Digital Signatures Build Greater Efficiency in Engineering
Friday, June 25, 2010
Do you have any idea what is Digital Signature? Frankly, I've heard about digital signature recently in an email discussion in my university. However, I did not pay that much attention about it. I don't really know much about it until I receive an email from Ashley, from Arx.com, a company specializing in providing Digital Signature services based in United States. She briefly explained to me about digital signature and benefits it brings to architecture, engineering and construction (AEC). After reading her explanation, I understood the importance of digital signature especially to the engineering industry. The application of it will speed up verification and approval process for technical drawings and documents regardless of the geographic location of engineers and managers.
While organizations across industries have suffered from the worldwide financial crisis, the engineering market took an especially difficult hit. In the face of the crisis, engineering firms including chemical engineering firms are dealing with a serious decline in projects, and a tense rise in competition.
To deal with the industry’s changing landscape, engineering firms are turning to new technologies that enhance collaboration, expedite processes, and cut costs. Digital signatures have proven to be a most prevalent solution among leading AEC firms; they’re now accepted by PE Boards in a vast majority of US states, and they enable these firms to securely and compliantly replace their time-consuming and expensive paper-based processes with electronic ones.
With digital signatures, engineers that are geographically dispersed have the freedom and ability to add their signatures and professional seals in a matter of seconds, and electronically route documents that are sealed from changes to the parties that need to receive them. In this way, digital signatures bind liabilities to their sources, and also enhance collaboration by enabling firms to make use of their best talent, regardless of its location. In addition, digital signatures enable AEC firms to completely eliminate the printing, scanning, physically routing, and archiving processes that go hand-in-hand with paper-based approval processes, and cost an organization not only in resources, but in valuable time. With digital signatures, signed and sealed AutoCAD®, Word, Excel®, and other documents can be delivered in a matter of minutes instead of days.
Today’s digital signature technology makes these types of benefits available for AEC organizations of any size, so it’s no wonder that so many are turning to digital signatures to improve efficiency, cut costs, and gain a crucial competitive advantage. In response to the growing interest in digital signature technology, Engineering News-Record (ENR) is hosting a webinar entitled “Digital Signatures: Designing New Levels of Efficiency and Collaboration”, where Chris Krafft of Black & Veatch, a leading engineering design firm, will discuss his firm’s use of digital signatures. Other speakers will include the President of ZweigWhite (an engineering consultancy), and the CEO of ARX, a leading digital signature solution provider, who will present a recently-published map highlighting digital signature acceptance by PE Boards across the United States. Free registration for this webinar is available here (http://video.webcasts.com/events/pmny001/viewer/index.jsp?eventid=35050).
Photo: credited to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature
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Labels: Chemical Engineer, Chemical Engineering, News
posted by Kipas Repair JB @ 8:33 PM,
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The Author
I’m Zaki. I used to be a project, process and chemical engineer. Few years ago I successfully became a Chartered Engineer (IChemE) and Professional Engineer (BEM). I'm now employed as a chemical engineering educator/researcher/consultant. Hope you like reading my blog. I welcome any feedback from you. My email: zaki.yz[alias]gmail.com. TQ!