Your RFI Agent Chases the Architect While Your PM Runs the Job
The RFI Agent in EngageSuite360 takes every request for information from the moment a foreman asks the question to the moment the architect's answer is in the crew's hands. It writes the RFI, sends it to the design team, chases the response, and routes the answer back to the field. Your project manager stops digging through email chains and stays with the owner, the superintendent and the decisions only a PM can make.
What it takes off your plate
Here's how RFIs go on too many jobs. The electrical foreman finds a conflict between the panel location and a duct run. He tells the superintendent, who texts the PM, who writes an RFI when he gets back to the trailer. It goes to the architect by email. The architect forwards it to the engineer. Two weeks later nobody is sure whether it was answered, and the reply is buried in a thread with a different subject line.
Meanwhile the crew is working around the question, or waiting on it. Follow-up is whenever the PM remembers. When an answer finally comes back, it might change the drawings, the cost, or the schedule, and the PM is the one piecing that together at night.
What the RFI Agent does, step by step
The RFI Agent handles the communication first, then the record keeping.
- Takes the question. A foreman or the superintendent sends the question by text, email or voice note, with a photo if there is one. The RFI Agent replies to confirm it got it and asks for anything missing: the drawing sheet, the grid line, the spec section.
- Drafts the RFI. It writes the RFI in your firm's format with the question, the reference, the photo and a suggested solution if the field offered one, and sends the draft to the project manager to approve.
- Sends it out. Once approved, it submits the RFI to the architect and any engineer on the distribution list, in your project management system or by email, with the date the answer is needed.
- Chases the answer. As the due date approaches, it sends a reminder. After it passes, it follows up again and copies the PM so he can make the call if it's holding a crew.
- Routes the response. When the answer arrives, it sends it to the foreman who asked and the superintendent, and flags whether it changes drawings, cost or schedule.
- Links the consequences. If the answer adds work, it notes a possible change order for the PM. If it moves an activity, it notes the schedule impact for the PM to review. Whether it's a change and what it costs stays with your people.
- Closes it out. It marks the RFI answered and closed once the field confirms they have it.
RFIs often travel alongside submittals to the same design team; see Deploy the Submittal Agent and Free Your Project Manager by Noon.
Where the work is recorded
An RFI that isn't recorded is just a question someone asked once. Every question, draft, submission, reminder and response the EngageSuite360 RFI Agent handles is recorded in EngageSuite360: on the project, on the architect's and engineer's contacts, and on the sub whose foreman asked, in the field's own words.
The next morning your project manager opens the project and sees the RFI log with a status on every line: drafted, submitted, overdue, answered, closed. Each overdue item shows who was reminded and when. Each answered item shows who in the field received it. The official RFI in your project management system stays the source of record, and EngageSuite360 carries the conversations around it.
When a dispute comes up months later about who asked what and when, the record is on the project.
What your people do instead
Your project manager spends the day on the owner meeting, the pay application, and the decisions that keep the job moving, instead of hunting through emails. Your superintendent walks the site and coordinates trades, knowing the question he passed along is being chased. Your foremen get answers back directly, so crews spend less time working around unknowns.
The daily report still captures what happened in the field; for that side of the job, see Your Permit Agent Puts Permit Conditions in the Superintendent's Hands. The RFI Agent keeps the questions moving. The judgment about the building stays with your team and the design professionals.
One next step
See how EngageSuite360 is shaped for general contractors, with projects, subs, RFIs and the RFI Agent in one place, on the EngageSuite360 page for construction.
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