Right-of-Way Agent - Contract Land Staff : Job Details

CLS is looking for experienced Acquisition Agents or Real Estate Agents local to Lockport or Lancaster, NY. This position is responsible for acquisition and enforcement of real property rights required for the operation, maintenance, and expansion of the transmission, distribution, and communication system infrastructure of the Client's Networks. Provides local contact for interface with government, permitting, and customers related to franchise or property rights.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Investigate, negotiate, acquire, defend, and ensure legal recording and enforcement of property rights required for electric, gas, or communication infrastructure for Client Networks (Distribution & Transmission).
• Utilize existing and future Client software and physical files to document all communication with landowners including in-person meetings, email, phone in addition to capturing project updates and progress on each affected parcel.
• Engages landowners to mitigate encroachments on rights of way.
• Respond to internal and external customer inquiries in matters related to property rights.
• Prepare or assist in preparing and securing specific state, highway, railroad, County, Town, City, Village permits for use of lands owned by governmental agencies, the public or other utilities including tree clearing permits.
• Investigate, negotiate, and acquire leases, licenses, and permits for Networks infrastructure, staging areas for storm or construction lay down areas, railroads & canals crossing permits.
• Responsible for document management involving legal documents filing, recording, parceling & indexing and retrieval.
• Coordinate and process payments to landowners for certain property rights through internal workflow including Client's SAP system.
• Serve as legal witness as necessary for condemnation or other proceedings.
• Investigate electric and gas franchise agreements and boundary lines.
• Other tasks as assigned by ELM team members.

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Accountability: This position is responsible for working with all office staff, ensuring a healthy work environment and the satisfaction of all staff. Must be able to work effectively and professionally with office staff, the client, and landowners.

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.

Project / Job Requirements:

• Must have 2+ years of Right of Way or Real Estate experience.
• Must be local to Lockport or Lancaster, NY (no per diem).
• Must be willing to work in-house (Monday - Friday) with occasional travel.
• Must have or be willing to obtain a NY Notary Public.

Education:

• Associate degree or two years of college and two plus years of Right of Way experience or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Experience:

• Experience drafting and negotiating property rights documents including rights-of-way, easements, licenses, leases, purchase and sale agreements
• Ability to plot metes and bounds descriptions of property and read variety of maps/surveys
• Ability to evaluate, interpret, and analyze engineering and right-of-way drawings
• Ability to interpret and research (abstract) legal documents
• Property rights research methods, including courthouse searches for recorded documents and internet research of same
• Ability to determine valuation of crops, timber, etc. for damage settlement
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Licensing:

• Must have valid drivers license.
• Must maintain minimum automobile liability insurance in the amount of $100,000/$300,000/$100,000.

Language Skills:

• Requires excellent oral and written communication and presentation skills.
• Must be able to write clearly and concisely to prepare reports, specifications, and correspondence.

Mathematical Skills:

• Ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in all units of measure, using whole numbers, common fractions, percentages, and decimals.

Reasoning Ability:

• Ability to apply commonsense understanding to carry out instructions furnished in written, oral, or diagram form.
• Ability to deal with problems involving several variables in standardized situations.

Other Skills and Abilities:

• Intermediate computer skills and familiarity with general PC operation.
• Intermediate software skills with all Microsoft Office applications.
• Ability to learn new computer programs rapidly.
• Ability and willingness to move rapidly from place to place and meet timeline constraints.
• Capacity to be flexible, multi-task and maintain a great attitude.
• Ability to be a team player.