The Hidden Cost of Poor RFI Management 

RFIs are supposed to be the “pressure-release valve” of construction administration. When drawings, specs, or field conditions don’t line up, teams ask a focused question, get a clear answer, and keep work moving. Newforma’s own RFI overview and guidance frames RFIs exactly this way, as formal clarification that helps protect quality, reduce rework, and keep workflows smooth.  

But when RFIs are managed poorly, scattered across inboxes, tracked in fragile spreadsheets, answered without visibility, or left to linger, costs compound quietly and responses are delayed. Not just in obvious delays, but in rework, disrupted trade stacking, damaged trust, and claims risk. And because these impacts are distributed across dozens of small decisions, they’re easy to underestimate; until the project is already paying for them. 

Below are the hidden costs that show up most often, plus practical fixes that bring discipline back to RFI workflows. 

The first “hidden” cost of improper contract administration is a micro-stoppage. When a crew hits an ambiguity, it creating a micro-stoppage where work either pauses or proceeds on assumptions.  

Either choice is expensive. 

• Pause: labor burns, equipment sits, sequencing slips, and downstream trades lose their window. 
• Proceed: the project team “stays busy” now, but an incorrect assumption heightens the risk of ripping out work later. 

This is why Newforma’s RFI workflow guidance emphasizes making RFIs buildable and specific with one clear question, solid references, and fast documentation; because vague RFIs waste time and create ping-pong loops.  

Industry guidance echoes the same failure mode: delayed responses and fragmented communication create “schedule creep” that accumulates across many open items.  

Hidden cost signal: Your schedule doesn’t show “RFI delay,” but your weekly plan reliability drops, and trade partners start “floating” activities to protect themselves. 

Poor RFI management is a rework’s best friend. When the field builds to an assumption and the clarification comes later, the project pays three times: once to install it wrong, once to demo the wrong installation and one more time to fix it. 

Newforma’s “What Is an RFI?” page explicitly details how RFIs reduce the risk of reworks and save time/money by clarifying design intent and compliance requirements.  

More broadly, research and industry reporting consistently tie rework to gaps in information and coordination. For example, Construction Industry Institute (CII) research has examined rework’s impact on cost performance across a large project dataset.  And Autodesk/FMI have highlighted how poor project data and miscommunication drive significant avoidable cost; which is exactly the kind of environment poor RFI practices create.  

Hidden cost signal: You’re behind because of rework, but the root cause was weeks earlier; due to unanswered RFIs, unclear responsibility, or a response that never reached the field. 

Most teams notice the pain before they notice the cost: 

• “Who has this RFI?”
• “Which drawing detail did this reference?”
• “Did we answer this already?”
• “Why is the superintendent building off an old response?”

RFIs and submittals get scattered across emails, PDFs, and disconnected tools. This leads to transparency drops; duplicate entry rises; slowed review cycles ; and the bottlenecking of field access.  

This admin tax isn’t just annoying,it’s a measurable effort drained from coordination, planning, and risk management into basic “find the thing” work. 

Hidden cost signal: Your PMs and PAs are “busy all day,” but output is mostly status checking and cleanup instead of proactive project leadership. 

RFIs aren’t only about constructability, they’re a quality and compliance mechanism. Newforma’s RFI guidance emphasizes that clarification supports regulatory and design compliance and contributes to higher quality outcomes.  

When RFI management breaks down, quality issues don’t surface immediately. They surface at the worst time, like an inspection, commissioning, or owner punch. You know when fixes are the most disruptive and expensive. 

Hidden cost signal: Late-stage “surprises” that weren’t surprises—just unresolved questions that lived in someone’s inbox.

In disputes, documentation isn’t paperwork; it’s gospel. When projects escalate into delay/disruption, defective work, or scope interpretation conflicts, the outcome often hinges on what was asked, when it was answered, and who acted on it.  

Legal and arbitration guidance repeatedly stresses meticulous documentation and evidence management in construction disputes.  

This is where sloppy RFI practices get expensive: 

• Missing due dates
• Unclear decision authority
• Responses not logged
• Field directives issued outside the system
• No traceability to drawings/specs. 

That’s why logging the full cycle (questions, email messages, actions, file transfers) matters.  It supports tracking and resolution of conflicts during or after construction.  

Hidden cost signal: When a claim starts forming, your team spends days reconstructing history instead of managing risk in real time. 

If you’re seeing any of the following, you’re likely paying more than you think: 

• RFIs live in email threads with no single log
• Multiple teams maintain “their own” RFI trackers
• The field doesn’t trust the latest answer
• Response times vary wildly by discipline/person
• RFI chains are common because initial questions/answers aren’t complete 
• You struggle to reconstruct history during owner meetings or claims conversations 

RFIs aren’t the problem, and neither is email. The real cost shows up when questions live in too many places, answers lack visibility, and no one can say, with confidence,what’s been asked, answered, approved, or acted on. 

That’s exactly the gap Newforma Konekt is built to close. As a project and information management platform, it brings emails, documents, decisions, and workflows together into a single, connected project record, so RFIs don’t disappear into inboxes or spreadsheets. 

With Contract Administration features in CA Track, teams can manage RFIs as the formal, traceable workflow they’re meant to be. With the Outlook add-in, emails can be filed directly as RFIs, capturing real-world communication at the moment it happens and turning it into structured, defensible project data without slowing anyone down. 

The result isn’t just better organization, but also fewer delays, less rework, stronger documentation, and a project team that spends less time chasing information.