The half of the project the building official is required to ask for.

What is designed, and what is shown

Two things have to be true at once. The building has to work, and a reviewer who has never seen it has to be able to check that it works in about twenty minutes. A calculation package that is right and unreadable gets a correction letter anyway.

Gravity

• Roof and floor framing, spans and species
• Beams and headers, with the load they actually pick up stated
• Posts followed all the way down to a footing that is sized for them
• Foundations, including what happens where new concrete meets old

Lateral

• Shear walls with the capacity and the table the capacity came from
• Holddowns, sill anchorage, the plate washer, and the inspection note that lets the pour pass first time
• The open front condition a garage conversion creates, declared with the limits that make it legal
• Diaphragms, and where the load goes when a wall is removed

The licence

Drawings and calculations are prepared and stamped under a California Professional Engineer licence, civil. Civil engineering expressly includes framed and homogeneous structures, buildings and bridges, which is where residential structural work sits.