Why Building Plans Get Rejected: The Most Common Plan-Review Comments

The pattern: a few categories drive most comments

Plan reviewers see the same issues over and over. Knowing the categories lets you self-check before you submit, because the same handful of mistakes account for a large share of returned sets. Below are the ones that surface most.

1. Egress and occupant-load errors

This is the most common life-safety category, and it almost always traces back to one root: the occupant load was calculated wrong, and every downstream number inherited the error. (See our occupant load guide and means of egress guide.) The specific comments:

• Wrong occupant load at the source — using gross area where net is required, or the wrong load factor from IBC Table 1004.5. This produces a wrong occupant count before the floor plan is even finished.
• Too few exits — a space exceeds 49 occupants but shows only one exit, or crosses 500 or 1,000 without adding the third or fourth exit IBC Table 1006.3.1 requires.
• Egress width below capacity — a corridor or door that meets the dimensional minimum but is too narrow for the occupants it serves. A 44-inch corridor can satisfy the minimum and still fail the IBC §1005 capacity calculation (0.2 inch per occupant for level components).
• Exits too close together — correct exit count, but they aren't separated by the required fraction of the space's diagonal (§1007), so a single event could block both.
• Common path measured wrong — measured to the nearest exit door instead of to the point where two separate paths first become available, which hides a single-exit violation.

2. Accessibility clearance conflicts

Accessibility comments frequently involve maneuvering clearances and the accessible route — door approach clearances, turning space, and route continuity that conflict with the architecture once dimensions are checked. These are governed by ICC A117.1 and the applicable accessibility standard, and they're easy to miss because they depend on clearances around elements, not just the elements themselves.

3. Missing or incomplete required information

A large share of comments aren't about the design at all — they're about completeness. Common examples:

• Required sheets or details not included in the set.
• Values referenced but not annotated on the drawings (for instance, envelope insulation R-values required for energy-code review).
• Title-block and professional-stamp fields left incomplete.

These are pure documentation gaps, and they're among the most avoidable: the information exists, it just isn't on the sheet where the reviewer looks for it.

4. Energy-code documentation gaps

Energy-code (IECC) comments often aren't about failing a performance target — they're about the drawings not demonstrating compliance: missing insulation values, fenestration ratings, or the compliance path not being clearly documented. The review can't confirm what the drawings don't show.

5. Code-edition and codes-of-record mismatches

One of the most consequential and least obvious: the plan cites or designs to a different code edition than the jurisdiction has adopted. Jurisdictions typically adopt a given IBC edition several years after publication, sometimes with local amendments — so designing to the newest published edition can put you out of step with what your AHJ actually enforces. Section numbers and some thresholds shift between editions, and a citation to the wrong edition is itself a comment.

How to catch these before you submit

Every category above is a self-check you can run during design rather than discovering after a rejection: recompute the occupant load from net area and the correct factor, confirm exit count and width against that number, verify exit separation and common-path measurement, check that required values are actually annotated, and confirm you're citing the edition your jurisdiction has adopted. A structured pre-review against the adopted codes for your specific jurisdiction catches the recurring issues while there's still time to fix them in the design.