Engineering Project Management Checklist

Pull the signed agreement (AIA B-series, EJCDC, ACEC, or owner form) and verify the scope, fee structure (lump sum / cost plus / T&M), reimbursable categories, and any additional-services language. Flag indemnification, limitation-of-liability, and standard-of-care clauses for the PIC if they deviate from firm boilerplate.

Set up the project in Vantagepoint / Ajera / Unanet with the contract amount, phases, and labor budgets by discipline. Lock the charge codes before staff start booking time — retroactive corrections are painful and distort utilization.

Confirm the EOR holds an active license in the state of practice (or comity is in process) and that the renewal cycle does not lapse before the IFC issuance date. Verify firm Certificate of Authorization where the state requires one.

Walk civil, structural, MEP, and specialty leads through scope, schedule, fee allocation, and known risks. Identify any work that exceeds in-house competence (blast, seismic retrofit, fire-protection PE, geotech) and decide on subconsultant vs. internal staffing.

Pull the AHJ's current adoption table — IBC edition, IECC edition, NEC cycle, state amendments, ASCE 7 reference, ADA standard. Document on the cover sheet. Mismatched code editions between AHJ and design set are a common cause of plan-review rejection.

Capture governing codes, design loads (DL/LL/W/S/E per ASCE 7), risk category, soil bearing assumptions, design temperatures, ventilation rates per ASHRAE 62.1, and energy compliance path. The BoD is the document the team and reviewers come back to at every milestone.

Schedule discipline check, IDC, peer review, code review, ADA review, and constructability review against each milestone (30/60/90/IFC). Assign reviewers who are not the original designers and who have no conflict of interest with the project team.

Determine whether the project triggers NPDES construction stormwater (>1 acre disturbance), Section 404 wetlands, NEPA review, floodplain LOMR, or air permits. Issue a permit-responsibility memo to the owner clarifying who files what; designer-vs-owner permitting confusion drives most permitting fire drills.

Each discipline lead delivers 60% drawings, sealed-page-ready specifications drafts, and calculation packages. Calc packages are PDF'd, dated, page-numbered, and saved to the project record — not left in working Excel files on someone's desktop.

Run Model Coordination in Autodesk Construction Cloud (or Navisworks / Solibri equivalent) across architectural, structural, and MEP federated models. Distribute the clash report to discipline leads with a resolution deadline before the IDC meeting.

Walk every discipline through the others' drawings — ceiling heights vs. ductwork, plumbing chases vs. structural beams, FFE vs. civil grading, electrical rooms vs. fire-rated assemblies. Capture coordination redlines with action owners and due dates.

Cross-check drawing notes against the relevant CSI MasterFormat sections. Resolve conflicts; do not rely on the boilerplate "in case of conflict, specifications govern" clause to paper over a real disagreement between the EOR and the specifier.

Senior reviewer marks up drawings and calculations using Bluebeam Studio. Engineer addresses each redline; comments are not closed unilaterally. Calc reviews verify load combinations, software inputs, and units — "the software is not the engineer."

The reviewer (not the engineer) confirms each redline was addressed or carries written justification for not addressing it. Skipped backchecks are the most common QA/QC failure — the redline gets ignored, the seal goes on, and the issue surfaces in CA.

For high-risk elements (lateral system, deep foundations, fire/life-safety, complex hydraulics), a PE outside the project team performs an independent review. Document scope of review and findings; the peer reviewer signs the BoD page.

Update drawings, calcs, and BoD per peer-review findings. Re-circulate to the peer reviewer for sign-off before sealing — issuing under seal with known unresolved peer-review comments puts the EOR's license at risk.

Code review against the AHJ-adopted edition; ADA review against the 2010 ADA Standards (or PROWAG for ROW projects); constructability review by someone with field experience. Capture each on the QA/QC sign-off sheet bound into the project record.

Track each RFI and submittal against the contract turnaround (commonly 14 days). Reviewer assignment is explicit; escalate to the PIC when a response slips past 10 days. Late RFI responses are a frequent driver of contractor change-order claims.

Each observation report defines what was observed and what was not — "observed structural steel erection at gridlines A-D; did not observe MEP rough-in." Observation is a snapshot, not inspection; sloppy scope language has cost firms in claims for work the EOR never saw.

Pull contractor markups periodically during construction rather than waiting for the final roll. Incorporate within 90 days of substantial completion. Record drawings produced from memory at year-end are a known quality and liability problem.

Pull the project team together to capture coordination issues, code interpretations, recurring RFI patterns, and subconsultant performance. Feed the firm's design-issue database so the next project team doesn't relearn the same lesson.