The Real Cost of Construction RFIs(And What to Do About It)

Three weeks before concrete pour, your superintendent finds a conflict between the structural drawings and the MEP layout. The beam at grid line C-4 runs right through where the ductwork needs to go. Nobody caught it in coordination. Now you need an answer from the engineer—yesterday.

You fire off an RFI. It's well-written, includes the relevant sheet references, and clearly explains the conflict. Then you wait.

And wait.

A week later, you get a response: "Please clarify which beam is being referenced."

If you've been in construction for more than a few years, you've lived some version of this. The RFI process—the formal mechanism we use to get clarification on design documents—is supposed to reduce risk and keep projects on track. Instead, it's become a black hole that swallows time, money, and goodwill.

1What an RFI Actually Is (and Isn't)

A Request for Information is exactly what it sounds like: a formal question from the contractor to the design team asking for clarification on the construction documents. When the drawings show one thing but the specs say another, or when something's missing entirely, an RFI is how you get it sorted out on the record.

The key word is "formal." RFIs create a paper trail. They establish who asked what, when, and what the official answer was. When disputes arise later—and they will—that documentation matters.

But here's what RFIs aren't supposed to be: a substitute for coordination. They're not a way to transfer liability. They're not a weapon in a claims strategy. And they're definitely not meant to be ignored for three weeks while the crew sits idle.

The problem is that on too many projects, RFIs have become all of those things.

2The Math Nobody Wants to Talk About

In 2013, the Navigant Construction Forum published a study that put a number on what everyone in the industry already knew: RFIs are expensive. Their research—analyzing over 1 million RFIs across 1,362 projects worldwide—found that the average RFI costs $1,080 when you factor in the time spent by both contractor and design team to process it.

That's not the cost of the work that might result from the answer. That's just the cost of asking the question and getting a response.

A moderately complex commercial project might generate 500 to 800 RFIs. Do the math: you're looking at somewhere between $540,000 and $860,000 in administrative overhead just for the RFI process. On a $50 million project, that's not trivial.

But the direct cost is only part of the story. Industry research suggests that RFI-related delays account for roughly 10% of schedule slippage on average. On a project with $50,000 per day in general conditions costs, a two-week delay from slow RFI responses wipes out $700,000.

The real kicker? The same Navigant study found that 22% of RFIs never receive a response at all. They just disappear into the void. The median response time for those that do get answered? 9.7 days.

3Why the Process Keeps Breaking

Spend any time on construction forums and you'll find no shortage of frustration about RFIs. The complaints tend to cluster around a few recurring themes:

The Understaffed Design Team Problem

Architects and engineers are often juggling multiple projects simultaneously. The team that designed your building may have already moved on to the next one by the time construction starts. Your RFI lands in an inbox alongside fifty others, and there's no dedicated person to triage them.

The Liability Fear Problem

Some design teams treat every RFI like a potential lawsuit. Instead of providing clear direction, they respond with hedged language that doesn't actually answer the question. "Contractor to verify field conditions" isn't an answer—it's a deflection.

This defensiveness isn't entirely irrational. Design professionals have been burned by contractors who use RFI responses to build claims. But when every response is filtered through legal paranoia, the whole process grinds to a halt.

The Garbage-In Problem

Let's be honest: not every RFI deserves a response. Some are poorly written, lack context, or ask questions that could be answered by actually reading the documents. When design teams get flooded with low-quality RFIs, it becomes harder to prioritize the ones that actually matter.

The Incomplete Documents Problem

Here's the uncomfortable truth: many RFIs exist because the construction documents weren't complete when they went out to bid. Design teams under fee pressure and tight schedules push out drawings that are "good enough" with the expectation that details will get sorted during construction.

The result is a project that generates hundreds of RFIs asking questions that should have been answered in design development.

4What High-Performing Teams Do Differently

Despite all this, some project teams manage to run efficient RFI processes. Here's what they have in common:

They front-load the work

The best PMs don't wait until construction to find the problems. They conduct thorough plan reviews during preconstruction and identify conflicts before the first shovel hits dirt. This doesn't eliminate RFIs, but it dramatically reduces the emergency ones that blow up schedules.

One PM I spoke with described her process: "I spend two weeks doing nothing but reading drawings before we mobilize. Every conflict, every ambiguity, every missing detail—I flag it all. By the time we start, I've already submitted forty RFIs. They're not emergencies because we planned for the response time."

They write RFIs that get answered

A well-written RFI includes:

• The specific sheet numbers and detail references
• A clear description of the conflict or question
• The impact if not resolved (schedule, cost, safety)
• A proposed solution when possible
• Relevant photos or markups

The proposed solution is key. It's easier for a design team to approve or modify a suggested approach than to create one from scratch. You're doing some of their work for them, which speeds up the response.

They establish response expectations early

The best time to negotiate RFI response times is before the contract is signed. Build it into the agreement: standard RFIs get a response within 7 days, urgent ones within 48 hours. Define what "urgent" means. Agree on consequences for non-response.

This sounds obvious, but most contracts are vague on RFI timelines, which leads to the "we'll get to it when we get to it" dynamic that kills projects.

They track everything

High-performing teams maintain an RFI log that shows aging, response times by category, and trends over time. When you can show the owner that the design team's average response time has crept from 5 days to 15 days, you have leverage to fix the problem.

The data also helps you identify which types of questions are causing the most friction, so you can address them systematically rather than one at a time.

5The Case for Catching Problems Earlier

Most of what makes RFIs expensive isn't the question itself—it's the timing. An RFI submitted during preconstruction, when there's slack in the schedule and no crew standing by, costs a fraction of one submitted mid-pour.

The challenge is that thorough plan review takes time. Going through hundreds of sheets, checking for coordination conflicts, verifying dimensions, cross-referencing specs—it's exactly the kind of detailed, tedious work that gets rushed when bid deadlines loom.

This is where technology is starting to change the equation. AI-powered plan analysis can now scan drawing sets and flag potential conflicts in hours rather than weeks. It's not perfect—you still need experienced eyes to evaluate what it finds—but it catches things that humans miss when they're tired or rushed.

More importantly, it generates the documentation you need to write a good RFI: sheet references, conflict descriptions, even suggested questions based on what similar projects have asked.

6The Bottom Line

RFIs aren't going away. As long as construction documents are produced by humans and interpreted by other humans, there will be questions that need answers on the record.

But the current process—where questions disappear into email chains, responses take weeks, and nobody tracks the cost—doesn't have to be the norm.

The teams that succeed treat RFI management as a discipline, not an afterthought. They invest in preconstruction review. They write questions that get answered. They hold design teams accountable for response times. And increasingly, they use technology to catch problems before they become expensive emergencies.

The $1,080 per RFI figure isn't destiny. It's just the average. With the right approach, you can beat it.