Event Details

NCSS is partnering with the Yadkin Valley Chapter to present this seminar. 

Registration begins at 7:30 am, class begins at 8:00 am, and concludes at 4:30 pm.  Lunch will be provided.

Topics:

Surveyors' Response to Hurricane Helene - 2 Year Anniversary

• NCDOT Hurricane Helene Survey Response by Keith Honeycutt

This presentation will focus on the Unique Surveying and Mapping Challenges in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and the collaborative effort with the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Hurricane Helen Survey Response. Discussion will center around the challenges faced during the planning, scheduling, and acquisition of Post-Helene Surveys & Mapping. This will highlight how Preconstruction’s Location & Surveys Unit and the Photogrammetry Unit worked together to provide critical survey and mapping products as part of our Helene Response.

• Hurricane Helene Permanent Repair on NC 197 North, Mitchell and Yancey Counties, NC by Jim Davis

On September 27, 2024, Hurricane Helene tore through Western North Carolina, and nowhere felt it harder than the mountain communities of Mitchell and Yancey Counties. Yancey County recorded the highest rainfall totals in the storm — 30.78 inches in Busick and 26.65 inches in Celo, and the North Carolina State Climate Office called the totals "off the charts," noting that even 16.5 inches would have qualified as a once-in-1,000-year flood by 20th-century standards. Spruce Pine, the largest town in Mitchell County, saw 24.12 inches of rain and severe flooding from the swollen North Toe River, wiping out downtown shops, roads, and utility connections. Across the region, NCDOT reported roughly 400 roads closed or impassable due to landslides, flooding, and destroyed bridges, and more than 200 landslides damaged roadways in the days that followed.
NC 197 and its surrounding secondary roads, running through the Toe and Nolichucky River basins, were among the hardest-hit corridors — river-adjacent roadbeds scoured away, bridge approaches undermined, and entire sections of pavement simply gone. The same corridor's rail line lost miles of track to the flooding and re-establishing it meant more than laying new rail: ESP's team had to research deeds over 100 years old to re-establish the historic railroad right-of-way before reconstruction could proceed.
This seminar walks through ESP Associates' role in that recovery. Attendees will see how the project team used mobile and aerial LiDAR to rebuild pavement DTMs and best-fit road alignments across roughly 13 miles of shifted, storm-altered terrain, and how property research across 230 parcels kept the redesign grounded in real ownership conditions.
It's a case study in disaster-response infrastructure: what it takes to survey, model, and rebuild a river valley's transportation network — road and rail alike — when the ground itself has changed, and when a century-old paper trail is as critical to recovery as any LiDAR scan.

• Surveying the Storm: Helene, Recovery, and Rebuilding Western North Carolina by Christopher Jordan

When Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina in September 2024, Holmes Geospatial was hit alongside the communities we serve. This is the story of how our firm went from storm victim to recovery partner — restoring critical water infrastructure, mapping landslides, and helping our region rebuild.

Ethics (1PDH) and Standards of Practice (1PDH) by Tim Bowes

Instructors:

Keith E. Honeycutt, PE, PLS - Mr. Honeycutt has over 32 years of service with the North Carolina Department of Transportation and holds both the North Carolina Professional Engineer and the North Carolina Professional Land Surveyor registrations. In addition, he holds the North Carolina Certified Public Manager certification. Mr. Honeycutt served in various roles including Division Locating Engineer and Eastern Regional Engineer. As a member of the Location and Surveys Unit’s senior management, he assisted in directing a large and multi-functional Technical Services Business Unit in engineering and geomatics. Mr. Honeycutt was responsible for managing and directing the planning and coordinating of multiple geomatics operations between North Carolina’s Eastern Region’s Division Field Offices and Private Sector Engineering Firms, including all Sonar Bathymetry Surveys Statewide and served as Location & Survey’s subject matter expert on storm response for Eastern North Carolina. Mr. Honeycutt is currently employed with GEL Solutions and is serving on behalf of Location and Surveys as the point of contact for Western North Carolina recoveries and Project Manager for all Western North Carolina Hurricane Helene surveys and mapping.

Jim Davis, PLS,  is a Survey Division Manager for ESP Associates, Inc. He has been licensed as a Professional Land Surveyor in North Carolina for 31 years. His experience includes a wide range of services including historical boundary surveys and route location surveys for NCDOT. He received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Surveying from Ohio State University and earned a Master of Business Administration degree from UNC Charlotte. Mr. Davis has previously served as president of the NCSS Education Foundation, President of NCSS Yadkin Valley Chapter, Chairman of the NCSS Education Committee, and Chairman of the NCSS Standards of Practice Committee.

Christopher Jordan, PLS, CFS, UAS Pilot
Licensed in North and South Carolina
Surveying 22+ years
UAV pilot

Tim Bowes, PLS: Tim earned his AAS Degree in Agriculture from NC State in 1984 and Surveying Certificate from Wake Technical Community College in 1988. He became a PLS in NC in 1990 and is a graduate of the Otis A. Jones Institute. In 1999. Tim co-founded BBM Associates, Inc. as a Surveying, Engineering, and Land Planning Business in the Raleigh area, where he was a Principal and Survey Operations Manager until BBM merged with VHB Engineering in 2016. He joined WithersRavenel, Inc. in 2021, where he currently serves as a Senior Delivery Officer.