Land Surveyor provides 25 years of service in both New York and Pennsylvania

LAKEWOOD, NY — Dan Barry of Lakewood is celebrating an impressive milestone. It was 25 years ago in March that Barry started his land surveying business. Since then, he’s seen his company expand from a one-man operation to the inclusion of two other employees. He’s also made a name for himself in both Western New York and Northwestern Pennsylvania. His work has included everything from residential and business-related projects to larger, topographic survey projects for municipalities and boundary line surveying projects in the Allegheny National Forest.

Daniel Barry is celebrating his 25th Anniversary in business. Over the years, he’s surveyed everything from residential properties to multi-million dollar construction projects in both New York and Pennsylvania. (Submitted Photo)

While Barry’s business has now been in operation for 25 years, he’s actually been involved with surveying for 38 years, and it all started with a conversation he had in high school.

“I got into this totally by accident,” explains Barry. “My senior year in high school my guidance counselor asked what I was going to do when I finished high school. I said I was going to go to college, but still wasn’t sure what I was going to study. He looked over my records and saw that I was strong in math, history and science, so he suggested I should study to be a surveyor, and I said, ‘okay.’ That was about it.”

After graduation, Barry studied land surveying for two years at Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondacks. He received an Associate’s Degree in land surveying in 1973 and returned to Chautauqua County, where he began a five-year apprenticeship with local surveyor George Dimas. Between 1978 and 1984, Barry worked for Jerry Erickson and Michael Rodgers. It was during that time period that he also became a licensed land surveyor for New York State in 1981. After working for Dimas for two more years, Barry made the decision to start his own business in 1986.

“For the first nine years I really focused on developing a customer base,” Barry says. “I was also working as an estimator and project manager for Ken Eckman Excavating in Frewsburg, NY. We did site work and demolition for the Wal-Mart Plaza in Lakewood, NY, which was the biggest project I’ve ever been involved with. “

In 1988, Barry became licensed to survey in Pennsylvania. By 1995 he was so busy with surveying projects that he left his position with Ken Eckman Excavating. For the past 16 years, he’s focused solely on projects associated with his surveying business.

Any Project, Any Time, Anywhere in Western NY & Western PA
Since starting out on his own in 1986, Barry has worked on a variety of different land surveying projects throughout Southwestern New York and Northwestern Pennsylvania. With each one, he’s always been able to provide the highest quality of work at an affordable cost to his clients.

“I own a real estate company and own a lot of real estate personally also,” explains Tom Turner, one of Barry’s clients in Lakewood, NY. “I’ve used Dan for all of our personal work and referred him to clients for years. He is on time, on budget, and his work is always very well done.”

In addition to residential and business properties, he’s also worked with various local attorneys, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), local developers, foresters, municipalities, and the Federal Aviation Administration, as well as several different architects and engineers. His most recent list of projects includes a wetland survey at Goose Creek and Chautauqua Lake in the Towns of Busti & North Harmony. Barry also recently did survey work for a new Tube Coaster being built at Holiday Valley in Ellicottville.

Barry has done a wide variety of surveying projects throughout Western New York and Western Pennsylvania, including surveying a section of the Cohocton River in Cohocton, N.Y. (Submitted Photo)

One of Barry’s most memorable projects was surveying larger tracts of land in the Allegany National Forest in Northwestern Pennsylvania. Another was working for the NRCS along the Cohocton River and surrounding wetlands area in Cohocton, NY. “Working outdoors, in the middle of nature is always rewarding,” Barry says.

Besides Barry, the company also has two other employees. Joseph McGraw, his crew chief, is also a licensed surveyor in New York and is working toward getting licensed in Pennsylvania. Joe has been with the company since 2003. Brian Kearney is his survey technician and has been with the company since 1998.

An Ever-Changing Business
Over the years, Barry has seen quite a few changes in surveying – most notably with technology. But because he has nearly 40 years of familiarity with surveying equipment, he and his staff know what the appropriate tool is for each individual project, ranging from compass and tape to the most state of the art GPS equipment.

“It’s amazing to see just how far technology has advanced since I’ve been doing this,” he says. “We use a Real Time Kinematic GPS instrument that allows us to get accurate measurements – down to the centimeter. It’s far more expensive to use the instruments, but the trade-off is it takes less time to do the work.”

Some of the services that Barry provides include surveying residential properties, minor and major subdivisions in New York and Pennsylvania, accident surveys for court cases (and court room testifying), issuing flood certificates, gas and oil well plats and staking, construction staking, topographic surveys for engineering or land development projects, line marking for timber harvesting and farm surveys.

“Working with new people and in different places is really what I like best about this job,” Barry says. “It never gets old. I’m always going someplace else and working outdoors, so I couldn’t have picked a better career than the one I’m in right now.”

A complete list of services can be found at his website, www.danbarrysurveyor.com. For more information, call (716) 763-1254.