Contract documents routinely hand the design of specific components to the contractor. Stairs, railings, steel connections, cold-formed framing, and equipment anchorage often sit outside the engineer of record’s scope, which leaves the builder responsible for producing stamped calculations and drawings before fabrication starts.

That responsibility is what delegated design engineering covers. The engineer works to the performance criteria written into the specification, seals the package, and the engineer of record reviews it for general conformance rather than redesigning the piece.

The firms below work in this space. Details come from each company’s published material.

1. Zenith Engineers Inc.

Founded in 2009, Zenith Engineers Inc. is a full-service structural engineering firm focused on delegated design, construction engineering, and deferred submittals for general contractors, specialty contractors, and developers. Zenith reports more than 1,000 deferred submittals engineered, and its engineers have experience in wood, concrete, and cold-formed structures as well as scaffolding and anchorage design.

Key scopes: Steel connection design; metal stud and cold-formed steel engineering; miscellaneous steel; equipment anchorage and bracing for mechanical, electrical, and plumbing lines; pipe support engineering; shoring, reshoring, formwork, and falsework; construction sequencing.

Project types: Commercial, industrial, water and wastewater treatment plants, modular, and multifamily.

2. Walter P Moore

Houston-based Walter P Moore, founded in 1931, runs a construction engineering practice serving builders, fabricators, and erectors. Its website lists 36 offices worldwide. Contractors often engage this kind of practice after award, once connection design and erection sequencing land on their scope.

Key scopes: Steel connection design; erection engineering, including crane planning, critical lift analysis, meaning review of high-risk crane picks, rigging, and bracing; temporary works design; excavation support systems; fabrication modeling and detailing for steel, cold-formed steel, and rebar.

Project types: Airports, museums, hospitals, stadiums, and commercial buildings.

3. Thornton Tomasetti

Thornton Tomasetti’s construction engineering practice reports more than 1,000 projects across 35 states. According to the firm, its first connection design project was Soldier Field in 2003. Published materials describe work with developers, contractors, designers, fabricators, and erectors, which means the same group may be engaged by an owner on one job and a steel fabricator on the next.

Key scopes: Steel connection design; temporary stability analysis and erection procedures; crane, heavy-lift, and erection planning; excavation support and bracing; contractor support engineering; on-site representation.

Project types: Commercial, stadiums and arenas, airports, healthcare, residential, industrial, and renovation work.

4. McLaren, an Affiliate of KCI

Formerly McLaren Engineering Group, this New York-based firm joined KCI as an affiliate in October 2024, according to its website. McLaren lists construction engineering among its key service lines and states that it serves clients in all 50 states, which suits contractors working across state lines.

Key scopes: Steel connections, miscellaneous metals, and delegated design; pre-construction engineering; crane engineering; rigging and heavy lifts; shoring; construction logistics; temporary structures and site safety.

Project types: Infrastructure, buildings, and specialty structures for entertainment, commercial, transportation, and institutional clients.

5. raSmith

Brookfield, Wisconsin-based raSmith provides cold-formed steel engineering that extends to prefabricated wall panel systems. The focus here is panelized rather than volumetric, meaning wall assemblies built flat in a shop rather than finished rooms.

Key scopes: Delegated cold-formed steel engineering; prefabricated and pre-finished wall panel design; multistory load-bearing framing; curtain wall framing, meaning framing for non-structural exterior wall systems; shop drawings.

Project types: Residential, senior living, hospitality, education, healthcare, retail, mixed-use, industrial, and sports facilities.

6. PSE Consulting Engineers, Inc.

Headquartered in Klamath Falls, Oregon, with offices in Medford, Oregon, and Jacksonville, Florida, PSE Consulting Engineers, Inc. states that it is licensed in all 50 states. Its published work centers on modular and prefabricated buildings, where units built in one state are frequently installed in another.

Key scopes: Structural calculations and stamped permit plans; module connection details; transportation load analysis; foundation engineering.

Materials: Wood, hot-rolled and cold-formed steel, light-gauge steel, shipping containers, and structural insulated panels.

Project types: Modular homes and accessory dwelling units, hotels, apartments, offices, retail, education, healthcare, and industrial buildings.

7. Salas O’Brien

Salas O’Brien is a multidisciplinary engineering firm whose structural group lists cold-formed steel design for prefabrication and modular structures. Much of the listed work is component-level, covering assemblies that arrive finished and install into a building framed the usual way.

Key scopes: Cold-formed steel wall panel design; prefabricated bathroom and office pods; patient room headwalls, corridor racks, and skids; fabrication models and drawings.

Project types: Healthcare, education, commercial, hospitality, government and military, multifamily, and venues.

What Separates One Delegated Design Firm From Another

General capability matters less than scope fit. A firm fluent in steel connections may not handle cold-formed panel systems, and the reverse holds as well.

Worth comparing across proposals:

• Which deliverables the fee includes, such as calculations, stamped drawings, shop drawings, and site visits
• Licensure in the state where the project sits
• How the firm coordinates submittals with the engineer of record and the design team
• What information it requires before design begins
• Availability during construction, when field questions tend to surface

Matching the Scope to the Seal

Delegated work moves at the speed of its inputs. A specification section, a current drawing set, and a clear picture of the installation method give an engineer enough to design something buildable on the first pass.

Requirements shift with contract language and local practice, so the delegated engineer should confirm the criteria against the specification before starting. Firms that have handled this scope before tend to ask for those documents unprompted, which is a useful signal during selection.