Holding the Line
Service and commitment on active duty at Terminus Surveying, LLC
Architects, general contractors and land and building owners keep Terminus Surveying, LLC busy every day.
The Terminus team of Tampa, Florida, is a disabled combat veteran-owned-and-operated business that has a proven record in providing expert surveys and the important diagrams and plans that result. “Terminus” is Latin for a final point as in a boundary—an apt name for a firm that specializes in exacting measurements of what’s on, above and below a site or piece of property. The coordinates and geospatial details are fundamental to the legal documentation and impact future changes on a property.
The owners are Jason Douglas, CEO; Joshua McDonald, Draftsman; and Erika Turnbull, Chief Information Officer. Douglas and Turnbull are veterans, and with a couple of other vets employed there, they draw on their previous military service to motivate all 20 employees to operate with values of commitment, youthful energy, camaraderie, “smarts,” hard work and flexibility to tackle every job effectively and efficiently.
“We emphasize quality,” McDonald says. “We pride ourselves in getting the job done right, making sure it’s accurate and complete.”
“We’re not run like other businesses,” Douglas says. “We are younger than other surveyors, we see the value of diversity, we’re more tech-savvy, we like to joke around sometimes and we even have ‘Red Fridays.’ ” Since 2005, military supporters across America have been wearing red on Fridays to show support for service members who are actively deployed. RED stands for Remember Everyone Deployed.
Boots on the Ground
When on the job site, the Terminus team members use sophisticated Carlson GPS-based equipment for data collection and use receivers with an accuracy rate of 1/1000th. Carlson software is used back at the office to manage and interpret the data. The company opted for Carlson technology in part due to the ongoing training available from Carlson.
Douglas and Harry “Ben” Rogers guide the efforts of the team headed to the field. Douglas is a registered surveyor in training in the state of Florida and Rogers is the company’s licensed PSM (Professional Surveyor and Mapper).
The Terminus team is regularly called upon by McKenzie Contracting, LLC; ARCO Design/Build and the Franklin Street real estate firm for its services.
Terminus specializes in six surveying services. First and foremost, the standard boundary survey is the most frequently requested. This common measurement contributes to the accuracy and quality of various other surveys. While some surveyors may cut corners and perform the other types of surveys without resolving the boundary for themselves, it’s unethical and against standards of practice, Douglas says.
A boundary survey covers the basics: determining property lines and a parcel’s corners and identifying easements, encroachments and any limitations due to state or local regulations.
A topographic survey maps the contours of the ground, as well as any features immediately above or below the surface of the earth like trees, manholes, walls and streets.
Pursuant to the issuance of a title or mortgage insurance, an ALTA survey is necessary. ALTA —American Land Title Association—surveys are expensive and time-consuming, but mandatory for any business related to real estate transactions.
Architects, engineers and even landscape architects request a survey called a site plan. These result in a diagram showing buildings, locations of utilities, positions of nearby roads and other structures.
An elevation certification is a survey that provides elevation information about flood zones that could affect a home or business address.
Terminus can also provide all the peripheral services that are required before and after a surveyor gets to work on a site. These include stake out and tie-in tasks.
“We try to offer a little more than other surveyors because we know what the regulators want,” Douglas says.
Joint Force Entry Mission
A team that operates in unison, the company has a history of banding together. In 2017, the owner of the predecessor surveying company announced he was closing the business. That company had a 100-year history of providing surveying services to the region.
Douglas was the operations manager at the time and the news caught him off guard. He had enjoyed working with the other veterans employed there and he knew the closure would affect them all.
Sensing the opportunity, and the strength they possessed operating as a unit, the three owners purchased the company and continued operations under the new company name.
Running the new company was challenging. Even though they retained the employees, the responsibility of all operations, management and work was now squarely on their shoulders, Douglas says.
“We’ve had to overcome many obstacles to get where we are today; we’ve had to learn it all.”
The company that had 13 employees before the ownership change has 20 today, and its annual revenues are over $1 million.
Douglas is one who knows how to complete a mission. The retired staff sergeant served in Iraq, Colombia, Afghanistan and other locations as a member of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, which specializes in joint force entry operations.
Perhaps a sign of what was to come, while in the service, Douglas often found himself protecting a military surveyor. It was there that he developed an interest in the trade.
When his active duty ended, he got a job with a general contractor and he gravitated toward surveying work. The projects involved construction of cellular towers. He befriended one of the draftsmen who worked skillfully in AutoCAD and sought opportunities to work with him. At first, that meant working nights and weekends while he continued his other key responsibilities.
He has now logged five years of work in surveying and is pursuing his surveying licensure. He’s currently completing a degree in geomatics from the University of Florida.
Answering the Call
“In the service” may refer to members of the military, but it also describes Terminus employees’ ongoing commitment to their community.
From the beginning, Terminus has been especially loyal to fellow veteran groups in Hillsborough County. For VFW Riverview Post 8108, the Terminus team donated free surveys as well as the muscle to restore the organization’s meeting place by replacing ceiling tiles and flooring and by completing other fix-up projects. This generosity extends to other area VFW posts too, as well as to the Veterans Council of Hillsborough County, which is helping find jobs for homeless vets.
The company’s benevolence extends beyond vets, too. For many years, Terminus has sponsored the Walk MS 5K, helping the nonprofit event raise $1.75 million over the years.
For youth, Terminus works with CareerSource Tampa Bay, which provides summer job placement services to disadvantaged teens. They also help members of the Boy Scouts of America achieve merit badges in surveying, using curriculum from the National Society of Professional Surveyors.
Above and Beyond
The fact that there’s no assignment out of bounds for Terminus benefits general contractors, developers and property owners. Douglas says that Terminus is duly qualified for any challenge, even if it falls in that “other” category. “We’re known for doing all surveys that no one else wants to do,” he says.
Those “other” projects include documentation of a flashy circus act, survey of an island and documentation of underground utilities covering a large region.
Far from typical, the call to measure the vertical distance a man traveled when shot out of a cannon contributed to the Guinness World Records acknowledgement of the feat. Terminus was there to give the official count of 195 feet to judges and all attendees in the Raymond James Stadium, Tampa, home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The world record recognition went to one brave and unharmed “human cannonball” named David Smith Jr., aka “The Bullet,” on March 13, 2018.
Perhaps equally unconventional was the company’s helpful survey of Tiki Bay Island—or as the locals know it best, “Beer Can Island.” It’s an uninhabited 7-acre piece of beach property situated off of better known Apollo Beach and located about where Hillsborough Bay meets Tampa Bay, the inlet, on the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The survey was requested as part of the eventually successful purchase of the tiny island for a docking site for a party barge.
Terminus’ work also includes right-of-way surveys for all major cellular carriers in the region to prepare for the upgrade to the 5G networks; redline surveys of underground utilities for some of the largest fire line and utilities services in the state; and extensive work with the leading gas wholesaler in the state, Automated Petroleum & Energy Company (APEC).
Terminus even dispatches its team to aid communities that need surveys in order to create green zones or wet zones, where businesses can sell marijuana or liquor.
“There’s no job we won’t take on,” Douglas adds.