Construction /Customer-service agent live field guide · 9 min

RFI Triage Desk

Reads each incoming RFI, finds the relevant spec and drawing, drafts a first-pass answer with source links, flags duplicates and overdue items, and routes it to the right person — who reviews and approves before anything goes back.

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theater/demos/construction_rfi-triage-desk.html · sandbox · read-only

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FIG. 1

The live demo, running on fabricated data. Open it to step through the full flow — every output is shown for a person to approve before anything happens.

How it would work

Reads each incoming RFI, retrieves the spec clause and drawing sheet it points to, classifies and routes it, drafts a grounded holding reply, and lays it all out for the site admin or engineer to approve before anything goes back to site.

Input 01

The RFI and the project register

An incoming RFI — sender, subject, the question, and the drawing and spec sheets it references — read against the project's own drawing register, specification, and RFI log.

Agent 02

Classifies, retrieves, drafts

Tags type, urgency, discipline and the responsible owner, retrieves the referenced sheets (e.g. structural S-211, hydraulic H-204) and the governing spec clause, flags likely duplicates and overdue items, and drafts a reply citing each statement to its source.

Output 03

A routed draft, working shown

A classified, routed draft with every reference cited and design-clash or structural items flagged for escalation — laid out for the site admin, contract administrator or engineer of record to review, correct and approve before it is sent.

Where it works well

It gets a grounded first response onto every RFI within minutes, in arrival order or not.

Done by hand each RFI is a 15-to-30-minute read-and-route before any answer is drafted, and the urgent design clash can sit behind ten low-priority finishes queries.
Best where RFI volume is high and routing is habit, not rule: a contract administrator or site engineer fielding dozens a week across multiple subcontractors.
At twenty or fifty RFIs a week, the recaptured hours go back into resolving the hard ones with the consultant, not sorting the inbox.

The slow, invisible cost of RFIs is the triage — opening each one, working out which discipline owns it, finding the drawing and spec sheet it points to, and checking whether it has already been answered — before anyone even starts drafting a reply.

Where it works badly

It is confidently wrong when it answers from a superseded drawing — and a clean citation makes the wrong answer look right.

Weak on genuine design clashes and anything touching structure, fire or services compliance — it should escalate to the engineer of record, never draft a technical direction.
If your drawing control is loose — multiple revisions live at once, no single current set — the draft is only as trustworthy as the sheet it happened to retrieve.

The honest test

If you cannot say, right now, that the register it reads holds only the current revision of every sheet, this tool makes your wrong answer faster to send, not safer.

Point it at a register where S-211 Rev C has been superseded by Rev D, or where the spec uploaded is last tender's, and it drafts a tidy, cited reply grounded in a sheet that no longer governs. The citation is the trap: it reads as authority, not as a version.

What it doesn't do — and shouldn't

It drafts and routes. A person approves. On anything structural it escalates and stops.

WHAT IT DOES

Surfaces the drawing revision and spec clause it answered from

Flags likely duplicates and RFIs past their response date

Marks design-clash, structural, fire and services items for escalation

WHAT IT WON’T

Issue a technical direction or approve a change to cost or time

Sign off a beam penetration, reo change or any structural detail

Decide whether a variation is claimable or send the reply itself

An RFI response is a permanent project record: it can authorise a variation, shift a deadline, and feed a payment claim under Victoria's Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 2002. Structural and code-compliance design intent belongs to the engineer of record — in Victoria structural documentation must be certified and signed by a registered building practitioner of the relevant class. The accountable person stays on the decision because the consequence — on cost, on programme, on safety — lands on them, not the tool.

What your data has to look like

A current drawing register, the project specification, and a routing map of who owns what.

Typical readiness

across orgs we see, before the first job

A single current drawing set, by revision

Needs shaping

The project specification, searchable

Usual weak point

A routing map — discipline to responsible owner

Needs shaping

The RFI log with response dates

Usual weak point

Sender and subcontractor details

Usually ready

The real first job

Drawing control is usually the weak point — superseded revisions left live alongside the current set, and a routing map that exists only as tribal knowledge. Getting to one controlled, current register and an explicit routing map is usually the real first job — larger and more valuable than the drafting layer on top. Once the inputs are clean, every RFI after that is triaged right by default.

Right fit if…

You field dozens of RFIs a week across multiple subcontractors

You run a controlled drawing register with one current revision per sheet

Your specification is searchable, not locked in flat scans

You can name who owns each discipline's RFIs today

Walk away if…

Multiple drawing revisions sit live at once with no single current set

Most RFIs are genuine design clashes needing the engineer, not routing

Your spec and routing live only in people's heads

You want a tool that signs off structural details for you

Open questions

The worried-buyer questions, answered straight

No — anything touching structure, fire or services compliance is flagged for escalation, not answered. On a design clash like a penetration over beam reinforcement, the desk drafts a holding reply that confirms the clash and routes it to the engineer of record for a formal direction; it never issues the technical direction itself. In Victoria, structural design intent must be signed off by a registered building practitioner of the relevant class. The site admin approves the holding reply; the engineer owns the answer.

It is only as good as the register it reads. If superseded revisions sit live next to the current set, it can retrieve and cite an out-of-date sheet in a reply that looks authoritative. Getting to one controlled register with a single current revision per sheet is usually the first piece of work — and the piece that makes every RFI after it trustworthy. The tool shows the revision it used so a reviewer can catch a stale citation before it is sent.

No. It removes the triage — opening each RFI, working out who owns it, finding the drawing and spec it points to, checking for duplicates — so the contract administrator or site engineer spends their time on the judgement: whether the draft answer is right, whether a clash needs the consultant, whether the answer carries a variation. The reply is still theirs. The capacity it frees goes back into resolving the hard RFIs and keeping the programme moving.

Current to the issued-for-construction set. Drawings get superseded mid-job and specifications get revised, and an RFI answered from last revision’s sheet is confidently wrong even with a clean citation. The honest test: can you say, today, that the register it reads holds only the current revision of every sheet? If revisions live side by side, the draft inherits whatever it happens to retrieve.

Drawings, specifications and RFI correspondence are commercially sensitive and often carry contractual and payment consequences under the Security of Payment regime. Any deployment runs against your own project platform and data handling, not a shared pool — we scope where the data sits and who can see it as part of the build. The demo here runs entirely on fabricated data; the Broadmeadows Civic Precinct project and Brennan Concreting are not real.

No, and it does not try. It flags when an RFI response may carry a change to cost or time so a person looks closely, but whether something is a claimable variation or feeds a valid payment claim is a contractual judgement under Victoria’s Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 2002 — and that regime was substantially reformed in 2026. The contract administrator or quantity surveyor makes that call; the tool just makes sure the RFI does not slip through unflagged.

What it takes to build

3–4 weeks · 4 phases

Reused from template~70%

Bespoke to this skin~30%

stack · Claude · RAG over project register · routing engine · review UI

What it would cost

Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed dates.

Bite-sized first piece

One contained change, low risk

Pilot build

Most builds land here

Embedded support

Scale on proof

Considering this for your project?

The honest place to start is a bite-sized first piece — one contained change, low risk. Tell us where the RFI backlog hurts; we'll play it back, scope it, and show you what's possible.

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