John Duel Email & Phone Number

United States

Washington D.C. Metro Area

55 M Street Southeast, 5Th Floor, Washington D.C. 20003

This position is currently the entire Right of Way Section. In the absence of an appraiser, I have prepared waiver valuations. Comparable sales are difficult, especially with 40% of the property in the District being government owned. Fortunately I have good relationships with several appraisers that have reviewed my work.Title reports can be challenging as information can come from lots of different places. The on-line system for the Recorder of Deeds and the Office of the Surveyor are excellent. General Index and court records are searchable as well. The District has some difficulty in following through on Transfers of Jurisdiction though. Legal descriptions in the District are interesting as well. The history of the District is colorfully described in the recorded documents and legal descriptions. I often stumble across recognizable names from history and make connections that most people don't get to make. Cool stuff.Certifying projects is always interesting here. Most project managers tell me that there is "no right of way" for there project. Rarely is that the case. I am working hard to get the projects before they are at 90%. I'm not always successful.Alleys are also the responsibility of the DDOT and have their own challenges. Most alley questions involve their location or the location of something in the alley. The Office of the Surveyor's "Wall Reports" have been invaluable. Several times I have stopped our crews from repaving alleys private alleys. (DDOT has enough responsibility!)DDOT is responsible for the street, tree space, sidewalks and what is known as "Public Parking." The different use of these spaces makes my work interesting. Our designs for highway projects have to be sensitive to those uses. The right of way work in each of these requires different approaches.All in all an interesting place to work!

Taught Language Arts to wonderful 5th graders.

I was the manager for the R/W Plans Section in the Right of Way Group. We hired consultant survey firms to survey rights of way for highway projects and reconcile the field data with real estate title work to produce a results of surve that accurately depicts the legal boundary of the Department's ownership.Additionally this section produces right of way plans for the acquisition of real property for highway puroses. Right of Way Plans also is responsible for the development of legal documents for the acquisition of real property rights.

Phoenix, Arizona

I managed a very talented group of professionals. I can never say enough about how extremely good these people were. While I was there, we earned a national award from AASHTO for the work that my intern headed up in developing the amazing electronic retrieval system for our Right of Way Plans.This group developed the Right of Way plans that established the legal location of ADOT right of way. This was done using on-call surveys and right of way title reports. They also prepared legal descriptions and documents based on those plans and title reports for the acquisition new right of way. Packages were prepared for Acquisition Agents and the Transportation Board.

I managed the acquisition of real estate for ADOT.

I provided Real Estate expertise for the Arizona Department of Transportation. I prepared right of way title reports, acquired real estate for highway purposes, prepared delineation packages, and reviewed right of way plans.