You say that like 'self-important ninny' is a bad thing.

that's funny

yup

dunno...kinda like the thrill of practicing bareback...

Really? My co-op in 2014 we were still physically stamping some drawings, I actually billed about an hour doing all the manual work of stamping on a set of CD's so that the partner could sign each of them.

Ben, where was this? (state/province) I do remember stamping a 40-page set of drawings a while back and then the boss signed all of them. damn tedious.

Most jurisdictions scan everything these days to satisfy public record and document retention policies. Some don't even keep paper copies anymore - they dispose of them a year after the CO is issued. Besides embossing, a lot of other things we used to do up through the 1980s or early 90s would get the sheets rejected now because they don't feed through an OCE well - like using sticky-back, white-out, shading the backs of mylars with colored tape, pin registrations, even stapling typed specs to drawing sheets!

They scan tens of thousands of pages at a time with a document feeder - stack them up in a special box-like thing, shake them on a vibrating table to get them all perfectly aligned, and leave them to run. Think about all the drawing sheets a large city gets in a year - easily tens of thousands per day, millions per year - it's not like they can have a guy putting things sheet by sheet on a flat bed, or taking photos of it. All the drawings have to be flat, unbound, no attachments, uniform thickness. Embossers are pretty much a thing of the past on anything but tiny projects in tertiary locations.

I didn't miss that you were joking - I was responding to your general enthusiasm in this thread about recommending embossers.  It's not really an issue of what should or might or could go through the machines. The people who take in the drawings just follow the policy, which typically says no embossing, no tape, no attachments, no pin holes, and so on and so forth. They're not going to argue with you about the settings of their scanner - they just reject your drawings.  It's beside the point for a lot of cities now anyway, because they don't intake any paper drawings in the first place - they require everything to come digitally from the architect or print house. Now I suppose that if you were so attached to the idea of embossing that you wanted to print out a set, emboss it, give it back to the print house, let them scan it, and send it to the city, you could do that - but you'd have to emboss over a digital or ink stamp anyway for the seal to still be visible once it's scanned. You wouldn't be getting anything out of that other than an extra large bill from the print house and a waste of time.

How is that different from any time that you upload the set to a plan room during bidding (which is nearly always a requirement on any public or large-entity-client project)? Anybody who pays for it gets the construction set. On a large project the number of people who get the original set is typically in the hundreds, if not thousands (every GC and sub who is considering bidding, every potential supplier of every GC and sub, suppliers who are not named in the specs but want to request substitution, every potential fabricator of each manufacturer...) Having the construction set does not grant use of the drawings to build anything other than the project for which they were intended. If somebody who purchases the drawings - whether from a plan room or a city - goes out and uses them to build something else, the architect has zero liability for that.

Do you have any actual examples of court cases involving an architect or design professional being sued for problems resulting from someone building from a set of plans that was not intended for that project? I've never seen any court case or engineering board decision having anything to do with such a situation. I can see how something like this might conceivably happen if an architect were to sell stock plans - then the architect could reasonably be named as a party to a case in which some issue resulted from using those plans.   But I don't see how an architect would be accepted by a court as a party to any case in which a builder or anybody else purchases plans from a city and then used them for a different project than the one for which they were intended and permitted.  That would be illegal act on the part of the purchaser and builder - but the architect would have no liability whatsoever. I've been to court as an expert witness on several cases, and while lawyers sometimes do try to name everybody they can possibly throw into the mix as a party to a case, the bogus ones are always rejected by the court long before anybody actually makes it to a courtroom.

In any case, many jurisdictions have gone completely digital for drawing intake - that's just the way it is. If you feel there's an unacceptable liability cooperating with the requirements then I suppose you just wouldn't take on a project anyplace where you'd need to submit that way.

I believe you're worrying about something that so rarely (if ever) happens that it is an insignificant risk. It's certainly your call as to whether you judge that to be enough of a risk that you choose to limit your practice to only those projects for which it's possible to submit embossed original drawings and not submit digital files. You'd just need to make sure before you sign any contract for design services, or respond to any RFPs or RFQs, that the project is not located in a jurisdiction that requires digital submission for permitting, and that your clients, their representatives, CMs, etc. do not require it for bidding.

Good luck with that. Always limit your practice to small projects for private clients, in very small places, in states without laws that require permit drawings to be available publicly (as is the case with several states' QBDS protocols) and that might work out fine.

Who knew that it is so crazy and difficult to put the project address on the titleblock.

