Post life cycle management

Hi,
I need to control the life cycle of posts. Basically I want author to be able to save post, which would move the post to edit buffer and alert editor that he has to check new post, after he does that, he would save it and then admin would be able to post it.
Is there plugin for that or can I manage that with basic WP functionality? I have only minimal experience with wp user roles (since I ran only one-man blogs until now), but I don’t think wp can manage such functionality on it’s own?
Thank you very much for your help 🙂