Short answer: in Massachusetts, a visual structural inspection runs $800 with verbal recommendations given on site, or $1,500 if you need a written Engineer’s Inspection Letter. Stamped design work starts around $1,500 for a single load-bearing wall removal or a foundation repair, and around $5,000 for an ADU permit set. What follows is why those are starting points rather than quotes, and what moves a project above them.
Why nobody will give you a number
Ask five engineering firms what a job costs and you will get five invitations to schedule a consultation. There is a reasonable explanation and a less reasonable one.
The reasonable one: engineering fees genuinely do depend on things nobody can see from an email. Two kitchen walls that look identical can be a routine beam and a structural reframing, and the difference is not visible until someone looks at what is carrying what.
The less reasonable one: a number on a web page can be compared, and comparison is uncomfortable.
We think the discomfort is worth it. A homeowner who finds out in week three that the engineering alone costs more than they budgeted for the whole project has been failed by everyone who stayed vague. So below are the figures we actually work from, and more usefully, the factors that decide where a given project lands.
Removing a load-bearing wall
The common case — one opening, one floor bearing above, beam ends landing on something already able to carry them — starts around $1,500 for stamped drawings. The wall removal and beam design page covers the process in full.
Four things move it:
- Span. A twelve-foot opening and a twenty-four-foot opening are not the same problem. Past a certain span the beam stops being dimensional lumber and becomes steel, which changes the connections, the cost of the member itself, and sometimes how it physically gets into the house.
- What is above it. One floor is routine. A floor plus a roof, or two floors, multiplies the load and usually the beam depth — which then decides whether the beam can be hidden in the ceiling or has to drop below it. That is an architectural consequence of a structural number, and it is the one homeowners care about most.
- Where the load goes next. This is the one that surprises people. A beam gathers what used to be a spread load into two points, and those points have to travel down through the building to something capable of carrying them. When that path runs out at a floor joist or an undersized footing, the project acquires a column, and sometimes a new footing under it.
- What is hidden inside the wall. A plumbing stack or a duct run in the wall you are removing is a coordination problem before it is a structural one.
Most of this can be worked out from photographs and a floor plan before anyone drives anywhere.
Foundation repair design
A defined, visible problem — a cracked or bowing section of wall, reachable, where the cause is understood and the repair is reinforcement rather than replacement — starts around $1,500.
- Extent. One wall section is a different design from a whole perimeter, and a whole perimeter sometimes means underpinning rather than reinforcement.
- Whether the cause is known. If water is driving the movement, the drainage has to be solved or the repair fails. Establishing that can take more than one visit, or monitoring across a freeze and a thaw — which in Massachusetts means the answer sometimes arrives in April.
- What the foundation is made of. Poured concrete, block and fieldstone fail differently and are repaired differently. Fieldstone, which is most of the older housing stock around here, rarely has a simple answer.
- Access. A repair needing equipment in a crawl space with four feet of headroom and no exterior access costs more to design, because fewer methods are available to design around.
- Soil information. Where settlement is involved and no soil data exists, a geotechnical investigation may have to come first. That is a separate cost, and an honest engineer tells you before you commit, not after.
If you are not yet sure whether what you are looking at is serious, start with foundation cracks in older Massachusetts homes.
ADU structural design and permit set
Since February 2025, Massachusetts has allowed an accessory dwelling unit by right in single-family zoning districts, sized at the lesser of 900 square feet or half the gross floor area of the principal dwelling. By right is widely misread. It means the zoning hearing usually goes away. It does not mean the permit set does.
Converting existing space — a basement or an attic, where the structure is sound — starts around $5,000 for a permit set. See ADU design and permitting for what the full process involves.
- Detached new construction is a building: its own foundation, its own frame, a full set of drawings. It is not an alteration of something that already stands, and it is not priced like one.
- Whether a plot plan exists. Most towns want a certified plot plan showing setbacks. If there is none, a land survey comes first.
- What the existing structure can take. A basement conversion often needs headroom the foundation was never built to give. An attic conversion usually needs the ceiling joists it is sitting on to become floor joists, which they were not sized to be.
- How much of the set you need. Structural alone, or architectural, MEP and fire protection coordinated as one package.
- Septic. A property on septic rather than sewer may need Title 5 capacity confirmed before an ADU is viable at all. Settle this first — it is the question most likely to stop a project outright, and the one most often asked last.
Typical starting fees
| Work | Typical starting fee |
|---|---|
| Structural inspection, verbal recommendations on site | $800 |
| Structural inspection with a written Engineer’s Inspection Letter | $1,500 |
| Load-bearing wall removal, single beam, stamped drawings | $1,500 |
| Foundation repair design, stamped drawings | $1,500 |
| ADU structural design and permit set | $5,000 |
What an engineering fee does not cover
Worth knowing before you build a budget around one number:
- Municipal permit and application fees, which the town sets and you pay directly
- Land surveys and certified plot plans
- Geotechnical investigation and test borings
- Measured documentation of an existing building, where none exists and the project needs it
- Construction itself. An engineer designs and documents; the builder builds, under a separate agreement that the engineer is not party to
Why the cheapest quote is often the expensive one
The number on a proposal is not the cost of the project. The cost of the project is that number plus whatever the drawings failed to anticipate.
A beam sized without checking where its reactions land produces a column discovered mid-demolition, with the wall already open. A permit set that omits what the building department wanted produces a revision cycle and a crew standing still. Both cost more than the gap between two engineering quotes, and both arrive at the point in the schedule with no slack left in it.
One question worth putting to any firm you are considering: what happens when the building department comes back with comments, and is answering them included? The answer tells you more about the real cost than the fee does.
Getting an actual number
Photographs, a sketch, a floor plan, the building department’s comment letter — whatever already exists is usually enough to scope the work and put a fee in writing.
And if the honest answer is that the project does not need an engineer at all, that is worth hearing too. It happens more often than people expect, and it costs nothing to ask.
Have a project that needs a licensed engineer?
Send us your scope and we will come back with a written proposal — typically within 1 business day.