How Drawing Review Caught HVAC Mismatches on Salt Lake Restaurants
- The HVAC schedule did not match the airflow on the plans, and the restroom finish schedule disagreed with the elevations. A urinal height note was in the set and was not the rebuild.
- Helonic checked the six Salt Lake restaurant PDF sets for airflow and finish tags.
- The firm confirmed 305 issues and priced $120,000 in restroom and equipment rework they avoided.
Salt Lake City, UT. 305 issues across 6 restaurants.
Issues Detected
305 across 6 stores
Lead Findings
Airflow and finish
Estimated Savings
$120K before build
One Restaurant Prototype Copied Into 6 Salt Lake City Shells
An architecture firm was fitting the same restaurant prototype into six existing shells in Salt Lake City. The accessible restroom was supposed to be identical in every store.
The HVAC schedule listed a supply airflow that did not match the diffuser callout on the plan. The restroom finish schedule called for a tile the interior elevations did not show. The urinal height was off too. Rebalancing the air and opening a finished restroom is the money. The height note is not.
A prototype error like that lands in every store unless someone checks the schedule against the plan.
Helonic Listed 305 Issues Across the Six Store Sets
They uploaded the six tenant PDFs. Helonic compared the HVAC schedule with the plan airflow and the finish schedule with the restroom elevations.
The combined list was 305 issues. The ones that repeated into every store were the HVAC airflow mismatch and the restroom finish conflict.
Each finding named the store's sheet, so the prototype could change once and the shell-specific notes could change per site.
See retail and restaurant drawing review, all drawing review case studies, tenant improvement coordination, conflicts between specs and drawings, accessibility checking, and the Nashville hotel review.
305 Issues, $120,000 in Restroom Rework Avoided
The firm lowered the urinal, matched the airflow number on the schedule to the plan, and picked one restroom finish before the landlords approved the sets.
They priced $120,000 to reopen finished restrooms and rebalance the HVAC after the stores were built.
Landlord reviewers still marked signage. The urinal height, the airflow, and the finish tag were already aligned.
The airflow mismatch sat between the architectural and mechanical sheets. Across 1,000+ drawing packages Helonic has reviewed, architectural and mechanical sheets accounted for about 29% of coordination conflicts, the largest single discipline pair. See constructability review ROI data.
ADA Restroom Rules and Mechanical Code Airflow Across 6 Restaurants
Utah adopts the International Building Code statewide, and Salt Lake City enforces it. Accessibility follows ICC A117.1 through the building code, and restaurants are also public accommodations under the 2010 ADA Standards.
The urinal note was an accessibility item. The ADA Standards set a maximum rim height of 17 inches for an accessible urinal. On paper it is a dimension. In a finished restroom it is tile and plumbing.
Supply airflow is designed under the International Mechanical Code and its ventilation rules. Dining rooms carry high occupant loads, and kitchen hood exhaust needs make-up air. If the schedule and the diffuser callout disagree, the balancer has two numbers to choose from.
Food service plans also go through the county health department, which looks at equipment and finishes. That is one more reviewer who reads the finish schedule and the elevations side by side.
“The HVAC airflow did not match the plan, and the restroom finish schedule disagreed with the elevation. Helonic caught both before we copied the prototype into six stores.”
Salt Lake Restaurant Drawing Review: Questions and Answers
Where did the 305 issues come from?
A completed Helonic review of six Salt Lake City restaurant sets.
What were the main findings?
An HVAC airflow mismatch between the schedule and the plan, and a restroom finish conflict between the finish schedule and the elevations. Those are the items that get rebuilt. A urinal-height note was also on the list.
Does one prototype review cover every store?
The restroom and the HVAC type are shared. A height or airflow error in the prototype repeats in every shell that copies it.
Were all six stores on one review?
The firm ran the six tenant sets. The airflow mismatch and the restroom finish conflict repeated from the prototype into each store.
How high can an accessible urinal be?
Under the 2010 ADA Standards, the rim of an accessible urinal can be no higher than 17 inches above the floor.
Which building code applies in Salt Lake City?
Utah adopts the International Building Code statewide with state amendments, and Salt Lake City enforces it. Accessibility follows ICC A117.1 and the 2010 ADA Standards.
Why check a prototype before it is copied?
Every store that copies the prototype inherits its errors. On this program, the airflow mismatch and the restroom finish conflict repeated into all six stores until they were fixed once.
Manas Gandhi
Co-founder & CTO, HelonicManas is the co-founder and CTO of Helonic, where he leads engineering and AI research for construction drawing analysis. He works directly with structural, MEP, civil, and fire protection engineers to translate the way they review drawings into AI systems that flag the issues that actually matter in the field. Before Helonic, he built machine learning pipelines for technical document understanding and has spent the last several years interviewing licensed design engineers and discipline leads to ground product decisions in real practice rather than industry assumptions.
- AI for technical document understanding
- Cross-discipline coordination workflows
- Code compliance automation (IBC, NEC, NFPA, IPC, IMC, ASCE)
- Structural and MEP drawing review systems
How this page was researched: Reviewed against Helonic's 2026 drawing-analysis categories, RFI workflow, and product capabilities.
Last reviewed by Manas Gandhi · September 12, 2026