Is it normal for a big engineered beam to have cracks running down the length of it?

Splits running with the grain on the bottom of a new engineered beam are almost always checking, and it ussually shows up fast. The lumber comes to the site at a moisture content way above what it'll settle at in a heated house, so the outer fibers dry and shrink while the core hasn't caught up yet. Something opens a few cracks within weeks. A few feet long is normal. Length isn't what matters anyway, it's width and depth. If a crack is thin enough that a business card won't slide into it, and it hasn't separated one lamination from the next, it's cosmetic. The red flag is a check that's wide, or one that's delaminated, where you can see a gap between the layers instead of just a split along them. If you see that, or the beam is sagging, get the builder and the engineer's number out. Otherwise you're fine. I've framed plenty of these and watched brand new LVL sprout checks within a month of drywall going up. Never once seen one become a structural problem that didn't announce itself some other way first. The screws at odd angles are normal too. Toenailing framing into a beam is standard, and where there's real load the hangers or the engineer's schedule dictate what goes where. Looks messy, works fine. Pencil marks are just layout numbers from the crew, they mean nothing. Since your inspector signed off, the odds are heavily in your favor that nothing's wrong. But I'd still take a few photos now with a tape measure next to the worst crack, dated. If anything changes down the road, or you ever sell and a buyer's inspector asks about it, you've got a record of it being minor from day one. One thing you can do if the builder's shrugging still bugs you: ask him for a copy of the beam spec sheet from the manufacturer. Most of them have guidelines printed right on there about what checks are acceptable, and seeing it in writing from the maker usually settles the worry better than a laugh from the truck.

Same thing happened on my garage header about six years back. Checked hard within the first summer, one crack nearly the whole span and I freaked out. Took a picture, moved on, never changed an inch since. One thing I'd add, check again in a year once the house humidity settles. If the cracks look the same then as they do now, stop thinking about it. Mine acutally tightened up a little in winter when the wood swelled back.

Second guy's point about the cracks tightening up in winter matches what I saw on my basement LVL. I marked the ends of the worst check with a pencil and wrote the date right on the beam, and by the next season it had actually closed up a little instead of growing. That pencil mark trick is cheap and gives you something concrete to compare against besides photos.

Also worth calling the manufacturer directly, not just asking the builder for the spec sheet. When I did that on mine they had a guy walk me thru what counts as a problem over the phone in about ten minutes, no charge.

Quick update - following the suggestion about checking the wood in diferent seasons, I noticed that the splits on my basement header really did shrink up a bit as the cold weather hit. That gave me some peace of mind. However, I’m still worried about this slight warp I see on the end grain of the beam. Does that also need monitoring, or is that just part of the drying process?