Please join us for our monthly luncheon on Tuesday, March 12, 2024.

Guest Speaker:
BJ Swanner
Senior Project Manager/Director
Monument

Topic: Big Projects, Big Data. Geographic Information Systems as a critical collaboration tool for design, planning, and right-of-way analysis for major infrastructure projects.

Presentation Description:
Planning for major capital improvement projects can often begin years, or even decades before construction commences. Throughout the planning, design, and environmental review process, right-of way professionals are called upon to help analyze the need for additional property and rights to construct projects, and to estimate costs to obtain those rights. For regional scale “mega projects”, affected properties can number in the dozens to hundreds (or more) requiring detailed studies of the impact to properties and displaced uses.

To provide the information necessary to evaluate right-of-way impacts as part of the overall design and environmental process, right-of-way professionals have begun to adopt new technologies, allowing them to readily exchange critical data with engineers, planners, oversight agencies, local agency stakeholders, and the public. The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specifically has paved the way for unprecedented collaboration among these project partners and enabled right-of-way professionals to provide meaningful insights to the project development process that can help minimize unnecessary impacts to existing infrastructure.

In addition to helping identify right-of-way requirements and minimizing impacts, GIS has helped analysts develop estimates of the likely cost to obtain property and rights early in the project development process. Especially in regions where real estate can be a significant portion of the overall project cost, these estimates have proven invaluable for assessing overall project feasibility, applying for funding, and programming funding for future project phases.

This presentation will provide insights into the adoption of GIS technology by right-of-way professionals and provide examples of integrating the technology into the planning process for large infrastructure projects. The presentation will highlight some of the advantages to using GIS as part of the planning process, discuss some of the challenges to implementing these systems, and discuss other considerations for teams who may wish to adopt this technology for their projects.