Confidence: verified (standard US AEC practice) · Last verified: 2026-07-03 · Original SYMATEQ content.
Once construction starts, the design engineer's role shifts from producing drawings to verifying that what's actually being built matches the design intent — a role carried out largely through three distinct, frequently confused mechanisms: submittals, shop drawings, and RFIs.
Submittals: proof that the specified product is actually what's about to get installed
A submittal is the contractor's documentation — manufacturer cut sheets, performance data, material samples, engineering calculations for delegated-design elements — demonstrating that the specific product they intend to install matches (or, via an approved substitution, equivalently meets) the specification. The engineer of record reviews and returns each submittal with a disposition: commonly Approved, Approved as Noted (accepted with specific corrections the contractor must incorporate), Revise and Resubmit (not yet acceptable, requires meaningful rework and another review cycle), or Rejected. This review is a genuine engineering check, not a formality — a submittal review is often the last point before physical installation where an engineer can catch a spec mismatch (wrong voltage, wrong capacity, wrong listing) before it becomes an expensive field correction.
Shop drawings: submittals for anything that has to be fabricated or laid out specifically for this project
Shop drawings are a specific category of submittal for components that require project-specific fabrication or layout detail beyond a manufacturer's standard cut sheet — ductwork fabrication drawings, electrical switchgear/panel layout drawings, custom piping/rack layouts, control system wiring diagrams. Because shop drawings represent the fabricator's or installer's own interpretation of how to build what the contract documents specified, reviewing them is where dimensional coordination errors (a rooftop unit's actual curb dimensions versus what the structural opening was designed for, referenced in the value-engineering discussion in 03-bidding-procurement-and-value-engineering.md) most often surface and get caught before fabrication proceeds.
RFIs: the mechanism for resolving a question the contract documents didn't fully answer
A Request for Information (RFI) is the formal channel a contractor uses to ask the design team to resolve an ambiguity, conflict, or gap discovered in the contract documents during actual construction — a dimension that doesn't match between two drawings, a detail that doesn't address a specific field condition, a code requirement that appears to conflict with a specified product. RFIs are distinct from submittals in a way worth being precise about: a submittal says "here's what we intend to install, please confirm it matches the spec"; an RFI says "the contract documents don't clearly tell us what to do here, please clarify." Treating an RFI response as an opportunity to quietly change the design scope, rather than to genuinely clarify existing intent, is a common point of contract dispute — a real design change discovered through the RFI process usually needs to be processed as a formal change order, not folded silently into an RFI answer.
Site visits and field observation: verifying installed conditions against the reviewed submittals and shop drawings
Construction administration typically includes periodic site visits by the design engineer (scope and frequency defined by the specific owner-architect/engineer agreement) to observe installed work against the design intent and previously reviewed submittals — these are observation visits, not exhaustive inspection of every component, and the distinction matters: a design engineer's site visit is not a substitute for the AHJ's own required inspections (see 05-testing-balancing-and-commissioning.md and 06-closeout-occupancy-and-handover.md) or for the contractor's own quality-control responsibility, even though all three activities are checking related things.
Change orders: the formal record when the actual scope changes from what was contracted
When field conditions, an RFI resolution, an owner-requested change, or an unforeseen condition genuinely changes the contracted scope, cost, or schedule, that change gets documented through a formal change order — a distinct process from an RFI or a submittal revision, because a change order modifies the contract itself (price and/or time), while RFIs and submittals operate within the existing contract's scope. A pattern of scope changes being handled informally through RFI answers or verbal field direction, without corresponding change orders, is a common source of later payment and schedule disputes — precisely because the paper trail that would normally establish what was actually agreed to never got created.
Source / verify: Standard US construction administration practice (AIA B101/A201 or equivalent general conditions framework defining submittal/RFI/change-order procedures). Confirm the specific project's submittal review timeline, RFI turnaround expectations, and change-order authorization process against the executed owner-architect and owner-contractor agreements.