Washington Land Surveyor seal requirements: size, wording, and the rule that sets them

No. WAC 196-23-010 requires the impression or image to conform to the design illustrated in the rule, and the authorized land surveyor design is a rounded square framed by a rope border — the circular scalloped outline belongs to the professional engineer and structural engineer designs on the same page. The illustrations are printed in the certified PDF of the section and are dropped from the HTML version, so a surveyor reading the section online sees the four items that must be legible and no picture at all. A circular surveyor seal carrying the right four items still does not conform to the design the board authorized. (WAC 196-23-010)

Yes. RCW 18.43.070 gives the whole chapter exactly two legends — "registered professional engineer" or "registered professional land surveyor" — and WAC 196-23-010(2) repeats the surveyor's form as one of the four items that must be fully legible. The illustrated surveyor design sets it on two lines, "REGISTERED" above "PROFESSIONAL LAND SURVEYOR". "Professional Land Surveyor" standing alone is not one of the two legends, and no abbreviation such as P.L.S. or L.S. appears on any authorized design. (RCW 18.43.070; WAC 196-23-010(2))

Yes — Washington inverts the usual instinct. WAC 196-23-020(2) defines preliminary documents as those not final but released or distributed by the licensee, requires them to be clearly identified as "preliminary" or to carry wording differentiating them from a final document, and then provides that they "must be stamped, but need not be signed or dated by the licensee." So the stamp goes on a released preliminary; it is the signature and the date that are held back, not the seal. (WAC 196-23-020(2))

Yes, once it is final. WAC 196-23-020(1) defines "document" for the seal rule as "plans, specifications, plats, surveys, land descriptions as defined in WAC 332-130-020, reports, and as-built documents prepared by the licensee", and any final document must contain the seal, the signature and the date of signature. The borrowed definition is wide: WAC 332-130-020(5) makes a land description "[a] description of real property or of rights associated with real property", so a metes-and-bounds description written for a client or filed with a public official sits inside the sealing rule rather than beside it. (WAC 196-23-020(1); WAC 332-130-020(5))

A certificate in words the statute writes for you. RCW 58.09.080 prescribes the surveyor's certificate that shall appear on the record of survey map — reciting that the map correctly represents a survey made by the surveyor or under the surveyor's direction in conformance with the requirements of the Survey Recording Act, at the request of a named person — and it prints the signature block as "(Signed and Sealed)" above the certificate number. The recording office is held to a checklist as well: RCW 58.09.110 has the auditor accept for recording those records of survey and records of corner information that are in compliance with the recorder's checklist jointly developed by a committee of the survey advisory board and representatives of the county auditors, once that checklist is adopted in rule by the Department of Natural Resources. (RCW 58.09.080; RCW 58.09.110)