Energy code compliance shouldn't be a separate consultant, a separate invoice, or a separate schedule risk. At Red Brick Engineering, Title 24 and COMcheck energy code compliance is engineered directly into the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design — so the numbers on the compliance report match the equipment on the drawings, and one PE stamps all of it.
Most delays and plan-review comments on energy compliance come from the same root cause: the compliance documents were built by someone who didn't design the systems. The lighting power allowance is calculated against fixtures that later changed. The mechanical inputs don't match the actual equipment schedule. The envelope assumptions were guessed. We eliminate that gap because the same team designing your HVAC, lighting, and service also produces the COMcheck, REScheck, or Title 24 package. When a fixture swaps or a rooftop unit changes, the compliance report changes with it in the same model.\n\nThat integration matters most where the code gets aggressive. Prescriptive lighting and mechanical trade-offs, envelope U-values, and equipment efficiency floors all interact. Handled as one design problem, they resolve cleanly. Handled by three parties, they generate RFIs and revisions.
California's energy code has moved decisively toward electrification, and a lot of teams are still designing to it as an afterthought. We deliver Title 24 compliance on projects that live at the sharp end of that shift — all-electric custom homes we're designing on the Malibu coast for owners rebuilding after the wildfires, and the Mojave Narrows Chateau, a 52-bed, three-story senior living center in Victorville designed to the California Building Standards Code with full Title 24 compliance. All-electric compliance is not a checkbox; heat pump sizing, service capacity, and the envelope have to be coordinated so the modeled performance survives contact with the real building.\n\nBecause we design the mechanical and electrical systems ourselves, our Title 24 documentation reflects equipment we'd actually specify and stamp — not placeholder efficiencies chosen to make a report pass. That's the difference between compliance that clears plan check and compliance that also builds correctly.
Outside California, commercial projects run on COMcheck and residential on REScheck, but the version of the IECC in force — and the state amendments layered on top — change by jurisdiction. That's where multi-state developers get burned: a report format that satisfied one city fails the next. We produce envelope, mechanical, and lighting compliance to the edition actually adopted by the authority having jurisdiction, and we confirm the adopted edition rather than assuming the latest.\n\nEnvelope, mechanical, and interior/exterior lighting are documented as a coordinated set. Where the prescriptive path is tight, we run the trade-off options so you keep design flexibility instead of value-engineering the building to satisfy a form.
Zach Larson, PE, stamps mechanical, electrical, and plumbing on every Red Brick project, and the energy compliance package sits under that same accountability. A developer building across multiple states works with one engineering firm and one point of responsibility, not a patchwork of local compliance vendors. Our compliance inputs also reflect real cold-climate heat pump behavior and high-altitude corrections rather than sea-level nameplate assumptions — so a report you clear in plan check is one you can actually build to in the Mountain West.
Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing — designed and stamped by the same principal engineer.
