Nevada Architect seal requirements: size, wording, and the rule that sets them

The Nevada State Board of Architecture, Interior Design and Residential Design, under NAC chapter 623 — not the State Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors, whose stamp rule is NAC 625.610. The sizes differ as a result: an architect's seal must be approximately 1 7/8 inches in overall diameter, while an engineer's or land surveyor's stamp is approximately 1.7 inches. The same architecture board also prescribes a 2 1/2 inch equilateral triangle for a registered interior designer, so "the Nevada seal" is never one thing, and the 1.7 inch figure is the wrong board's. (NAC 623.750(1)(a); NAC 623.755(1)(a); NAC 625.610(2))

The prose of the rule asks only for the name of the registrant and the number of registration — the words come from the design printed alongside, which the seal must conform to. In that design the registrant's name arcs across the top of the outer ring and "STATE OF NEVADA" across the bottom, with a five-pointed star in the ring at the left, and inside the inner circle "REGISTERED", the registration number and "ARCHITECT" are stacked on three lines. The profession is split around the number rather than set in the ring, so a seal that reads "REGISTERED ARCHITECT" around the outside does not follow the design the rule prescribes. (NAC 623.750(1)(b); Board's published architect seal design)

No — and neither do the documents. The expiration date is an engineering and land surveying requirement: NAC 625.610 lets that stamp carry the expiration date, then requires the licensee to write it beside the stamp if it does not, and requires it on every document released for construction or issued as formal or final. Nothing in NAC 623.750 or NAC 623.766 puts an expiration date on an architect's seal or on architectural submissions. What an architect's documents must bear is the date, the seal and the signature. (NAC 623.750(1)(b); NAC 623.766(2); NAC 625.610(3)(e), (4), (8)(d))

All of them. NAC 623.766(2) requires each document submitted to a public authority to bear the date and the original or electronic seal and signature of the registrant who provided the responsible control under which the work indicated on that sheet was performed. There is no cover-sheet concession of the kind the engineers' rule gives: NAC 625.611(2)(b) lets copies of original plans be stamped on the cover sheet and the first sheet for each engineering discipline, and chapter 623 has no counterpart. Specification sets add a table of contents or cover sheet indicating the professional discipline that is the source of each specification, stamped, signed and dated by the registrant responsible for that discipline. (NAC 623.766(2), (3); NAC 625.611(2)(b))

An as-built plan, a record plan or a bid document; a report that includes observations concerning the progress of construction; and an estimate of the costs of a project. The bid document is the one to notice — the engineers' and surveyors' equivalent list at NAC 625.610(12) excuses as-builts, record plans, progress observation reports and cost estimates and says nothing about bid documents, so the two exemption lists are not interchangeable. (NAC 623.763(5); NAC 625.610(12))