How to write an RFI in construction, with a free template

A Request for Information (RFI) is a written question from one party on a project to another, asking for information needed to carry out the work: a dimension the drawings do not give, a clash between two services, a detail that can be read two ways. On Indian sites it is just as often called a query, a site query or a technical query (TQ). They are the same thing.

An RFI asks for an answer. If what the project actually needs is a choice between options — which marble, which fitting — that is a decision, and it is better recorded as one, with the options and who chose. Mixing the two is how a simple question turns into a week of back-and-forth.

An RFI is not a variation. If the answer changes the scope, cost or programme, follow your contract's variation or change process; the RFI only records the question and the answer.

The form is in the order someone answering it needs: what and where first, then the question, then what happens if nobody answers.

RFI number

A running number for the project — RFI-014 or Q-014 — so it can be quoted on a call, a drawing or in the minutes.

Title

Location plus subject: "Floor 06 · Residence 602 kitchen: shaft clashes with counter run". Never "Query" or "Urgent".

Raised by

The firm and the person, so the answer can come back to someone.

Directed to

One party who owns the answer — usually the architect or a consultant — with others copied. A question sent to everyone is owned by no one.

Date raised and needed by

When it was asked, when the answer is needed, and why that date: "before Thursday's pour".

Location

Tower, floor, flat, room. As exact as the site needs to act on the answer.

Drawings referenced

Drawing number and revision for every sheet involved, so the answer is read against the right ones.

Question

One question, written so it can be answered in a sentence.

Background

What was found on site and why it matters. Attach photos or marked-up drawings.

Proposed solution

What you would do, if anything. It is far quicker to approve an option than to invent one.

Impact if unanswered

Which work is held up and from when.

Response

The answer, who gave it and when, and whether anything else must change — a drawing, a specification.

Status

Open, answered, or closed once the answer has been acted on.

A plumbing agency finds that the shaft position on the drawings clashes with the kitchen counter run in one flat. Here is the question as it often arrives, and the same question as an RFI.

1. One question per RFI. Two questions in one RFI get one answer, and the other is forgotten.
2. Say exactly where. Floor, flat and room — not "the shaft".
3. Cite the drawing and its revision. An answer read against a superseded sheet is worse than no answer.
4. Propose an answer. "Can it move 150 mm east?" is answered in a line; "What should we do?" starts a meeting.
5. Say what is waiting, and by when. A date tied to a real event — a pour, a delivery — gets answered before one that is not.
6. Send it to someone who can answer. If you are not sure who that is, send it to the PMC to route, not to everyone.

An RFI that nobody tracks is a phone call with paperwork. Keep every RFI in one log — the Excel template has a row per RFI, a status list and a column that counts the days each one has been open.

• Review open RFIs at the weekly coordination meeting, oldest first, and minute who owes each answer. Our MoM template has a column for it.
• Close the loop. An RFI is not closed when it is answered; it is closed when the answer has reached the drawing and the work it was holding up has restarted.
• Write down the ones raised on calls and WhatsApp. On most Indian projects that is how questions start. A two-line RFI afterwards is what makes the answer findable later.
• Let the PMC route them. Where there is a PMC, it usually receives RFIs and sends each to the party who should answer. Where there is not, agree at kick-off who does.
• Agree response times at the start. How quickly an RFI must be answered is normally set by the contract or agreed at the kick-off meeting. Write it down rather than assuming it.

• Several questions in one RFI.
• No location, so the person answering has to ask where.
• No drawing or revision, so the answer is given against the wrong sheet.
• Sent to everyone, so nobody owns the answer.
• No "needed by" date, so it waits behind everything else.
• The answer given on a call and never written on the RFI.

A form and a log make RFIs consistent. They do not connect the question to the work it is holding up. In Space, an RFI is a query on the project itself.

• Queries share one reference series with tasks and decisions, so Q-014 can be quoted on a drawing or a call and found again later.
• A query is directed to the people who can answer it, and stays open and visible to them until one of them does.
• The task it is holding up says so: "Waiting on Architect response".
• The answer stays with the question, and the work it was holding up can move.
• Raise a query from a chat message with # or /, or review one Space suggests from a meeting. Nothing becomes project work without a person deciding it should.