RICS HQ Recently Hosted a Five-Strong Delegation of Licensed Professional Land Surveyors, Representatives from the States of Virginia, Iowa, Georgia and Tennessee.

David Holland (NSPS Governor/VA) has written an article for Professional Surveyor magazine detailing a recent trip to England by five Surveyors from the United States. The article will appear in a future edition of the magazine.

Among the activities of the delegation was a visit to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

Below is an accounting of that visit written from the perspective of James Kavanaugh, RICS Director/Land Group:

Pictured are: Stephen Letchford (VA); David Holland (VA; NSPS Governor); James Kavanaugh (RICS Director/Land Survey Group); Chuck Dunlap (VA); Richard Leu (Iowa; NSPS Governor); Bart Crattie (TN)

The USA operates a state-by-state licensing system for professional land surveyors but has a national surveying body (National Society of Professional Surveyors). The delegation was on a fact finding mission to the UK and also managed to visit places of geographic and surveying significance such as Greenwich.

Discussions ranged from the historic links and shared surveying heritage of the UK and USA, including presentations on the UK system of mapping, land registration and property ownership, to developments in professional practice and technology.

The US delegation was especially interested in the wide-ranging remit of RICS professional practice as compared to some parts of the world and the evolution of the profession in the UK. Potential collaboration on RICS best practice and client guides was discussed, as was the RICS online academy and its potential application for state surveyors. The group also invited RICS to participate in the forthcoming celebrations planned in Philadelphia for late August 2013 to mark the grave of Charles Mason, the UK land surveyor of Mason–Dixon line fame.

RICS prepared a speech for the then Prime Minister Tony Blair to read at the 2002 celebrations and restoration of some of original boundary monuments. US land surveyors tend to be acutely aware of their history and the Mason-Dixon Line has gained a hold on the US national memory as the division between North and South, Yankees and Dixie, freedom and slavery.

More prosaically, its original intention was to quell a 1760s bloody boundary dispute between the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania. RICS Land has a strong and growing relationship with our colleagues in the US and this visit will hopefully be the start of developing opportunities within the state licensed sectors which employ over 20,000 professional land surveyors in the USA.