Virginia Land Surveyors Professional Development Courses

This course covers the topics of adverse possession and prescriptive easements.  Both are legally-established means in which a party may acquire either legal title, or the deeded privilege, to use land belonging to another party without the expressed consent of that owner. Surveyors who perform boundary retracement surveys must be familiar with this legal doctrine; these types of boundary surveys are often muddled by the existence of an adverse possession or prescriptive easement situation. 

Explore the ethics of engineering and land surveying, including different aspects of the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) as well as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) Code of Ethics. 

Examine legal descriptions that are written on warranties and deeds.

This course is designed to provide an overview of how easements are used and how they affect the land surveyor. The course will cover types of easements and how to create easements at well as how easements are terminated. Throughout the course various case studies will be discussed, which will give the participant an example of how easements are used.

This course is designed to give the student a comprehensive overview of the applications of GIS by using case studies of companies across the United States. It will cover five studies of municipalities and companies that implemented GIS to increase the efficiency of data processing as well as to replace cumbersome paper mapping systems. The course will cover creating a GIS from scratch as well as using existing programs and customizing them to meet the specific needs of the entities using the GIS.

This course covers the topics of adverse possession and prescriptive easements.  Both are legally-established means in which a party may acquire either legal title, or the deeded privilege, to use land belonging to another party without the expressed consent of that owner. Surveyors who perform boundary retracement surveys must be familiar with this legal doctrine; these types of boundary surveys are often muddled by the existence of an adverse possession or prescriptive easement situation. 

This course is designed to fulfill professional development requirements for land surveyors. The course opens with definitions of terms related to water rights and their importance to land surveyors. Then it focuses on tidal and non-tidal boundaries and the significant difference between the two. Finally, the course informs us of shorelines, their changes over time, and how a land surveyor can determine a historic shoreline. McKissock has met the standards and requirements of the Registered Continuing Education Program. Credit earned on completion of this program will be reported to RCEP, provider #127505.

Examine legal descriptions that are written on warranties and deeds.

This course is designed to provide an overview of how easements are used and how they affect the land surveyor. The course will cover types of easements and how to create easements as well as how easements are terminated. Throughout the course various case studies will be discussed, which will give the participant an example of how easements are used.

The two basic water allocation systems, Riparian Rights and Prior Appropriations, used in the United States are based on pragmatic values and environmental conditions that have defined how Americans prioritize and distribute surface water and ground water to those with a legitimate need for its use. Although both doctrines are sensible in their distribution methods, that commonality is where the similarity ends. Their colorful histories, unique philosophies, legal battles and evolving management methods are thoroughly explored with-in their own chapters: "Water Rights West of the Mississippi" and "Water Rights East of the Mississippi".; The final chapter is dedicated to groundwater aquifers; the different types of aquifers, potential impacts to surface water as well as their associated allocation systems.