Three Checks That Can Prevent Right-of-Way Problems
A homeowner recently shared a story online about coming home to find large utility excavations in the backyard.
No meaningful advance notice. No clear explanation of who was doing the work. No easy way to know why it was happening.
A few days later, crews came back and began installing a new utility pole, in the middle of their back yard.
At that point, the homeowners started asking harder questions. What easement was the utility relying on? Where was the easement actually located? Was the crew even working on the right property?
According to the homeowner’s account, those questions uncovered several problems. There was an existing utility easement, but the new pole appeared to be outside of it. The work order was tied to another property. The location had not been surveyed before the work began. Once supervisors became involved and checked the site, the work stopped and the newly installed pole was scheduled to be removed.
It is an extreme example, but the lesson is pretty simple.
A lot can go wrong when land rights, landowner communication, and field execution are treated as separate parts of a project.
They are not.
Start With the Land Rights
Before crews ever arrive, someone needs to answer a basic question: what rights does the utility actually have on this property? That sounds straightforward, and sometimes it is.
Other times, not so much. The easement may have been acquired decades ago. The language may be vague. The document may cover only part of the parcel. There may be several easements from different time periods, each with different terms. Old facilities may no longer line up neatly with the recorded rights.
And existing infrastructure can be misleading.
Just because a pole or line has been in one location for years does not necessarily mean the utility has the right to place new facilities in the same general area. A fence is not automatically a property line. An overhead wire does not necessarily identify the limits of an easement on the ground. That is why pre-construction land rights review matters.
For some projects, that may be as simple as confirming the easement and comparing it to current parcel information. On others, it may require title work, GIS review, survey support, or a closer look at the actual language of the grant.
The point is not to prove that the utility has some kind of interest in the property.
The point is to make sure the rights actually support the work being planned.
Talk to the Property Owner Before the Equipment Shows Up
Having the legal right to enter a property does not mean a landowner will be happy to discover a crew in the backyard with no explanation. That is where outreach matters.
In the situation described online, the homeowners said they first learned something was happening when they found large excavations on their property. Later, they learned crews had returned because a security camera sent an alert showing a utility truck in the yard.
That is a rough way to start a relationship. A simple conversation ahead of construction could have changed the entire dynamic.
On projects NSI has supported, land agents have gone out ahead of work crews to knock on doors, explain what is coming, answer questions, and give property owners a real point of contact. If something changes in the field, the landowner knows who to call. If the owner has a concern, the project team hears about it before it becomes a complaint.
There is another benefit that sometimes gets overlooked.
Property owners know their land.
They may know that the fence is not on the actual line. They may know where water collects after heavy rain, where access becomes difficult, where previous utility work caused damage, or where a feature on the ground does not match what appears on a map.
That information can be useful before construction starts.
Good landowner outreach is not just about being polite. It is another layer of project review.
Make Sure the Crew Knows Exactly Where to Work
Even the best land rights review does not help much if the information never reaches the crew in the field. The people doing the work need to be able to answer a few basic questions.
- Are we on the right property?
- Are we inside the area where the utility has rights?
- Are we performing the type of work those rights allow?
If there is uncertainty about any of those, there needs to be a way to stop and get an answer.
That might mean better maps. It might mean staking. It might mean a survey. In some cases, crews may simply need a clearer work package showing parcel boundaries, easement limits, access routes, and the exact location of the proposed facility.
Just as important, crews need to know that stopping to verify something is acceptable. There is always pressure to keep work moving. Nobody wants a crew sitting idle while someone checks a document or calls a project manager.
But there is a big difference between losing a little time to verify a location and losing much more time removing something that was installed in the wrong place.
The Landowner Should Not Be the Last Quality-Control Check
One of the most striking parts of the homeowner’s story is that the problem was not caught by the planning process, the work order, the contractor, or a property verification step.
The homeowner caught it.
According to the post, work continued until the property owner insisted that someone with authority come out and verify the location. Once that happened, supervisors measured the site, reviewed the situation, and ultimately stopped the work. That is not where the final check should happen.
A good right-of-way process creates several opportunities to catch a mistake before it reaches that point.
- Land rights personnel review the documents.
- GIS and survey information help locate those rights on the ground.
- Land agents communicate with affected owners and often uncover issues that do not show up in project files.
- Project managers make sure the right information gets into the work package.
- Then field crews verify that what they see on the ground matches what they were told.
Any one of those steps can catch a problem.
Together, they make it much less likely that a simple mistake turns into a construction dispute.
Good Landowner Relations Start Before There Is a Problem
Landowner relations sometimes get treated as the part of the job that becomes important after someone is upset. But by then, you are already playing from behind and likely working in an adversarial situation.
The better approach is to start the relationship before construction begins. Tell people what is happening. Give them someone to contact. Be clear about where the utility has rights and what work is planned. If something changes, keep the communication going.
Most property owners are not expecting perfection. They do expect to know when someone is coming onto their property and what that person intends to do there.
At NSI Consulting & Development, we approach right-of-way work with that broader picture in mind. Property rights analysis, GIS, field coordination, and landowner outreach all support the same goal: making sure the project team knows where it can work, the field crew knows where it should work, and the property owner understands what is happening.
Sometimes the easiest right-of-way problem to solve is the one you catch before the crew ever arrives.
