Some of my experience of being an electrical engineer "systems archetect" for video intergrated circuits can be used for discussion here. In my world, I specify the overall structure of the functions of this intergrated circuit, but I leave it to specialists to design and build the actual silicon circuits of that intergrated circuit. This would be somewhat similar to my designing say a house. "I want the kitchen here, the dining room next to it here, bedrooms at the other end here, etc". And some details like, "I'd like 4 counter circuits in the kitchen, and this bedroom here will be my ham radio room and I'll need a 240V 15A outlet to power my transmitter in there." But leave it to the EC to take care of the detailed design of the electrical system per NEC but saying "use wire one step thicker than what the NEC says". I'd avoid "but that's not code, can't do it" type problems. I'd say what I want to be able to do and let the EC make it happen.
THus the lack of detail you see from engineers is partly the deligation of that task to the EC and partly to avoid arguements over code complience problems. "The kitchen is to have 2 fridges and a freezer, just make the appropriate electrical happen to code". Code things like the max number of breakers in a panel engineers are not likely to know about, thus they leave it to the electricians to figure out how to orginize the system to be code.
