3.5 Survey Plans, Records and Information

3.5 Survey Plans, Records and Information

Source: Survey Regulations, Part IV (Survey Plans, Records and Information), regulations 30 to 40, read with section 3 and section 4 of the Survey Law.

The plan is where the whole chain terminates. Sections 3 and 4 of the Survey Law give it its legal effect - no registration and, save for good cause shown, no admission in evidence without a surveyor's signature; a copy deposited with the Surveyor-General within a month of completion. Part IV of the Regulations prescribes what the document must actually be.

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1. The physical plan (regulation 30)

The original plan of a survey shall be drawn in waterproof ink on mounted drawing paper or on other material approved by the Surveyor-General. The size of the plan shall not be less than twelve inches by eight inches.

Three requirements: waterproof ink, an approved substrate, and a minimum size of 12 in x 8 in (roughly 305 mm x 203 mm). The rule reflects the plan's function as an archival document that will be consulted for decades and copied repeatedly.

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2. Required content (regulation 31)

The original plan of a survey shall show the following:

Paragraph (g) is the one that makes a plan usable by the next surveyor. A plan that shows beacons without the ties to permanent features has recorded the geometry but not the means of recovery.

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3. Colours and annotations (regulation 31(e))

  Demarcated boundaries ....... FIRM RED lines where they do not
                                follow lines of existing detail,
                                with a PINK VERGE all round,
                                INTERNAL to the enclosed area.
                                (Different colours may be used for
                                 verges where necessary to distinguish
                                 conflicting claims or overlapping
                                 areas on the same plan.)

  Other traverse connections .. BLUE lines (insetted if necessary)

  Building lines .............. FIRM BLUE lines marked "Building Line"

  Offsets ..................... BLACK figures between arrows

  Bearings .................... to the nearest MINUTE
  Distances ................... to the nearest TENTH OF A FOOT

The provision that different verge colours may be used to distinguish conflicting claims or overlapping areas on the same plan is worth remembering. It is the Regulations' express recognition that a plan may have to depict a dispute rather than resolve it - the cartographic counterpart of regulation 23, under which a surveyor surveys and shows a disputed boundary but may decline to demarcate it.

Bearing and distance annotations

These four abbreviations are prescribed, and a plan that omits them is incomplete:

Read together, the four annotations let any later reader tell, for every line on the plan, where the number came from. That is the single most useful property of a Nigerian survey plan and the reason the annotations are examined.

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4. Scales (regulation 31(i))

Subject to such modifications as the Surveyor-General may authorise in particular cases, scales of plans showing property boundaries shall ordinarily be:

The "other plans" series is imperial in origin - 1:240 is twenty feet to the inch, 1:480 is forty feet to the inch, 1:1,200 is one hundred feet to the inch, and so on. A plan drawn at 1:1,000 or 1:500 is drawn at a metric scale not in the prescribed list, which is a point a careful examiner may probe.

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5. Area accuracy (regulation 31(j))

The area of each plot shall be stated to the following accuracy:

The pattern is the sensible one: precision in the stated area declines as the parcel grows, because the relative accuracy of the boundary measurement, not the arithmetic, governs how many digits mean anything. Stating a 2,000-acre parcel to three decimals of an acre asserts a precision of about 4 square feet on a boundary surveyed to 1:3,000 - which is false precision, and examiners treat it as such.

Remember that regulation 5(E)(iv) requires the area of a straight-sided parcel to be computed arithmetically from the coordinates of the corners, with the area between an irregular boundary and the adjacent traverse line computed as a series of trapezoids.

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6. Records, inspection and copies (regulations 32 to 40)

Part IV also governs the public life of the plan:

• Regulation 32 - registrable instruments to be sent to the Surveyor-General.
• Regulations 34 and 35 - inspection of records, and inspection of plans by the public. The Survey Law makes the same point in section 4(4): the Surveyor-General shall keep proper record of any plan submitted, ensure its safe custody, and make it available to members of the public for inspection.
• Regulations 36 and 37 - purchase of copies of the Department's plans and of licensed surveyors' plans.
• Regulation 38 - certificates on copy plans. A copy is admissible under section 3 of the Survey Law only if certified by a surveyor as being a true copy.
• Regulation 39 - a licensed surveyor may demand information. This is the basis on which you conduct an archive search for adjoining plans and control before going to the field.
• Regulation 40 - the Surveyor-General may decline information. The right in regulation 39 is not absolute.

Regulations 39 and 40 together describe the ordinary opening move of any cadastral job: a search of the Survey Department's records for adjoining surveys, existing beacons and available control, undertaken as of right but subject to the Surveyor-General's discretion to withhold.