Structural drawing components, typical structural deficiencies, and interaction with other building systems. Covers when to refer for specialized structural review.
2
hours
0.2
CEUs
Design Professional Related
1.7.5
This course covers material relevant to the following ICC certification exams:
Structural drawing components, typical structural deficiencies, and interaction with other building systems. Covers when to refer for specialized structural review.
Format
On-Demand Online
Delivery
Self-Paced
Access
24/7 After Enrollment
Certification
Certificate of Completion
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Contact our support teamUnderstand structural drawing components and intent
Every structural review, whether performed by a licensed engineer or by a non-structural reviewer doing a first pass, starts from the same question: does this building have a complete, continuous path for its loads to reach the ground? Gravity loads are the ever-present dead weight of the building materials themselves plus the live loads of people, furniture, snow, and stored goods pressing down through the floors and roof. Lateral loads are the sideways push of wind and the shaking of an earthquake, which try to rack the building rather than simply compress it. A sound structural design resolves both kinds of load all the way from where they originate — a roof, a floor, a piece of rooftop equipment — down through the framing, into the foundation, and finally into the supporting soil. The reviewer's job is not to run these calculations. It is to confirm, by reading the drawings, that a continuous path exists and that nothing on the plans breaks it.
That confirmation starts with knowing what a structural submittal actually contains. At its core is the set of structural drawings themselves — the framing plans, foundation plan, sections, and details that show what the structure is made of and how the pieces connect. Behind those drawings sits the engineer's design: the calculations that size the members and connections, which the jurisdiction may or may not require to be submitted but which the engineer is required to have prepared. On the drawings themselves, look for a design-criteria or general-notes sheet. This is arguably the single most useful page in the set for a non-structural reviewer, because it is where the engineer states — in plain, readable form — the assumptions the whole design rests on: the governing wind and seismic criteria, the design loads assumed for each area of the building, the material properties, and the referenced design standards the engineer used. A reviewer does not need to independently derive any of these values. The task is simpler and more achievable: confirm that the criteria are actually stated, that they look internally consistent with the building described elsewhere in the submittal, and that the referenced standards match the materials actually shown on the drawings.
One more piece of the submittal set deserves early attention: the deferred submittal. Certain structural components — wood trusses are the classic example, along with some precast elements or specialty connections — are frequently designed by a specialty engineer working for the fabricator rather than by the engineer of record for the whole building. The code allows this design work to be deferred and submitted after the main permit is issued, but only under specific conditions: the engineer of record must identify on the approved drawings which items are deferred, and the deferred items must ultimately be reviewed and accepted by the engineer of record before that portion of work is installed. A non-structural reviewer's job with deferred items is mostly tracking — confirming the drawings flag them as deferred, and that a process exists to capture the later submittal before installation.
Picture a non-structural reviewer opening a submittal for a two-story medical office building. Before reading a single dimension, the reviewer turns to the general notes sheet and reads the design criteria almost like a checklist: is a wind speed and exposure category stated? Is a seismic design category identified? Is a soil-bearing value or a reference to a geotechnical report present? Is the lateral force-resisting system named — shear walls, a braced frame, a moment frame, or something else? None of these require the reviewer to check the engineer's math. They require only that each item is present, stated in a way that makes sense for the building's location and use, and consistent with what the architectural and foundation plans elsewhere in the set actually show. A design-criteria sheet with blanks, contradictions, or criteria that plainly do not match the building's site is worth flagging before the review goes any further.
The most common mistake a non-structural reviewer makes here is skipping the design-criteria sheet entirely and diving straight into the framing plans, because the criteria sheet looks like boilerplate. It rarely is. A second common mistake is treating the absence of stated design criteria as a minor omission rather than a completeness failure — if the criteria are not stated, the reviewer cannot confirm the rest of the drawings are consistent with them, and the submittal is not actually complete. A third mistake is overlooking deferred-submittal items because they appear on the drawings only as a note or a bubble rather than as a fully engineered detail; a reviewer scanning quickly for missing information can walk right past a properly flagged deferred item and mistake it for an oversight, or, worse, walk past an unflagged item that should have been called out as deferred and never catch that it is missing at all. The correction in each case is the same discipline: read the general notes and design criteria first, treat their absence as an incompleteness issue, and specifically scan for deferred-submittal callouts before moving on.
