How to Read a Structural General Notes Sheet

The structural general notes sheet is usually the first S-series sheet in the set, and it's also the one most people skip straight past to get to the framing plan. That's a mistake. The general notes carry the design criteria the entire structural design was built on: the loads, the material strengths, the code edition, the special inspections required. When a plan reviewer or a field team finds a conflict between what the notes say and what the plans show, it's usually because nobody checked the notes against the current drawings after the design changed.

This guide breaks down what belongs on a structural general notes sheet, why it drifts out of sync with the rest of the set, and how to check it before the sheet goes out the door.

What Belongs on a Structural General Notes Sheet

Six categories of information make up most general notes sheets:

Firm-specific formats vary, but a note category missing entirely, rather than just formatted differently, is worth flagging on any set you're reviewing.

Why General Notes Drift Out of Sync With the Plans

General notes get written once, usually early, and rarely get revisited line by line every time the framing plan or foundation design changes. A soil bearing value entered at schematic design based on a preliminary geotechnical report can go stale once the final geotechnical report comes back with a different number. A seismic design category can shift after a code update mid-project and never get updated in the notes even though the calculations were rerun. None of these are dramatic errors on their own, but each one is exactly the kind of internal inconsistency a plan reviewer is trained to catch, and each one generates a correction letter that pushes the permit timeline back a review cycle.

A Checklist for Reviewing General Notes Against the Set

• Loads: Do the live and dead loads stated in the notes match what the calculations were run against, and match any load values called out directly on the framing plans?
• Seismic and wind parameters: Does the seismic design category, site class, and wind exposure match the current code edition and the site's actual conditions, not a value carried over from a template?
• Material strengths: Does the concrete strength and rebar grade in the notes match every schedule and detail that specifies concrete or reinforcing, with no silent exceptions?
• Special inspections: Does the special inspection list actually cover every structural system used in the design, including anything added late, like post-installed anchors or a deferred precast connection?
• Code edition: Is the cited code edition the one actually adopted by the jurisdiction of record, not the edition the firm's template defaults to?

Checking each of these by hand across a full set, especially on a resubmission where only part of the design changed, is exactly the kind of cross-reference work that's easy to skip under deadline pressure and easy for automated cross-referencing to catch consistently instead.

General Notes vs. Keynotes: Don't Confuse the Two

General notes apply to the whole sheet or the whole set and are listed once, usually on the first structural sheet. Keynotes are numbered callouts pointing at one specific location on one specific detail, referencing a legend for the full text. Reviewers sometimes look for a design criterion in the keynote legend when it actually lives in the general notes, or vice versa. For the full distinction between the two and where each belongs, see keynotes vs. general notes.

Where This Fits in a Broader Structural Review

General notes are one piece of a larger structural set that includes framing plans, foundation plans, sections, and connection details. For the full picture of how to read the rest of that set, see how to review construction drawings, which covers the discipline-by-discipline review process this checklist fits into. For how AI review specifically handles the structural discipline, including cross-checking general notes against plans automatically, see AI for structural engineering.