InfoPath Dev

Greetings,

 I'm working through restructuring my organization's SharePoint site (2010), and I'm looking to InfoPath for establishing the project checklist for housing construction projects.  The project checklist itself can contain around 60-80 items, split into 4 development stages (acquisition, construction, post-construction, property sale).  I want to have one Sharepoint List that tracks every project, but I want to pull the actual checklist information from a secondary source.  Project requirements can change, and I'd rather have a central location for the actual checklist than try to change it in the form itself.

My question is this:  A project checklist is an ongoing thing.  I'd probably not use the Submit Form feature, because I'm never really done with it until the very end, which can take about 12 months.  So I'm wondering how I can utilize an external data connection to populate a list, without submitting the form afterward.

 How much sense does this not make?

 If I add a new item using the form with the project checklist as a secondary source, anything I mark 'completed' isn't saved with the form.  I'm assuming this is because it's not saving the information in the main list. 

 Any suggestions?  Is there another direction I should be going for something like this?

Just wanted to check in to see if anyone might have a suggestion regarding my earlier post.  Just for clarification, I'm using Infopath to customize a Sharepoint List which we use to track individual projects.  Each project has many requirements that need to be met, so I need to include a project checklist for each individual item.

 I'm trying to use Infopath to customize the form, allowing me to import the actual checklist (secondary data source) into the form.  This is important because we need the flexibility of modifying the project checklist as requirements change.  But when I save the list item, the information from the secondary source does not save.  I'm hoping there's a way to accomplish this.

Thanks!