Your RFI Agent Chases the Architect Until the Field Has an Answer
The AgentWorks RFI Agent takes the follow-up side of RFIs off your project manager: the waiting, the reminding, and the getting of each answer to the people in the field who need it. It tracks every RFI from submission to the architect's response, chases the design team when an answer is late, sends the answer to the right trades, and flags any response that changes cost or schedule. The RFI Agent does the chasing and the distribution; your PM and super make the calls.
What it takes off your plate
On most jobs, the RFI itself gets written. What breaks is everything after. The question goes out by email and sits in the architect's inbox. Follow-up reminders depend on whether the PM remembers. When the answer finally comes back, it lands in one person's inbox, and the foreman who asked hears about it days later, if at all. Meanwhile the crew works around the question or stops.
The cost is time on the critical path and rework when a crew guesses. An RFI that sits unanswered for a week can hold a whole floor, and nobody sees it until the lookahead slips. And the PM spends hours each week sending "any update on this?" emails instead of running the job.
What the RFI Agent does, step by step
The work starts with the people waiting on the answer and ends in the project record.
- Logs the RFI. When the super or a sub submits an RFI in Procore or by email, the agent logs it with the question, drawings referenced, who asked, and the response date required.
- Confirms receipt. It confirms with the architect's or engineer's office that the RFI was received and who on the design team is answering it.
- Chases the answer. As the required date gets close, the agent sends a reminder to the design team through Gmail. When it passes, it follows up again and tells the PM which RFIs are overdue and which crews are waiting on them.
- Distributes the answer. When the response comes back, the agent sends it by text and email through Twilio and Gmail to the foreman and subs whose work it affects, with the drawing or sketch attached, and asks them to confirm they have it.
- Flags impact. If the response adds scope, changes material, or moves a date, the agent flags it to the PM with the RFI attached so a change order can start. Whether it is a change and what it costs is the PM's call.
- Closes it out. Once the trades confirm and the PM agrees the question is answered, the agent closes the RFI and links it to any change order that followed.
Where the work is recorded
An agent that cannot write down what it did is a chatbot. The RFI Agent records its work where your team already looks.
In the CRM, each design team and sub contact record shows every RFI sent, reminder, response, and confirmation, in order. When the architect's office calls about an RFI, whoever answers sees the full history.
In the project system, such as Procore, each RFI carries its question, response, who received the answer, and any linked change order. The next morning the PM opens one log and sees what is open, what is overdue with the design team, what was answered overnight and who has it, and which answers were flagged for cost or schedule.
What your people do instead
Your project manager stays with the client and the design team on the conversations that matter: working out a real conflict in the drawings, walking the owner through a scope change, keeping the job on schedule. Your super stays in the field with the crews instead of relaying answers. Keeping the client confident is the human job.
The AgentWorks RFI Agent keeps the reminders and answers moving around them. For other parts of the business, read how a Change Order Agent prices the change and chases the signature and how to deploy the Daily Reports Agent and get your superintendent back on the job by lunch.
One next step
RFIs may not be where your company loses the most time. The free Industry Assessment shows which workflow an agent should take first in your business, and the construction industry page lays out every agent built for contractors like you.
See where the RFI Agent would start in your construction business.
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