Congratulations! You’re now the person responsible for making sure RFIs actually move, instead of vanishing into that mysterious gap between the field and the architect’s inbox. Where do you even begin? What’s the right approach? That’s exactly what this ZenTek Consultants blog series is here to help you figure out!

Part 1: Setting Up RFI Workflows

An RFI (Request for Information) process is only as good as the structure behind it; and in Procore that structure gets defined before a single question ever gets typed. Skip that setup and you’ll end up with pending and unanswered RFIs scattered across email, text messages, and whatever the super remembers to mention at the Monday meeting – exactly the chaos Procore exists to prevent. The key to establishing good RFI structures is understanding your internal workflow and adjusting a tool like Procore to meet that need as closely as it can. Luckily, there are a few standard features in the system that can make RFIs flow much quicker and easier.

Distribution List

Let’s start with the distribution list. Every project has a standard set of people who need visibility into RFIs. This can include the architect, structural engineer, owner’s rep, your Project Managers. Procore lets you set default distribution groups, so every new RFI automatically routes to the right people without manually adding recipients to every single question. You should build this list at project setup, not three weeks into the job, after the first RFI gets missed because nobody thought to cc the engineer. To build Project-based distribution lists, go to your RFI tool and click the Settings (gear) icon and scroll down to the RFI Emails section like shown below.

Ball-in-court Routing

Ball-in-court routing is the next decision, and it’s worth understanding this option thoroughly rather than leaving it on default settings. Procore tracks who currently “owns” an open RFI, in other words, who needs to act next. That ownership needs to transfer cleanly as a question moves from the field to the GC’s office, to the design team, and back. Set up your workflow templates so ball-in-court automatically passes to the right party at each stage rather than sitting with whoever happened to create the RFI. By default, the Ball is in the court of whoever the RFI is assigned to, but it can be pulled back to the RFI creator, the Manager, or assigned to another person to put it into a new court entirely. You can handle this by selecting “View” on the open RFI, then clicking the EDIT button to change the assignees or reset back to the creator/manager.

RFI managers deserve a clear explicit assignment too. On a complex project, you may want different managers handling different trade or scope categories rather than one person trying to track every open question across the entire job. Procore supports this kind of role assignment, and using it well means nothing falls through the cracks just because one person becomes too busy.

RFI Templates

Templates for RFI formatting and structure matter more than people expect. A consistent format with clear question statements, referenced drawings or spec sections, requested answer by date, makes it easier to write, answer and search for RFIs. You can build these out as part of your Project Templates by using Fieldsets at the company level so the RFI format is the same for each job.

Get this foundation right at kickoff, and the rest of your RFI process runs on rails instead of requiring constant manual chasing. Don’t miss the next installment of our “Mastering RFIs in Procore” series in a few weeks.