What Are the Most Common Plan Check Corrections?

Corrections cluster into four families. Documentation corrections: wrong code edition cited, missing references, forms incomplete or unsigned. Structural corrections: details that don't match the submitted calculations, load path discontinuities, connection designs missing for key joints. Energy and accessibility corrections: compliance forms inconsistent with the drawings, lighting or envelope values that don't verify. Coordination corrections: architectural, structural, and MEP drawings telling different stories about the same building. The fourth family — coordination — generates the most comments per project and is the most avoidable. Two disciplines drawing different ceiling heights, a beam shown structurally but missing architecturally, equipment on the mechanical plans with no electrical feed on the electrical plans. Every one of these is visible before submittal to anyone who cross-checks the set.

Structural reviewers live in the load path: they check that gravity and lateral forces trace continuously from roof to foundation, that the calculations support the details, and that connections — the most common failure point in real buildings — are actually designed and not just drawn. MEP reviewers check system sizing against loads, code-required clearances, and energy compliance alignment. If your energy forms say one efficiency and your schedules say another, expect a comment. Accessibility and fire-life-safety generate their own steady stream: path of travel details, fixture counts, exiting arrangements. These aren't engineering judgment calls — they're checklist items, which makes them the most frustrating corrections to receive, because they were checkable before submittal. A pre-submittal checklist pass against the jurisdiction's published requirements catches most of them.

The practical use of this list is a pre-submittal review against it. Before any package leaves my office, it gets checked for the known offenders: code edition current, calculations matching details, energy forms matching drawings, disciplines coordinated. It's unglamorous work and it's the highest-ROI hour in the project. And when the correction list does arrive, read it against the pattern too. If the comments are all documentation and coordination, that's a process fix. If they're substantive design issues, that's a scope conversation. The pattern tells you which.

• Documentation: outdated code editions, missing references, incomplete forms
• Structural: details not matching calculations, load path gaps, undesigned connections
• Energy/accessibility: compliance forms inconsistent with the drawings
• Coordination: disciplines disagreeing with each other on paper — the biggest family
• Pre-submittal checklist review against these four catches most of them