e-survey Forum

I seem to recall from several years ago, justification from LINZ why they charge separately for downloading a colour version of a plan image and for the black and white image of the same plan, however I can't remember what that justification was.

As I have recently (and still am) doing a lot of work reliant on very old plans, I typically find that I need to look at the colour versions so that I can tell if an observation or mark is adopted or observed. I therefore get the colour version as a first attempt. However, in as many cases as not, the resolution of these colour plans makes the text illegible, so I then end up getting the B&W version also, as the text is far easier to read on them.

On some large or complicated jobs, that means that where I had originally estimated obtaining say 20 plans at $3 each (total $60), suddenly becomes 40 plans (total $120). That might not sound much, but on lump sum jobs, that just eats into any profit ["what's that?" I hear you say] for the job. And if this continually happens (as it has), you begin to feel like you are getting the short end of the stick.

What I would like to see is LINZ charging one download fee for obtaining all available versions of a plan at one time (similar to getting the Survey and Title Sheets for a metric plan). Naturally, if one gets the plans at different search sessions, then LINZ would be entitled to a second search fee.

Another good thing would be to remove the 'Title Search (No Diagram)' option from title searches. It's all too easy for staff to click on this and then realise their mistake, and have to then follow up by clicking on the 'with Diagram' option or the historic title option (all separately charged for). I would expect in this day and age, that the extra demand on internet use by the practitioner would be minimal - those who search a lot of titles would probably already be on broadband, and those still on dial-up (eg in rural areas) probably won't be doing enough title searches that the little extra delay would have more than a minor effect on productivity.

Hi Gerald,
A solution to your escalating costs of extracting old plans via LandonLine is to buy the Cadastral Index database from ICS (Institute of Cadastral Surveying). Check out the website - it has a section on the tool and includes a calculator for costing. We have had this tool since it was released and it is a proven success. You can search plans AT ANY TIME, and print them as much as you like. No more archiving of plans from LINZ. The license fee is a one-off, and you can expand the plan set by land districts as you wish. Over a short space of time you will pay off the investment.....

On that topic - Quickmap offers a similar add-on, which is definitely an option worth looking at if you already use Quickmap software.

Yes, these are both options which I am aware of, and our company is now looking into the latter option.

However, these issues would certainly affect others as well, and a casual user would fall into the same traps, without the justification for purchasing a large collection of plans.

And the CT issue remains.

Also, why are we charged separately for a historical copy of a title? How about one charge for a CT (with a diagram, by default), and the option of additionally downloading the historical copy for no additional fee?