Code Reference: IBC Chapter 23 - The code establishes minimum requirements for structural drawing components to ensure public health, safety, and welfare. Requirements vary based on occupancy classification, construction type, and building height and area.
Identify obvious structural compliance issues
Non-structural reviewers are not expected to redesign a building, and understanding exactly where that boundary sits is the foundation of this module. The engineer of record — the licensed professional who signs and seals the structural drawings — owns the engineering. That seal is not decorative; it is the professional's legal attestation that the design was prepared under their responsible charge and, in their professional judgment, satisfies the applicable structural provisions. A non-structural reviewer's role is narrower and, in its own way, just as important: verify that the submittal is complete, that it is internally consistent, and that nothing on its face contradicts what the code requires or what the rest of the submittal shows. When those checks raise a question the reviewer cannot resolve by reading the drawings, the correct move is to refer the item to someone with structural training — never to approve past a doubt, and never to attempt an engineering judgment the reviewer is not licensed to make.
Within that boundary, there is still real, useful work a non-structural reviewer can do, because some structural problems are visible without any calculation at all. An open floor area shown on the architectural plans with no corresponding beams or columns on the structural plans is an obvious mismatch — somewhere, either the architectural drawing is wrong, the structural drawing is incomplete, or a design element has genuinely been missed. A referenced design standard that does not match the construction type is another: steel and concrete design standards appearing on the structural sheet for a building the architectural plans show as wood-framed throughout suggests the drawings were assembled incorrectly, copied from a different project, or otherwise contain an error the design team needs to resolve. Long spans without any apparent means of support, framing members that appear to simply stop without a connection detail, or a foundation plan with no distinction between typical conditions and areas carrying obviously heavier loads are all things a careful, attentive reviewer can spot on sight, long before any calculation would confirm a genuine problem exists.
The discipline in every one of these cases is the same: notice the inconsistency, do not attempt to resolve it by guessing at the engineer's intent, and route it to specialized structural review or back to the design team for clarification. Approving past an obvious inconsistency because raising a question feels like second-guessing a licensed professional defeats the entire purpose of having a second set of eyes in the review process.
A reviewer working through a small commercial tenant improvement notices that the architectural plans call for removing an interior wall to open up a retail floor, but the structural drawings in the same submittal still show that wall as load-bearing, with no new beam or header indicated anywhere on the framing plan. Nothing about resolving this requires structural calculation. The reviewer simply needs to recognize that the architectural intent and the structural drawings do not agree, and that removing a load-bearing wall without a documented replacement means of support is exactly the kind of obvious compliance gap this module is meant to train reviewers to catch. The correct response is to hold the submittal and require the design team to reconcile the two sets of drawings — either by revising the architectural plan to retain the wall or by adding an engineered beam and connection detail to the structural set — before approval.
The most damaging mistake in this module runs in the opposite direction from Module 1's: instead of missing an obvious problem, a reviewer oversteps and tries to solve it — sketching in a beam size, waiving a connection detail as probably fine, or otherwise making a structural judgment call that belongs to the engineer of record. This exposes the jurisdiction and the reviewer to real liability and can quietly let an inadequate design through. A second common mistake is the opposite extreme: treating any structural note the reviewer does not immediately understand as an automatic rejection, which needlessly delays projects that are, in fact, complete and correct. The correction for both is the same referral discipline: a non-structural reviewer's authority extends to identifying inconsistencies and incompleteness, not to resolving them. When something looks wrong, describe specifically what was observed and route it for specialized review; do not silently fix it, and do not reject broadly without being able to point to the specific inconsistency.
Code Reference: IBC Chapter 23 - The code establishes minimum requirements for obvious structural compliance issues to ensure public health, safety, and welfare. Requirements vary based on occupancy classification, construction type, and building height and area.
