of work experience undertaken and work experiences that you would not have gained had you not worked for a surveying company, plus a review of our curriculum - in terms of papers that were useful, papers that weren't useful, things that may have been done differently from that taught at Survey School, etc. The report is not expected to be any longer than it needs to be to clearly meet the needs given above. However, the report should be prepared in a form consistent with professional standards of presentation (i.e. layout, spelling, grammar, structure and organisation, signed and dated). Your report will be returned for correction if these standards are not met.

Teaching Arrangements

The documentation for SURV 499 must be made on an annual basis in the standard format. The report must be given to the co-ordinator by the end of March each year.

1. Daily diary sheets and summary sheet categorising the work done
   Or
2. A short written report if a student is unable to obtain vacation employment over the course of the year. A short report needs to be submitted to the co-ordinator stating what attempts were made to find vacation employment. State what firms were sent your CV, what firms were physically contacted or what positions were applied for
   Or
3. If a student makes no attempt to gain suitable vacation employment, then a short report must still be submitted stating the reason why no attempts were made to obtain surveying vacation employment

Please note that students are now required to submit something to the co-ordinator every year. This will allow us to better administer SURV 499 and provide us with the information required to make decisions if students have not completed their days by the end of their final year of study.

While there is no specific deadline for the submission of SURV 499 reports on work for credit, students are recommended and encouraged to submit their paperwork as soon as possible after a particular block of work has been completed. Completion of SURV 499 before the end of the final year is highly recommended so that eligibility for graduation is not impaired by non-completion of these requirements. Those intending to advance to the NZ Institute of Surveyors membership or licensing should be aware that time cannot be credited towards eligibility for licensing until the BSurv (which includes completion of SURV 499) is complete. Deferring the completion of SURV 499 can cause costly and potentially embarrassing delays at a later date.

A running register of everyone's days worked and annual reports is kept in the Office. The summary sheets will be retained by the School, while the diary sheets and report will be returned if the student requests it. Summary sheets and diary sheets are available at any time, from the Office.
The diary sheets and summary sheets are available on the table outside the Office.

Textbooks

Textbooks are not required for this paper.

Graduate Attributes Emphasised

Lifelong learning, Communication, Critical thinking, Self-motivation, Teamwork.
View more information about Otago's graduate attributes.

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and practical experience gained through SURV 499 Vacation Employment will provide a context that underpins the theory taught in lectures and an understanding and application taught during practical sessions.

Timetable