RFI
An RFI, or request for information, is a formal written question from the contractor to the design team asking for clarification the drawings or specifications do not provide.
Also known as: Request for information · RFIs in construction
Drawings are never complete. Two details conflict, a dimension is missing, a specified product is discontinued — and the contractor has to choose between guessing and asking. The RFI is the asking, in writing, with a date on it.
The date is the point. An RFI creates a record that the question was raised, when, and what it was blocking. If the answer arrives three weeks later and the trade sat idle, that record is the difference between an absorbed cost and a defensible delay claim.
A good RFI is answerable in one pass: it names the drawing and detail, states what is unclear, proposes the interpretation the contractor believes is correct, and says what the work is waiting on. A bad one asks an open question and invites another three weeks of correspondence.
They also accumulate. A project with hundreds of open RFIs is not a project with a diligent contractor; it is usually a project with an incomplete design, and the pattern is worth surfacing early rather than at closeout.
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