The exercise
Ask a principal at a structural engineering firm what a field review report costs, and you will get the billing rate times the hours billed. That number is accurate and useless. It tells you what the client pays. It does not tell you what the firm spends.
The distinction matters because the firm's cost includes labour that never appears on an invoice - the drafting time that falls between the site visit and the signed document. A twelve-engineer firm in the Greater Toronto Area tracked this labour across a representative sample of field reviews over several months. The numbers below are composites from that exercise, rounded to protect specifics but faithful to the proportions.
The anatomy of a single field review
A standard field review report under OBC 1.2.2.2 involves a licensed professional visiting a construction site, observing the work in progress, comparing it against the approved drawings and applicable standards, documenting findings with photographs, and producing a signed narrative report.
Here is where the time goes:
Travel and site visit - 1.5 to 2.5 hours
The drive from the firm's office to a GTA construction site averages 45 minutes each way, though sites in Markham, Mississauga, or Hamilton can push this past an hour. The on-site observation itself takes 30 to 90 minutes depending on the scope - a routine concrete pour review is fast; a full structural frame inspection is not.
This time is irreducible. The professional must be physically present. OBC 1.2.2.2 requires observation by the registered professional or someone under their direct supervision. There is no remote alternative for the site visit itself.
Note-taking on site - 15 to 30 minutes
The engineer takes handwritten notes, photographs, and sometimes voice memos on site. This is the raw material for the report. It happens simultaneously with the observation but carries its own cognitive load - the engineer is simultaneously evaluating structural work and documenting that evaluation for a future audience.
Most engineers use their phone camera and a notepad. Some use tablets. A few firms have experimented with structured inspection apps, but these tend to impose checklist-style data entry that does not map well to the narrative, judgment-heavy nature of a sealed field review.
Drafting - 45 to 90 minutes
This is where the economics break.
The engineer returns to the office (or, more often, opens a laptop at home after dinner) and writes the report. The drafting process involves:
- Opening the firm's Word template
- Filling in project metadata (address, permit number, date, weather conditions)
- Transcribing handwritten notes into professional narrative prose
- Sorting and captioning 5 to 15 photographs
- Writing observation summaries for each inspected element
- Stating findings (conforming / not conforming / not reviewed) with supporting rationale
- Writing recommendations if non-conformances were observed
- Citing the relevant code sections and material standards
- Cross-referencing the approved drawings
For a routine review with no non-conformances, a skilled drafter can push through this in 45 minutes. For a complex review with multiple findings, photo annotations, and regulatory citations, 90 minutes is common. Engineers who are meticulous about their prose - and many principals are, because their name is on the seal - can spend longer.
The critical detail: this is licensed-professional time spent on typing. The engineering judgment happened on site. The drafting is transcription and formatting - valuable work, but not the work the engineer's license is for.
Internal review - 10 to 20 minutes
In a well-run firm, a second engineer or senior technologist reviews the draft before the principal signs. They check for internal consistency, correct code references, photo-caption alignment, and formatting errors. In smaller firms, the principal self-reviews, which means reading their own prose fresh the next morning.
Revisions - 0 to 30 minutes
If the review catches issues, the original drafter revises. If a non-conformance is later resolved and the report needs re-issuance, another revision cycle begins. Re-issued reports are common. A firm producing 50 FRRs per month might re-issue 10 to 15 of them as construction progresses and deficiencies are addressed.
Export, seal, and distribution - 10 to 15 minutes
The final report is exported to PDF, the engineer's seal is applied (wet-stamp on print, or digital overlay), and the document is distributed to the code agency, contractor, and project file. Most firms use email. Some use Bluebeam Studio or SharePoint. The distribution list is typically 4 to 8 recipients per report.
The total
| Step | Time (routine) | Time (complex) |
|---|---|---|
| Travel + site visit | 1.5 hrs | 2.5 hrs |
| Note-taking on site | 15 min | 30 min |
| Drafting | 45 min | 90 min |
| Internal review | 10 min | 20 min |
| Revisions | 0 min | 30 min |
| Export + distribute | 10 min | 15 min |
Routine total: ~3.0 hours. Complex total: ~5.5 hours.
Drafting accounts for 25% to 30% of the total time on a routine review and up to 35% on a complex one. It is the single largest block of time after travel - and unlike travel, it is not irreducible.
The firm-level math
A twelve-engineer firm producing 50 field review reports per month, a typical volume for a mid-size GTA structural practice - spends roughly:
- 50 reports × 60 minutes average drafting time = 50 hours/month on drafting alone
- Add revision cycles (~15 re-issues × 20 minutes) = 5 more hours
- Add internal review (~50 reports × 15 minutes) = 12.5 more hours
That is 67.5 hours per month on the post-site-visit workflow - drafting, reviewing, and revising reports that document engineering judgment that already happened on site.
At a blended internal cost of $85/hour (a conservative estimate for a mix of P.Eng and EIT time in the GTA), that is $5,737 per month or roughly $69,000 per year in labour cost dedicated to producing the document, not performing the engineering.
The opportunity cost is worse. Those 67.5 hours per month are coming from licensed professionals whose time bills at $150 to $250/hour externally. Every hour a P.Eng spends drafting a report is an hour they are not reviewing construction work, mentoring junior engineers, or taking on new projects. The firm's revenue capacity is constrained by its drafting throughput.
Where the bottleneck actually is
The bottleneck is not the site visit. Firms can hire more engineers, schedule more visits, expand their geographic coverage. The bottleneck is what happens after the visit - the conversion of raw observations into a signed, sealed, defensible narrative document.
This bottleneck is why principals draft reports at 9 PM. It is why EITs spend their first two years learning to write prose instead of learning to evaluate structures. It is why firms turn down project volume they could technically service - they do not have enough drafting throughput to keep up with the reports.
The economics are clear: if you could cut drafting time by 60 to 70% without sacrificing the quality of the narrative, a twelve-engineer firm recovers 30 to 35 hours of licensed-professional time per month. At a blended billing rate, that recovered capacity pays for itself before the firm counts any other benefit.
What does not change
Cutting drafting time does not change the site visit. The engineer still drives to site, still observes the construction, still takes notes and photographs, still exercises professional judgment. OBC 1.2.2.2 requires that observation, and no technology replaces it.
Cutting drafting time does not change the review. The principal still reads every report before signing. The attestation - the moment where the engineer takes personal ownership of the document - is non-negotiable and becomes more important, not less, when drafting is accelerated.
Cutting drafting time does not change the seal. The engineer's signature and stamp attach personal liability under PEO Regulation 941. That liability exists whether the first draft was written by the engineer, by a junior staff member, or by an AI drafting tool. The standard of care is the same.
What changes is the conversion step - the 45 to 90 minutes where a licensed professional sits in front of a Word document and types up what they already know. That is the hour that does not need to exist in its current form.