Determine when specialized structural review is needed
Some structural coordination issues only become visible when a reviewer looks across disciplines rather than at the structural sheets in isolation. Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing drawings routinely call for penetrations, recesses, or heavy equipment that the structural drawings need to account for, and it is common for those sets of drawings to be prepared on different schedules by different consultants who are not always talking to each other. A rooftop mechanical unit is a concentrated load that needs adequate framing and, often, larger or reinforced footings beneath it — if the foundation plan shows uniform footing sizes throughout with no apparent accommodation near the equipment location, that is a coordination gap worth flagging, even though the reviewer cannot say what size footing is actually required. The same logic applies to large duct or pipe penetrations through a floor or roof structure, openings cut through a shear wall for a door or window, or heavy fixtures suspended from framing that was not obviously designed to carry a point load. None of these require an engineering analysis — only the habit of holding the structural, architectural, and MEP drawings side by side and asking whether they tell a consistent story.
A related but distinct area is coordination with special inspection. Certain categories of structural work — welding, high-strength bolting, particular concrete or masonry placements, and deep or unusual foundation systems among them — are significant and complex enough that the code requires a qualified special inspector to observe and document the work as it happens, in addition to the department's regular inspections. A special inspector typically has narrow but deep expertise in one type of work and provides continuous or periodic observation that the department's general inspectors are not staffed or trained to provide. The design team documents which elements require this heightened oversight in a statement of special inspections that should accompany a submittal triggering it. A non-structural reviewer's role is to confirm that statement is present when the drawings show work of the kind that typically requires it, and to recognize that the special inspection agency itself needs to be acceptable to the building official — accreditation and qualification of testing and inspection providers is covered in more depth in this platform's companion course on product testing and certification.
Foundation coordination deserves its own mention. A foundation plan should be traceable back to a geotechnical or soils report establishing the ground conditions the design assumes. A foundation plan with no apparent reference to any soils information, or with footing types that seem mismatched to the site conditions described elsewhere in the submittal, is worth flagging for specialized review even though the reviewer cannot independently evaluate whether the foundation design itself is adequate.
Consider a plan set for a two-story retail building with a lateral force-resisting system identified on the general notes as a series of plywood shear walls. Working through the framing plans level by level, a careful reviewer traces each shear wall from the roof down: the upper-level walls line up with walls below on the first-floor framing plan, until one wall reaches the first floor and simply is not there — the architectural plan shows an open storefront at that location instead, with no corresponding wall, drag strut, or transfer beam shown anywhere on the structural drawings to carry that load sideways to an adjacent wall or down to the foundation. This is precisely the kind of load-path discontinuity a non-structural reviewer can and should catch: not by calculating whether a collector member is adequately sized, but by noticing that the drawings show a lateral load arriving at a location where, on the next sheet, the wall that was supposed to receive it has vanished. The appropriate response is not to guess at a fix. It is to document exactly where the discontinuity was observed — which wall, which level, which sheets — and refer the submittal back to the engineer of record for a completed load path before the plans are approved.
A frequent mistake is treating cross-discipline coordination as someone else's job — assuming the mechanical reviewer will catch a rooftop-unit foundation mismatch, when in fact these gaps live precisely in the overlap between disciplines that no single reviewer owns by default. A second mistake is assuming special inspection requirements are self-evident and skipping the check for a statement of special inspections altogether; its presence should be verified, not assumed. A third mistake, particularly on a load-path issue like a discontinuous shear wall, is flagging the general concern ("the lateral system looks incomplete") without documenting the specific sheets and locations involved. The correction across all three is the same habit of specificity: name the discipline gap, name the missing verification item, and name the exact sheet and location — vague flags slow a review down almost as much as missed ones.
Code Reference: IBC Chapter 23 - The code establishes minimum requirements for determine when specialized structural review is needed to ensure public health, safety, and welfare. Requirements vary based on occupancy classification, construction type, and building height and area.
This course equips non-structural plan reviewers to perform a meaningful first pass on structural submittals without stepping outside their professional lane. It builds a working vocabulary for the structural drawing set — the design-criteria sheet, the engineer's calculations, referenced design standards, and the deferred-submittal concept — and trains the habit of tracing a building's gravity and lateral loads from where they originate down to the ground. It draws a clear line between the reviewer's role, verifying completeness and consistency, and the engineer of record's role, the engineering itself, and it works through the obvious, calculation-free red flags a non-structural reviewer can and should catch: unsupported spans, mismatched design standards, discontinuous load paths, and coordination gaps between structural, architectural, and MEP drawings. It closes with when and how to escalate — recognizing the work that calls for special inspection, tracking foundations back to their geotechnical basis, and referring structural concerns to specialized review with enough specificity to be useful.