A Request for Information (RFI) is a formal, written question a contractor sends to the design team or owner’s consultant when the drawings or specifications don’t give it enough to build from — a missing dimension, a conflicting detail, a product that’s no longer available.
Procore’s own definition frames it as a process rather than a form: an RFI “refers to a business process initiated by a contractor… to request information or raise concerns that must be formally answered by that contractor’s client or the project’s architect”. Its purpose, on Procore’s own account, is to “resolve information gaps, eliminate ambiguities, and capture specific project decisions” — and because it’s logged and dated, it becomes the record of who decided what, rather than an email that gets buried.
The reason to route a question through a formal RFI instead of a phone call is the same reason Treadstone Law flags undocumented site direction as a risk: “verbal instructions with no paper trail make it hard to prove the extra was requested, let alone at what price”. An RFI answer that quietly expands scope — a “just use the heavier gauge” reply buried in a response — still needs to be converted into a priced change order before the extra work is billed; an RFI resolves the ambiguity, it doesn’t by itself authorize paying for the consequence.
A structural detail on the drawings doesn’t show how a beam connects around an existing column. The contractor files an RFI rather than guessing or calling the engineer informally. The engineer’s written response specifies a heavier connection plate than the original spec implied. The contractor logs the RFI as resolved, then submits a separate change order pricing the extra steel and labour — the RFI answered the question; the change order is what gets it paid.
See also: Site instruction vs change order · As-builts vs record drawings · The submittal register and who owns it.
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