Just Got Your Engineered House Plans? Here’s What Comes Next

This is a question I hear all the time, and it’s a good one. For many people, building a custom home is the largest investment they’ll ever make. Pricing matters, timing matters, and understanding the next steps can prevent a lot of stress down the road.

Do Builders Need Printed Plans to Give a Quote?

Short answer: no.

Since COVID-19, a large portion of the post-design and permitting process has shifted to digital workflows. Most builders today are perfectly comfortable reviewing a full digital PDF set of plans, and in many cases, that’s actually their preference. Digital plans are easier to share, mark up, and distribute to subcontractors for pricing. One downside to working digitally is that you need to keep good track of revisions. 

Printed plans are still used for certain inspections, on-site reference, or jurisdictions that require hard copies, but they are not required to get accurate pricing.

What matters most is completeness. To actually price a home, a builder needs the full set of engineered plans, not just preliminary drawings or layouts. Accurate pricing comes from time spent reviewing detailed information, not from whether the plans are printed or emailed.

Why Accurate Pricing Takes Time

Clients often want pricing as early as possible, and that makes complete sense. You’re trying to understand whether the project is feasible, what kind of loan you’ll need, and whether the house you’ve designed aligns with your budget. The challenge is that not all pricing is created equal.

I like to explain it this way: imagine walking into a library, pulling a random book off the shelf, and asking someone how many words are in it and what it’s about. They could give you a rough idea by looking at the cover or skimming a few pages, but to give you an accurate answer, they would actually have to read the book. That takes time.

Pricing a house works the same way.

When a builder gives early pricing, they’re often working from assumptions.

Assumptions about structure, finishes, site conditions, mechanical systems, and overall complexity. That’s not wrong, it’s just incomplete. To produce real pricing, the builder has to spend time reviewing the full set of engineered plans, consult their subcontractors, understanding how the house goes together, and identify anything that could materially affect cost.

This is the difference between:

• Napkin pricing, which is quick, experience-based, and useful for early conversations

• Bid-set pricing, which requires time, detailed plans, and coordination with subcontractors

Bid-set pricing isn’t just a number pulled from a spreadsheet. It reflects real labor, real materials, real scope, and real risk. The more complete and coordinated the plans are, the fewer assumptions the builder has to make and the more reliable the pricing becomes.

That’s why accurate pricing doesn’t happen instantly. It’s not about dragging things out; it’s about replacing guesses with information.

Why Early Builder Involvement Matters (A Real Example)

I’ll give you a recent, real-world example from a project I’m currently working on.

During a recent progress meeting with a client and their builder, the builder brought up a question about the floor system: whether it made more sense to use traditional I-joists or floor trusses. Both options work structurally, and both are common. But, they’re not the same product and they don’t perform the same way during construction.

We talked through the pros and cons together. Floor trusses generally cost more than I-joists, so we were all clear that this wasn’t a “free upgrade.” But we also agreed that floor trusses are often the better overall solution, especially once you think beyond just structure.

Floor trusses make life significantly easier for the trades that need to run through the floor system: electrical, plumbing, and HVAC in particular. Instead of drilling, notching, or working around tight constraints, those trades have far more flexibility to route their systems cleanly and efficiently. That can reduce labor headaches, minimize field modifications, and lower the risk of conflicts during construction.

This is a good example of where design, construction, and budget all intersect. Yes, there’s an upfront cost difference. But there can also be downstream benefits in coordination, install quality, and fewer issues during the build. Those are the kinds of conversations that are much easier when the builder is involved early. 

That’s the value of early collaboration. It’s not about chasing the cheapest option on paper it’s about making intentional decisions that support the entire build from start to finish.  

How Design, Pricing, Lending, and Engineering Overlap

Once plans are around 90–95% complete, several things can begin happening at the same time. How smoothly this phase goes often depends on both the builder’s process and the lender’s requirements, not just the drawings themselves.

At this stage, plans can often be submitted to the lender to begin the construction loan process. Some lenders want a final, fully stamped set of plans before they’ll move forward, while others are comfortable starting their review with near-complete drawings. In most cases, however, the lender’s focus is less on the plans themselves and more on the builder’s cost breakdown.

That cost breakdown is what drives the loan. Some builders are comfortable providing pricing that is very accurate but still includes a small buffer. Others prefer to price the project down to the dollar before submitting anything to a bank. Neither approach is wrong but it comes down to the builder’s process and your level of comfort with it.

Once plans are nearing completion, multiple items can move forward in parallel:

• Plans can be submitted to the lender to start the loan process

• The builder can prepare a detailed cost breakdown for financing

• Manual J & D calculations and RESCheck can be completed

• Structural engineering can be finalized

A lot of this depends on coordination. Your comfort level and belief in the builder’s process play a big role here. If you trust the builder’s experience and track record, a well-assembled estimate can be more than sufficient to move things forward. If a builder prefers absolute precision before committing to numbers, the process may take longer.

The key is alignment. When the plans, the builder’s pricing approach, and the lender’s expectations are all in sync, this phase moves efficiently. When they aren’t, that’s when delays and frustration tend to show up.

Who Submits Plans to the City?

This depends on the project, the builder, and how the team is structured.

Some builders handle the permitting process from start to finish, including submitting plans, responding to city comments, and coordinating revisions. If you’re acting as an owner-builder, that responsibility typically falls on you.

In many cases, we’ve also stepped in as a liaison and submitted plans to the city on behalf of our clients or builders. Even when we aren’t the official party submitting for permits, we’re always involved behind the scenes by helping provide additional documents, clarifying drawings, responding to plan review comments, and answering questions as they come up.

The important takeaway is that you’re not navigating this alone. Regardless of who submits the plans, we stay involved to help keep the process on track and resolve issues quickly when they arise.

The Most Important Takeaway

There are a couple of important things to keep in mind at this stage of the process.

First, accurate pricing comes from complete information and aligned expectations, not speed. Whether you’re working with a fully custom design or a stock plan, taking the time to price the project from a complete, engineered set of plans paired with a clear scope and a builder’s cost breakdown leads to far fewer surprises once construction starts.

Second, you’re never alone during the process. Whether questions come up from a builder, a lender, or the city, we’re always available to clarify details, provide additional documentation, and help work through any questions or doubts along the way even when plans need to be adjusted, refined, or adapted to a specific site.

Getting these two things right early makes the rest of the build, financing, permitting, and construction much smoother and far less stressful.