What does a PE need before reviewing plans?

The intake list, item by item

• Project location. City and state at minimum — the jurisdiction decides which codes govern and whether the sealing engineer is licensed to do the work at all.
• The disciplines required. Structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, civil — or the honest answer, not sure, which scoping exists to resolve.
• The drawing set, current and complete. Every sheet the design depends on, at its latest revision. A set missing its schedules or its details is a set that will be corrected for completeness before anything else.
• The calculations. The engineering behind the drawings: loads, sizing, selections. Drawings without calculations ask the reviewer to reverse-engineer the design before reviewing it.
• Specifications and product data where the design depends on them — equipment selections, materials, manufactured components.
• Anything the authority has said. Comment letters, submittal checklists, prior review responses. These are instructions from the reader who matters most; a review that has not seen them is working partially blind.

The same-revision rule

One requirement runs through the list: the documents must describe the same design. Calculations run against an earlier layout, drawings updated without the specifications that match them — mismatches like these are the most common source of review comments and the easiest to prevent, with a ten-minute check before the package is sent. The cost guide explains why completeness is also the largest single lever on what a review costs: reviewers price the work the documents require, and partial documents require more of it.