Virginia Electronic 'mass' PE Sealing

[scull20]

My company will be signing and sealing a large project in Virginia soon. We plan on signing and sealing the drawings electronically based on the following from VA DPOR:

An electronic seal, signature and date are permitted to
be used in lieu of an original seal, signature and date
when the following criteria, and all other requirements of
this section, are met:
1. It is a unique identification of the professional;
2. It is verifiable; and
3. It is under the professional's direct control.

That being said, I came across a method of signing/sealing via Adobe PDF that seems to satisfy the above requirements, however it appears rather cumbersome for dealing with a very large amount of drawings.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how we can accomplish a 'mass' signing and sealing of drawings quickly?

Thanks.

 

[EngineeringEric]

I have sealed a piece of blank paper, scan it, crop it, and place it on my title block. This is does not result in a digital seal of the documents but does seal all of my drawings. I have done this all over Virginia and have never gotten a problem but i have heard of some counties requiring fresh seals, it is rare but has happened. you may want to call the local building officials and confirm that a digital seal is acceptable.

 

[scull20]

I will contact the local officials to be sure, but I still think I need to go about a different method of doing this.

With the amount of drawings per set and the amount of sets that need to be submitted there will be close to 1000 drawings. Going through 1 by 1 will be tedious and time consuming to say the least.

I figured there would be some method to apply the seal all at once to the same place on every drawing.

 

[IRstuff]

If you don't go through each drawing, how can you justify sealing them?

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[scull20]

We have gone through each drawing and calculations thoroughly, its just a matter of signing/sealing at this point.

 

[JedClampett]

It's a big project. Get a tennis ball, squeeze it until your signing muscles are in marathon shape. I guess in my opinion, the least we can do is sign every drawing. If you do it for a 15 sheet project, why not a 1000 sheet project?
Is it a waste of time? Yes. But no more proportionally than for that 15 sheet project.

 

[wannabeSE]

I don't know what Virginia accepts. But you may want to look at Bluebeam REVU. With this pdf software, a stamp can be applied to each one sheet and them copied to all sheets in a set with a couple mouse clicks. This assumes the deliverable don't require an individual file for every sheet. Also, is there some reason you can not put the seal an signature in the CAD border file before plotting pdfs?

 

[PEDARRIN2]

Create a jpeg or tiff file of your seal/signature and insert it into the title block of each drawing file.

We set it up in a way that it is hidden when we are drafting/designing and with a click of a button or check box, all the drawings are stamped and ready for printing.

 

[Ron]

I use Adobe routinely to electronically sign/seal documents. It has encryption features and generally complies with security protocols required by various states.

You can sign an entire document so that if changes are made to any page, the validation fails.

In some states (including my home state), each drawing must be signed and sealed separately. Adobe allows you to do this and accumulate the documents into one.

 

[JAE]

We do similar to what Ron mentions - except we use Bluebeam REVU.

What we do is this:
1. Insert your electronic seal into the cad title block.
2. Insert a jpg image of the signature over the seal on each sheet (you could also insert the signature/seal in the cad drawing to save time.
3. Use Bluebeam's signature routine to "sign" the entire pdf document. This is one signature that occurs on the first page of the pdf set.

I'd also note that one of my states I'm licensed in is changing away from "requiring" a validating electronic signature system to one that is totally up to the engineer.
They reason that:
1. The validation is there to protect the engineer so how they "control" their signature is up to them.
2. The engineering board can't foresee keeping up with technology anyway and don't want to keep changing the engineering laws every time some new technology arises.

 

[kylesito]

In many of the areas in VA that I have worked in, you can get a away with the scan/insert on title block for everything EXCEPT the first sheet which must be hand signed. This is often how we did it.

I have worked with bluebeam before and it works well but not a perfect set up. It can be touchy sometimes.



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[beej67]

...or hire an intern...

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