Every structural steel package in BC is really a working relationship between two parties who never sign a contract with each other: the fabricator and the engineer of record. The GC holds the contracts. But the technical conversation that decides whether the package runs smoothly happens between our detailing office in Burnaby and the EOR’s desk, through submittals, RFIs, and review stamps.
After fabricating structural steel across Metro Vancouver since 2007, we can tell you the projects that go well are the ones where both sides understand exactly where the responsibility line sits. This post maps that line.
Who designs what
The EOR designs the structure. Member sizes, steel grades, framing layout, load paths, seismic system, all of it flows from the engineer’s sealed drawings, designed to CSA S16, the Canadian steel design standard referenced through the BC Building Code. The fabricator does not size members, does not upgrade or downgrade material, and does not reroute load paths, ever.
Connections are where it gets interesting, because there are two models and they assign the engineering differently.
EOR-detailed connections. The engineer draws every connection on the structural drawings: plate sizes, bolt counts, weld sizes. The fabricator’s job is translation into shop drawings and accurate fabrication. Common on smaller packages and residential structural work.
Delegated connection design. The engineer specifies the forces each connection must carry and hands the connection design to the fabricator. The fabricator’s own professional engineer designs the connections, seals them, and submits them back to the EOR for review. Common on larger commercial packages, where connection-by-connection detailing by the EOR is impractical.
Both models work. What does not work is ambiguity about which model the project is using. If the drawings show typical details but the specs say connection design is delegated, someone has to resolve that at award, not at submittal. It changes who carries professional responsibility for every joint in the frame.
Design loads on the drawings, and why we read them like a contract
Under the delegated model, the connection forces on the structural drawings are the entire design brief. A beam schedule that lists end reactions, or a general note saying connections shall be designed for some fraction of the member capacity, is what our engineer designs to.
So when loads are missing, we stop. A drawing set that shows a braced frame but gives no brace forces is not something a fabricator should paper over with assumptions, because in Metro Vancouver’s seismic zone those braces and their gussets are the lateral system. The forces, and the ductility requirements attached to them, come from the EOR or they do not exist. This is exactly the territory covered on our seismic connections page: seismic connection design in BC is prescriptive about details precisely because the earthquake does not care what anyone assumed.
Reading loads carefully cuts the other way too. Sometimes the stated forces let our engineer design a simpler, cheaper connection than the typical detail on the drawings. Under delegated design, proposing that alternative through the proper submittal channel is part of the value a fabricator brings.
RFI discipline keeps the package moving
Drawings have gaps. Every set, every project. The question is what the fabricator does with a gap, and the only defensible answer is a written RFI to the EOR through the GC’s document channel.
Good RFI practice looks like this. Ask early, during detailing, when the answer costs nothing, rather than during fabrication, when it costs rework, or during erection, when it costs crane time. Ask one clear question per RFI with the drawing reference attached. Propose a solution where you can, an engineer answering “confirm shear tab per detail 5/S501 acceptable at this location” moves faster than one being asked to redesign from a blank page. And log everything, because RFI answers are design direction and belong in the permanent record.
Bad RFI practice also has a look: batching twenty questions into one document three days before fabrication starts, or worse, not asking at all and building on assumption. We described in the IFC-to-erection post how submittal delay flows straight into fabrication delay. Unasked questions do the same thing on a delay, then add rework on top.
What “reviewed” actually means on a returned submittal
Shop drawings come back from the EOR carrying a stamp, and the wording on that stamp is chosen carefully. It will say something like “reviewed” or “reviewed as noted,” and it will say the review is for general conformance with design intent only.
Here is what that means in practice. The engineer has checked that our drawings correctly interpret the structural design: right members, right connections, right welds where welds matter. The engineer has not checked our arithmetic on every dimension, has not verified quantities, and has not taken responsibility for fit-up. Those stay with the fabricator, stamp or no stamp.
Some fabricators treat EOR review as a safety net that will catch their mistakes. It is not, and the stamp language says so explicitly. Our detailers check dimensions against the architectural and structural sets, and our shop checks pieces against drawings before shipping, because when a beam arrives two inches short, “but the engineer reviewed it” is not an argument anyone accepts, least of all the engineer.
Field deviations go through the engineer, no exceptions
Erection reveals things. A column base lands on anchor bolts that are out of tolerance. An existing structure a new beam ties into is not where the drawings believed. A hole pattern does not line up.
The rule is simple and absolute: no field modification to structural steel without EOR approval. The deviation gets documented, a proposed fix goes to the engineer, and work at that location waits for direction. Often the answer comes back same-day, slot the holes, add a plate washer, weld per the attached sketch. Sometimes the engineer wants something different from what the crew proposed. Either way, the fix carries the engineer’s approval and enters the record, so the as-built structure remains the engineered structure.
The welding half of that fix has its own rulebook. Field welds on structural steel must be made under the same certification regime as shop welds: a fabricator certified to CSA W47.1 by the Canadian Welding Bureau, with qualified welders running approved procedures. That is the standard our CWB certified welding operates under, in the shop and in the field. S16 governs what the engineer designs; W47.1 governs who is allowed to weld it. Between those two standards sits the entire fabricator-EOR relationship.
A GC does not have to manage that relationship, but a GC benefits enormously from hiring a fabricator who manages it well, because every one of the failure modes above lands on the project schedule. We wrote our guide to structural steel for general contractors to help you evaluate exactly that. And if you want to see how our office handles submittals, RFIs, and engineer coordination on a real package, send us your project and ask us to walk you through a recent one.
