An engineering services firm managing 200+ RFIs per project, routing through email, with no tracking, no SLA, and a growing list of project delays caused by unanswered requests. See how they achieved 100% tracking and a guaranteed 24-hour response time.
Strata Engineering Group (name changed) provides structural and MEP engineering services for large commercial and institutional projects. A typical project generates 180-250 RFIs over its course — requests from contractors, owners, and subcontractors asking for clarifications, substitution approvals, and design interpretations.
Every one of these RFIs requires a response from a qualified engineer. Every delayed response puts work on hold. And for years, Strata's RFI process was: the RFI arrives in a project email inbox, someone routes it to the right engineer, the engineer responds when they get to it, and the response goes back out by email.
The failure modes were obvious. RFIs got buried in inboxes. The "routing" step was informal — whoever saw the email first forwarded it, or didn't. Responses went out on the engineer's schedule, not the contractor's. And when a client asked "what's the status of RFI-114?", nobody had a fast answer.
The 9.2-day average response time masked a more serious problem: the distribution was wildly uneven. A third of RFIs were answered within 2 days. Another third sat for 2-3 weeks. And the rest fell into what the team internally called "black holes" — requests that required coordination between multiple engineers, touched on ambiguous design intent, or simply landed in an inbox at the wrong time.
The black-hole RFIs caused the project delays. A contractor waiting 3 weeks for a structural clarification doesn't sit idle — they sequence work around the unknowns, which creates conflicts when the answer finally arrives and requires rework.
"We had a GC on a healthcare project who sent us a list of 14 outstanding RFIs as a formal letter. They'd been waiting an average of 23 days. Two of them had been in our inbox for 38 days. That was a relationship-defining moment, and not in a good way."
Strata's RFI workflow was designed around one constraint: every RFI must have a response within 24 hours. Not necessarily a final engineering answer — but a tracked acknowledgment, an assigned engineer, and a draft response from the technical knowledgebase within one business day. The constraint forced the workflow design to prioritize speed at every step.
Contractors submit RFIs via a structured web form: project, RFI number, discipline (structural/MEP/arch), urgency level, affected drawing sheets, question, and optional attachment. Unstructured email RFIs are auto-forwarded to the same intake form with prefilling. Takes 3 minutes.
AI classifies the RFI into one of the four category types (standard clarification, design coordination, design intent, substitution). Identifies the responsible discipline(s). Looks up the assigned project engineer for each discipline. Creates routing assignment with SLA clock started.
AI searches the technical knowledgebase (past RFI responses, specification library, design standards) for similar resolved RFIs and relevant specification language. Drafts a candidate response with citations. For standard clarifications, the draft is typically 80-90% complete. For design intent questions, it's a structured starting point.
Assigned engineer notified via email and in-platform. Notification includes: RFI text, AI draft response, relevant KB citations, urgency level, and SLA deadline. Engineer sees the context and a starting answer — not a blank page.
Engineer reviews the AI draft. For standard clarifications, typically edits 1-2 sentences and approves. For complex coordination items, uses the draft as a framework and writes the substantive answer. For items requiring another engineer's input, escalates with one click — which creates a new workflow branch with its own SLA.
If an RFI hasn't been responded to by hour 20 (4 hours before SLA deadline), automatic escalation notification goes to the project manager and department head. No RFI silently disappears past the deadline.
Approved response delivered to the contractor via their preferred channel: email, RFI submission portal, or direct upload to their project management system. Delivery confirmed and timestamped.
Completed RFI record synced to Procore: RFI number, question, response, responding engineer, timestamps. If the RFI established a new design decision, the AI drafts a KB entry for review — so the next similar RFI gets an even better first draft.
The quality of the AI drafts depends entirely on the quality of the technical knowledgebase. Strata's KB started with 4 years of completed RFI responses from their archive — roughly 2,800 resolved RFIs across 35 completed projects. Here's what the KB contains and how it's maintained:
2,800+ resolved RFIs indexed by discipline, project type, and question category. When a new RFI comes in asking about the acceptable tolerance for concrete flatness on a hospital floor slab, the KB surfaces the 8 previous times a similar question was answered — with the actual responses, the engineer who answered, and the project context.
Current versions of all specification sections Strata uses, along with their interpretations of ambiguous spec language. When a contractor asks "does spec section 03 30 00 permit fiber reinforcement as an alternative to welded wire fabric?", the AI finds the relevant spec language and Strata's established position on that question.
Key passages from IBC, AISC, ACI, and other standards that engineers frequently reference in RFI responses. AI can cite specific code sections in draft responses — which engineers then verify and adjust as needed.
After each RFI is resolved, the AI proposes a KB entry summarizing the design decision. An engineer reviews and approves the entry before it enters the KB. Over 12 months, the KB grows by 1,200-1,500 new entries per year from active project RFIs alone. The drafts get measurably better over time.
"Our GC clients noticed before we even announced we'd changed anything. One of them called to ask what we'd done differently — their schedule was moving faster than they'd planned because they weren't waiting on clarifications anymore. That's when we knew the system was working."
Strata's RFI workflow template is pre-built. For a new project, setup takes 3 minutes: connect the project, set the routing rules for which disciplines are covered by which engineers, and configure the Procore project ID. That's it. The KB is project-agnostic — every new project benefits from all previous project knowledge immediately.
Connect project and upload any project-specific documents (specifications, drawing index)
Set routing rules: which engineers cover which disciplines for this project
Connect Procore project ID. Workflow is live. Share intake link with contractors.
Every lost RFI is a project delay waiting to happen. Start tracking every request, routing to the right engineer automatically, and delivering AI-assisted responses in under 24 hours.