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Stamped PDFs
Hello Fellow Surveyors, We are receiving an increasing number of requests for a “Stamped PDF”. Pardon my ignorance. Without actually signing, stamping, scanning and converting, is there a way to legally create this that is acceptable? Who’s doing this and what is your opinions? Thank you in advance. Happy Monday.
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13 Replies
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I can only speak for TN. You would need to check with your governing board. But here, it is fine. The document must be “secured” though. The process I use is this: produce the drawing in whatever cad program you use and I print a digital version of my seal on it at that time. Once it is “printed” as a PDF file, I open it in Adobe, using that platform you can add your scanned “digital” signature right over your stamp as if you signed it yourself. Then you add a password protection to the document so no person can “lift” your signature off of the document later. The only permission I give is to be able to copy them or print them in high resolution. So in short, our State allows it, but you must secure it and you must be the only person who has access to do so. Technically employees at a company are not allowed to add your signature even if you are reviewing it. It is treated as if you physically signed it with a pen. I hope this helps, I know being able to email a high resolution plat that is signed is valuable to my clients. I also use this same process when filling out FEMA certs or reports. Best of luck out there!
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This topic has been addressed here several times. The state(s) you practice in will define what is required/legal for you. Your profile indicates New York is your home state. The “Guidelines for Professional Engineering Practice in New York State” addresses the use of signatures and seals by Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors. Guideline 3, III Electronic Seal and Signature (E-Signature) should be specific to your question and provides a link to NYS Office For Technology (OFT) for more information about The Electronic Signature and Records Act (ESRA).
I think you will find the requirements similar to both Federal and other state requirements. I prepared an article for inclusion in Ohio Surveying News, a publication of Professional Land Surveyors of Ohio, several years ago. I have attached a copy
and believe it will provide some assistance in complying with the requirements. Some of the online references are outdated although they should still provide starting points for additional searches.
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Adobe PDFs have three security-related things you can do to documents, and one or two ways to perform each thing. (Apologies to Dr. Seuss.)
- Thing 1: Encrypt a document so unauthorized people can’t do anything to it. They can’t read it, change it, print it. For recent versions of Adobe, there is no publicly-known way for anyone, including Adobe, and including the author, to recover the contents of an encrypted document if the password is forgotten, or the digital certificate is lost. One encryption method is the password, called a “document open password”; everyone who needs access is given the password, everybody uses the same password. The other method is digital certificates. The public key certificate of everyone who needs access is added to the document, and only people who can give the private key corresponding to one of the public key certificates can open the document.
- Thing 2: Sign a document. This can’t be done with a password, it can only be done with digital certificates. Anybody can read or print the file, but if it is altered by anyone, even the person who signed it originally, the signature becomes invalid and the display of the document is altered to show that the signature is invalid.
- Thing 3: Control use of a document by adding a “permissions password”, which is a whole different animal from the “document open password”. Among other things, you can forbid editing printing or extracting individual pages. But these are just flags that are added to the document. There is no indication of these flags as you read the document, but if you go into the properties, you can find out what is and isn’t allowed. These flags are basically the Adobe program talking to itself about what’s allowed. You can by a different PDF editing program that will ignore the flags and let you do whatever you want, or remove the permissions password altogether. If you use this approach, thinking that contractor you sent your document to can’t change it, you’re mistaken.
Thing 1, Thing 2, and Thing 3 can be freely mixed and matched.
Another thing I’d watch out for in any file fomat, whether it’s AutoCAD, PDF, Microsoft Word, etc., is hidden layers and properties. Just because it isn’t visible without a few manipulations doesn’t mean the recipient won’t rely on it. (Or use it as an excuse when the concrete wall turns out to disagree with a visible layer but agree with a hidden layer.)
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nothing beats Paper. Keep a copy in your files
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@peter-ehlert
Thanks Peter, as a daughter of a Land Surveyor, this is SOP – actually 95% of the time we keep mylar prints for our records. (Some topographic surveys we only keep paper), however there is ALWAYS a copy kept, per “Yoda”.
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Thanks so much! I have printed this out (see? paper rules!), and expect this to be the future of our profession, even though there will be a lot of controversy…
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@dallas-morlan
Dallas, Thank you so much for your feedback. I understand the requirements and legality of the electronic signatures, and was looking more for process. BTW, the link for OFT does not exist, not surprising… Best of all your article – very much appreciated!
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Had a request for old info on a survey a couple weeks ago.
Not much in the file, but my field book had enough to answer all the questions and save some time searching the digital files.
Survey was done in the fall of 1982.Most of my files have been shreaded, after they were scanned and backed up off site.
Field books also scanned, but not shreaded…old style -
Hahaha! Love the Seuss reference! This explains a lot, thank you. This is certainly great information. My first thought is that Thing 2 has the best protection as far as protecting the document’s validity. Thanks again for your response.
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@peter-ehlert
SHREADED? oh no! I get it, would love to scan all the files. However, for now, I enjoy looking through my father’s old folders and seeing/touching the old documents.
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@peter-ehlert
Scissors beats paper.
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This is an example of what I create. A scan of a drawing that I signed and stamped with red indigo pencil rubbed across my crimped seal.
In Texas is completely legal digital document and I am covered as long as I have the original hardcopy in my files.
BTW, the property may still be on the market if anyone is interested, lol.
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@dallas-morlan
Dallas,
Thanks for the link. I am still confused about the Privet key/Public key, and what it has to do with anything. I have read about some 40 digit string of SHA-1 characters being generated and included in the invoice. The recipient then gdownloaded a hash calculator and they are told to click on the hash calculator and a set of characters are generated which will be identical to those included in the invoice if nothing has been altered.
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