Digital Signatures Enable Engineers to Spend Time Where it Counts, Not on Processing Paper

ARX, a leading provider of digital signature solutions, has implemented the CoSign digital signature solution at Terracon, a leading engineering consulting firm. With 135 offices across the United States, Terracon provides geotechnical, environmental, construction materials, and facilities services. With digital signatures, Terracon’s employees are able to compliantly achieve faster turnarounds while improving collaboration and increasing client satisfaction.

CoSign is currently being used by 650 Terracon employees across 100 offices. In the past five months alone, Terracon employees have digitally signed 150,000 client reports, eliminating the costly and time-consuming need for printing and routing. The majority of these signers are engineers who regularly travel off-site and are required to approve documentation while in the field. Digital signatures in engineering enable signing from any location with an Internet connection. With CoSign, engineers can also digitally apply their digital seal in addition to a graphical signature.

“Prior to using CoSign, we would need to print out reports, sign them by hand, and then rescan them before we could send them to a client,” said Frank Milano, CIO, Terracon. “That in itself tells you the time that we save signing digitally.”

Milano stressed that legal compliance and the ability to validate the digital signature years into the future were crucial requirements surrounding digital signature adoption. “It’s important to have a signature that can be authenticated many years into the future, because we always have to be able to go back and access our documents and prove that they’re valid. Ultimately, we have many signatures on the [engineering] reports, and we have to ensure that 10 years down the road we could bring up the electronic document and prove that it was original, that any changes to the document have been detected, and that the employee who signed was truly the employee.”

“Acceptance of digital signatures in engineering is growing rapidly,” said Gadi Aharoni, CEO, ARX. “People are realizing that this technology can make a profound impact in terms of enabling better and faster customer service at reduced costs, and maintaining the necessary security and regulatory compliance. It’s very exciting to be a part of this and to provide a solution that makes a difference this way.”

Terracon is a dynamic and growing employee-owned firm of consulting engineers and scientists providing geotechnical, environmental, construction materials, and facilities services to clients at local, regional, and national levels. Since 1965, Terracon has grown from a small Iowa geotechnical firm to a large, multifaceted national firm. With more than 2,700 employees and more than 130 offices nationwide, Terracon has the resources of a large firm with the atmosphere of a small one. This growth is the result of talented, dedicated employees working toward a common goal to complement each other to deliver success for clients and employees.
For more information please visit http://www.terracon.com.

ARX (Algorithmic Research) is a leading provider of secure, cost-efficient digital signature solutions for the AEC industry. With ARX’s CoSign® digital signature solution, AEC firms can optimize their internal and external collaboration, enhance quality, cut project delivery times and operational costs, and increase client satisfaction. With CoSign, geographically-dispersed engineers can securely, compliantly, and affordably add their signatures and professional seals to drawings and other documents, and deliver them in a matter of minutes, rather than days. By eliminating the time-consuming and expensive need for printing and routing paper documents for approvals, and ensuring that each engineer’s contribution is securely attributed and sealed from changes, CoSign enables AEC firms to tap into their best resources – regardless of location. A scalable solution, CoSign functions seamlessly with major document formats including Adobe® PDF, AutoCAD®, MicroStation®, and Microsoft® Office applications, and allows third-parties to validate engineering stamps, seals, and digital signatures without the need for additional verification software. Learn more about the CoSign digital signature solution.

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CoSign is a registered trademark of Algorithmic Research, Ltd. All other trade names and trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Press Contact:
Ashley Miller
ARX
(415) 839 8161
Ashley@arx.com