Electronic signature and seal

Last board meeting at the TSPS convention (San Marcus 2016) I heard a story that is a nightmare for the professionals: a survey plat has one person’s stamp and another’s signature. This violates the rule of the board: the surveyor must be in control of his or her seal and signature.

This story happened because the company has all the RPLS electronic seals (and/or electronic signatures) on files. The RPLS signed the plat but did not notice the CAD Tech had added another person’s seal on the drawing.

After hearing the story, I can understand why some professionals are reluctant to change to electronic signature. However, this is 2017 and more and more clients request projects request to be turn into electronically. So I have some tips hopefully to help the situation.

- Do not put electronic seal in dgn or dwg files. I came across some files dwg and dgn files that include the engineer seal in the past, which I don’t think it it meant for us to see. People could steal that easily if they want to.

- Instead, keep your seal / signature as a custom stamp in in Adobe Acrobat. The stamp would only belong to your computer, and you will stamp the final pdf file, as it meant to be.

- If you insist on signing for each drawing every time, you can also do that also: Sign, stamp and date on a white piece of paper, scan it, and make it a custom stamp in Adobe Acrobat only and do it again next time.

- Certify your final product with your digital ID. The stamp and seal, in dwg or pdf, as mentioned above, are still a copy, or a picture of the survey with a picture of your seal and signature. A digital ID would create an encrypt document attached with your final product, and it will certify that you signed it on your computer, xxx date, xxx time and other mumbo jumbo computer stuff attached with your pdf.

The digital ID can be set up with Adobe Acrobat, here is a YouTube video to guide you step by step. There are ways to set up encrypt electronic signature in dwg too, but I don’t dwell on that too much if the file is for sharing, no idea how it will react to other computers.

- I don’t like to set up digital ID in own computer too much, it’s like you certify yourself that this is your signature.  You have to add yourself as a Trusted source on your computer for the signature to appear properly, who knows how it looks on other’s computer, which doesn’t have you as a Trusted source. Instead, I prefer to team up with other Trusted Third Party that do this encrypt signature. There is a list of companies that already set up as Trusted in Adobe software. If you looking for free way to do certify e-sign, I recommend Docusign, which use Entrust certificate ID.