OWNER’S ENGINEER AND PROJECT SERVICES.
ON THE OWNER’S SIDE OF THE TABLE.

What an owner's engineer does

The role runs the length of the project: reviewing drawings and calculations produced by the design firm, evaluating contractor bids, checking submittals and change orders during construction, and witnessing the testing that proves performance. The U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory teaches the role the same way: an independent party representative of the owner of a construction or engineering project.

For Watson Land Company in Carson, California, SLC served as owner's engineer on a heavy-duty EV truck stop concept with photovoltaic canopies and battery energy storage: site concept and layout, cost estimating, grant funding support, and total-cost-of-ownership analysis, all from the owner's chair.

Bid development and contractor selection

Bid evaluation is the structured comparison of contractor proposals against a project's technical requirements, so the award is made on engineering substance, price, and risk together instead of the low number alone. The cheapest bid that omits the utility coordination, the testing, or the spare conduit is rarely the cheapest project.

SLC's bid-phase work starts before the bids: writing the owner's technical requirements into the request for proposals so every contractor prices the same scope. When proposals come back, SLC levels them line by line, flags the exclusions and assumptions where overruns hide, and gives the owner a recommendation it can defend to its board, its lender, or its agency.

Independent design review and construction administration

An independent design review is a licensed engineer's check of another firm's design against code, the owner's requirements, and sound engineering practice, performed by a reviewer with no financial stake in the design being approved. Independence here is a professional obligation, written into the NSPE Code of Ethics, which requires engineers to act for each client as faithful agents and to avoid conflicts of interest.

Construction administration is the engineering work that continues after drawings are issued: reviewing submittals, answering requests for information, evaluating change orders, and confirming that the work installed matches the design intent. It is also where an unrepresented owner is most exposed, because every RFI answer and change order carries cost, and the parties writing them have their own interests.

An owner's engineer and a construction manager do different jobs. The construction manager runs the project: schedule, logistics, trade coordination. The owner's engineer protects the technical substance underneath it, confirming that what is being built matches what was designed, and that what was designed is what the owner is paying for. On projects with both, the two roles work side by side.

Commissioning and acceptance

Commissioning in construction is the systematic verification that installed systems perform to the design intent before the owner accepts them. On electrical projects that means functional testing of switchgear, protection, controls, and metering, witnessed and documented, with every deficiency on a punch list someone is accountable for closing.

SLC supports commissioning from the owner's chair: reviewing test plans, witnessing acceptance tests, coordinating utility energization, and holding the contractor's closeout documentation to the same standard as the design. A project finishes when its systems perform, and commissioning is where that gets proven.

Owner's engineer and engineer of record: two different roles

The engineer of record is the licensed engineer responsible for a project's design, the one who signs the drawings and answers for them to the building official and the licensing board. The owner's engineer is the opposite chair: an independent reviewer of a design that someone else produced and signed. The two roles stay separate on any single project, and SLC keeps them separate. On a given engagement, SLC serves in one role or the other, never both at once.

SLC does both kinds of work, on different projects. The firm is the design Engineer of Record on work like the PG&E primary service for Forum Mobility's 20 MW heavy-duty truck charging site, feeder line upgrades for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force, and the power and control system upgrade for San Jose Water's chloramine management system. That design practice is what sharpens the owner-side review: an engineer who signs permit sets knows where another firm's drawings tend to hide problems.

One engagement, from inception through commissioning

The earlier an owner's engineer joins a project, the more it can protect. Brought in at inception, SLC helps the owner define scope, contracting strategy, and schedule before any of it hardens into a contract. Brought in at construction, it can still hold the technical line on submittals, changes, and closeout, but the strongest opportunities to prevent cost have usually passed.

What owner's engineer services cost depends on the engagement: the project's size and contract structure, which phases the owner wants covered, and how much independent review the risk justifies. Engagements are scoped to the project, from a focused bid review to full inception-through-commissioning representation. Frank Sylvester, P.E. personally leads each one, so the owner has direct access to the engineer doing the work.