The 18th Surveyors Week and the 54th Annual General Meeting of the Ghana Institution of Surveyors will be held in Accra from February 18 to February 26, 2023.

Dr. Benjamin Armah Quaye, Chairman of the Planning Committee, has been providing some insight into the celebration.

He noted that successive governments have attempted to improve Ghana’s land administration regime through a variety of initiatives.

Previous major interventions included the Land Administration Project (LAP) phases 1 and 2, which sought to lay the groundwork and consolidate urban and rural land administration and management systems for efficient and transparent land service delivery.

The interventions’ primary goal has been to improve land administration by transforming institutional arrangements, reforming the legal and regulatory framework, harmonising the customary and formal sectors, introducing ICT-enabled processes, and re-engineering business processes.

Despite the above efforts, the challenges confronting the land administration system remain widespread.

How much involvement did surveyors have? How can surveyors positively contribute to the transformation agenda? What skills do surveyors need to contribute positively to the transformation agenda?

The 18th Surveyors Week and the 54th Annual General Meeting of the Ghana Institution of Surveyors, he says, will focus on these issues critical to national development.

The theme for the program is “Transforming Land Administration in Ghana – The Role of the Surveying Professional”.

“The transformation of the country’s land administration system cannot be properly focused unless surveying professionals with the necessary expertise are involved in the process. Again, because development is a complex mix, the various categories of experts must work closely together to ensure that no gaps exist”, he said.

The Ghana Institution of Surveyors regulates the practise of professional surveying.

It is a professional body that was founded on February 28, 1969, at the general meeting of the Ghana branch of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, when a resolution to that effect was passed and the constitution was promulgated.

It has nearly 3,000 members divided into three divisions.

These are the divisions of land surveying, quantity surveying, valuation, and estate surveying.

A land surveyor is a professional who provides a variety of services, including cadastral and mapping. Engineering estimations/costing, cost monitoring, engineering construction management, and other related tasks are all handled by quantity surveyors.

The estate/valuation surveyor is involved in a variety of tasks such as land economy, estate management, property valuation (including plant and machinery valuation, among others), facilities management, conflict resolution, and land compensation appraisals.