A pre-submittal checklist for a civil engineering plan set

Sheets, the index, and whether they agree

A sheet index on the cover is required by all four drafting standards below. The part worth checking twice is not that the index exists, it is that the index and the sheets say the same thing.

“sheet titles on the index sheet should match exactly with the corresponding plan sheet title and the sheet file name”

WSDOT asks for the sheet name in the title block to be entered as it appears in the index's Title column. Castle Rock wants sheet numbers on every page in a stated corner and format, and Montgomery County asks the index to mark which sheets are new or changed on an amendment.

What to confirm

• Every sheet is numbered, and no number is used twice.
• Every sheet in the set appears in the index, and every sheet the index lists is in the set.
• Each index title matches the title block on its own sheet.
• Any "sheet n of m" count matches the sheets actually bound in.

Scale, north arrow and legend

All four standards require a graphic scale and a stated scale, and all four require a north arrow. Three of the four require a legend.

“In addition to including the scale bar, the scale of the plan sheet, detail, and so on, will also be shown in text underneath the scale bar.”

The stated values differ, which is the reason to read your own: Montgomery County asks for 1 in. = 30 ft, Castle Rock for 1 in. = 50 ft horizontal with 1 in. = 5 ft or 10 ft vertical on profiles, and TxDOT recommends 1 in. = 100 ft or 50 ft for plans. What they share is that a sheet says what its scale is, including when something is not to scale.

• A graphic scale bar on every plan sheet, and a separate one for any detail drawn at another scale.
• The scale stated in text as well as drawn, and inside the range your jurisdiction publishes.
• A north arrow on every plan view, oriented the way the standard asks.
• A legend covering the symbols that appear on that sheet.

The seal, the signature and the date

Sealing rules are set by each state's licensing board, and the NCEES Model Rules are the common ancestor most of them read like. Two requirements are close to universal.

“In addition, each sheet shall be sealed and signed by the licensee or licensees responsible for that sheet.”

Texas states it as every original sheet of plans or drawings regardless of size; Florida as each page required to be sealed; California as signing in a way that attributes all work to the licensees in responsible charge. The date is the other one: California requires it immediately below or next to the signature and seal, and Ohio, Texas, Florida and the Model Rules all require it too.

Electronic seals are where states differ

The four-part test for a digital signature, that it is unique to the person, verifiable, under their sole control, and invalidated if the document changes, is written almost identically in the Model Rules, Ohio and Florida.

“linked to a document in such a manner that the electronic signature is invalidated if any data in the document is changed”

It is not national. Texas instead requires reasonable security measures to make the documents unalterable, and also wants the firm name and registration number on everything released, preliminary documents included. California fixes what a seal may be and forbids a rubber stamp of the signature. Florida alone offers a second path, matching a file's authentication code to a physically signed report. Check your own state's rule before you choose how to sign.

Revisions

“Any revision to a document containing the seal and signature of a licensee shall be described and dated.”

WSDOT carries a revision box with a date field, and Montgomery County asks the title information to include a revision block identifying revision dates. On a resubmittal, keep the numbering stable: a set that renumbers itself between rounds is hard for a reviewer, and for the portals described in the submittal requirements guide, impossible to version.

The checklist in one table

The file itself has its own rules, and they vary more than these do. What a submitted file has to be covers format, naming and the space left for the approval stamp, and how review and resubmittals work covers what happens once it is uploaded.

Everything above is visible on the sheets, which is what makes it worth a last pass. Set-Check reads a whole plan set before it is submitted, with AI in every run, and points each item it finds at the page it came from, for you to review. A clean result is not a prediction of approval. Open the sample report.