Construction and site stamps: the marks on a drawing set
3 September 2026 ยท Estamplab
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On a construction project the stamps on a drawing are not administration, they are positions. The difference between "reviewed" and "approved" is the difference between commenting on somebody else's work and taking responsibility for it, and the wording on the mark is what records which one happened.
Open the stamp maker and start from any of these
The review mark
The one an architect or engineer applies to a contractor's submittal. It is deliberately careful, and its wording is usually fixed by the office rather than chosen per project:
REVIEWED [ ] No exceptions taken [ ] Make corrections noted [ ] Revise and resubmit [ ] Rejected Review is for conformance with the design concept only. By: .......... Date: ..........
That last sentence is the entire reason the stamp exists in that form. Without it the mark reads as approval of means, methods and dimensions, which is not what a reviewer is doing. See the submittal stamp maker and the drawing approval stamp.
The site marks
- Approved for construction, on the issued set. See the approved stamp.
- Superseded, on the set it replaces, which is the mark that stops somebody building last month's drawing. See the void stamp.
- As built, on the record set.
- Received, with the date, on everything arriving at the site office. See the received stamp.
- The contractor's identity mark, on transmittals and payment applications. See the construction stamp.
What this is not
A professional seal. An engineer's or architect's seal on a drawing is a licensed act with a licence number attached, governed by a board, and it is a different object from a review or approval stamp. The two sit on the same sheet and mean different things.
That distinction is covered properly in engineer and architect seals.
Size, and the title block
A drawing sheet has a stamp area in or near the title block, and it is usually smaller than people expect. A review stamp with four tick boxes and a disclaimer needs to be legible at A1 and still legible when the sheet is printed at A3 for a site meeting, which is the size test that matters.
Keep the disclaimer sentence at its own smaller size, keep the tick boxes large, and check it at half scale before you commit.
Stamping the set
Drawing sets are PDFs and they run to hundreds of sheets. Stamping every sheet by hand is why the superseded mark gets skipped, and a skipped superseded mark is how the wrong revision gets built. Applying a mark across every page in one pass is what makes it survive a busy week.
Read more: The QC side, and the mark that has to name a person
The honest limits
Estamplab is a design tool. This page describes common commercial practice rather than giving legal or engineering advice, and what a review or approval mark commits a party to is set by the contract and, for sealed drawings, by the licensing board, so check the requirement with them.
Only produce a mark you or your organisation are entitled to use.
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