The Plan Orientation Checklist: What Experienced Plan Reviewers Do Before They Start Reviewing

We've spent a lot of time talking to plan reviewers and we're starting to notice some patterns. Patterns about what the best ones do, what slows everyone else down, and where their frustrations with their work come from.

One insight keeps surfacing, success isn’t determined in the middle of review, but within the first two minutes.

The best reviewers don’t just start reviewing. They orient themselves. There’s a fundamental difference between loading a document and loading the context required to make high-stakes judgement calls. It's the difference between opening a plan and immediately knowing you're looking at a commercial TI in a fire district versus spending the first ten minutes just figuring out what you're even dealing with.

Key Takeaways

• Before placing a single markup, experienced reviewers quickly determine three things: the type of plan, the scale, and whether the documentation is complete.
• When reviewers understand the project and its constraints from the start, they avoid constant pauses mid-review to figure out basic details.
• Slow loading plans, hidden scale bars, and disorganized sheets force reviewers to rebuild context repeatedly, wasting time before the real review even begins.

The Plan Orientation Checklist: 3 Essentials

Before a seasoned reviewer ever places a markup, they run through a short mental checklist. This gets them situated, familiar, and ready to apply the judgment that's critical for any plan review.

• What kind of plan is this?

Knowing the project type tells you which codes apply, which details you'll be hunting for, and the mindset you need to be in before you start your review. For example, a reviewer looking at a proposed building addition is thinking about ADA accessibility, setbacks, and parking. The same reviewer looking at a driveway permit is thinking about something else entirely. The plan type is the first thing they need to know to start mentally triggering what they'll need to look for, and what judgment calls they'll need to make.

• What is the scale?

A huge part of code compliance is about measurement, setbacks, distances between structures, and clearances. None of that can start until you know what one inch on this plan represents in the real world. If the scale is 1 inch to 20 feet, a setback that looks correct might be fine. If it's 1 inch to 30 feet, the same drawing might be a violation. The scale bar can live in a different spot on every plan, in no consistent format. Finding it is one of the first things every reviewer has to do. It grounds them and their work.

• Is the documentation in order?

Are the required sheets there? Are the pages in a logical order? Is the supporting documentation present? A reviewer who jumps into markup before checking this is going to hit a wall somewhere and have to back up.

Why it works when it works

Plan review is hard in a specific way. You're holding a lot of things in your head at once — codes, project context, what you've already checked, what you haven't. You're building a mental picture of this plan and constantly comparing it against a bank of requirements. Any interruption that forces you to stop and rebuild that picture costs time and accuracy both.

The orientation checklist exists because experienced reviewers figured out, through years of work, that loading context upfront makes everything that follows sharper. You're not stopping mid-review to figure out basic things about the project. You know them already. So when a hard call comes — is this ADA path delineated clearly enough? is that setback legal at this scale? — you're answering it with everything in front of you.

Here’s an example from the culinary world: A good cook spends most of their prep shift getting every ingredient, every tool, every sauce right in front of them before service ever starts. The French term for this is mise en place — which translates to things in place. The idea is that once things get moving, you should never have to stop and go looking for something. The first two minutes of a plan review are the same. Get oriented. Get everything ready. Then do the work.

What gets in the way

The problem is that most plan review tools fight the reviewer on every single one of these steps.

The plan loads slowly. They're clicking through pages one at a time just to get a sense of the project. The scale bar is somewhere on page 7, formatted differently than it was on the last plan. The pages aren't in a clear order. Each of these is a small thing. But each one forces a pause, breaks the thread, and makes them rebuild from scratch something they were in the middle of building.

Our VP of Product Matt Abbitt refers to these snags as "a plan reviewer's death by a thousand cuts." Each cut is minor. But together, they wear people down before they've even gotten to the hard part of the job.

The reviewers who cope best have usually built workarounds over the years. They pop the plan open in a separate PDF viewer to get their bearings, then jump back to the review tool to mark it up. They keep a Word document of frequently used comments to copy and paste from. They've gotten fast at hunting for scale bars.

None of this is efficient. It just becomes normal because it's been that way for a long time — and normal and efficient are not the same thing.

What we think plan review should look like

Here's how we think it should work: The plan opens before you've finished clicking. The scale is right there. The project type is immediately clear. You don't need a second window, a Word doc, or a separate PDF viewer. Everything you need to start reviewing is already in front of you.

That's the standard we hold ourselves to at e-PlanSoft. If you're a reviewer who's tired of the thousand small slowdowns before you even get to the actual work, we'd like to show you what we've built. Let’s start a conversation today.