"If they need a copy for research purposes" like if they are researching big foot or something?

My favorite is when Balkins complained about potential loss of revenue because you’re tied up in court defending yourself. I wonder how much loss of revenue you’d see if you have to spend all day trying to get them to intake your drawings for permit when you don’t follow their rules?

Some cities still do, but some don't accept paper plans at all anymore. They've cut budgets by cutting staff who handled those in-person transactions and processed and stored those drawings. Most likely more cities will follow in that direction. 

If the drawings are for public projects or even partially publicly-funded projects it's beside the point in some states anyway, regardless of the size of the project, and regardless of whether the town or city where it's located would otherwise accept paper drawings, because the quality-based design process regulations require digital submission. Different states have different rules and thresholds for QBD - in some the construction budget would have to exceed 500k, while in others it's only 10k, so even something like bathroom renovations to the town library or renovating a community room in a state college dorm kicks the project into the QBD queue, and then paper submissions are out of the question.

A city isn’t going to set up document streaming because of your irrational fears and inability to include basic information like an address.

I posed this question to my insurance rep today. He said: If one of their policy holders were to be named in a suit for a project on which they were never involved, the insurance company's attorney would send a letter to the court demanding that proof of a contract be produced. That sort of legal assistance is part of what my insurance pays for. If the court did not receive proof of a contract, or other evidence of my involvement with the project, such as correspondence from me regarding that project, then the court would dismiss me from the case - almost certainly long before it made it to a courtroom, and with little further involvement from me other than a notarized statement that I was never involved in the project and did not authorize use of my work.  He seemed a little amused at the possibility of such as case.  I'd still like to know where this has ever happened.

If one can’t provide proof of an agreement then one does not have standing, which means the suit gets dismissed
. Stock plans can still have an date and address placed on them for each time they are utilized.

Rick I think you'd have other more plausible things to worry about if you're selling stock plans that are stamped and signed. That seems like an irresponsible thing to do in the first place. What happens if someone buys a stock plan from you for a 1600 square foot house, with your stamp and signature on it but no project address, and then submits those plans for a permit in New York, where that project requires an architect? Then you're going to get fined for practicing architecture without a license. That seems like a more likely scenario than one where you sell the plan to someone who builds an authorized project with it, without ever putting an address on it, and then somebody at the city sells that same plan to someone else who builds an unauthorized project, over which some lawsuit ensues, in which you are named as a defendant...

The burden of proof is on the plaintive. The point that the insurance rep was making is that THEY have to come up with something that shows your involvement or express authorization.  It's not enough that your name or business name is on the plans - they have to prove that you had intentional involvement with that project. You keep saying anybody can name anyone in a lawsuit - that's true, but any lawyer can file a motion to dismiss, based on lack of evidence (you can even file that on your own behalf, without an attorney, though I wouldn't recommend that) and it's the plaintive who has to cough up the evidence, or that motion will be successful.  Let's say this theoretical enterprising person at the city resells your plans from project X to person Y, and person Y builds a copy of that house, unbeknownst to you. Something goes wrong, person Y sues you, and claims there was a verbal contract. Your lawyer is going to write a motion to dismiss. Now even if there was a verbal contract, person Y has to be able to come up with proof:  some proof might be that payment to you for your services cleared your account, right? Or perhaps emails from you, discussing the project? Or phone bills showing their calls to your number during the project's progress? If they can't produce any of those, then too bad so sad for them.  It's not enough that they claim that there was a verbal contract, they always talked to you in person, and they paid you in cash, and got no receipts. If they can't come up with something to substantiate the existence of a contract then they haven't satisfied their burden of proof.

Blooper pretty much covered it. Just because there is a verbal agreement does not mean there would not be some sort of recorded outcome. You're worried about potentially getting roped in with someone who is willing to commit 1) theft by stealing your plans, 2) fraud by submitted them to a local AHJ or even contractor as valid and legally obtained and 3) perjury by lying to the court about these circumstances. Even if someone else is selling your plans, the victim is not going to be irrationally attached to you and convince the court to follow along, the focus would quickly shift to the reseller.

A law suit requires standing. Just because someone can file a suit for anything does not mean it will actually go anywhere. If you have no evidence of a relationship with another party then you have no standing. Digital signing does not just mean using an image of a person's signature. Certificate-based digital signatures provide authentication because they do not allow for a file to edited. Using an SD card to distribute plans sounds like a horrible idea. You should use something that creates a record.