Every trade sends RFIs. On finish carpentry the clock runs differently, because the crew is already in the building when the question comes up and there is often nowhere else to send them. Response time stops being an administrative metric and becomes a line on the labor sheet.
A framing RFI usually has somewhere to go. The crew moves to the next bay and the answer catches up. A finish RFI often does not, because finish work runs room by room in a sequence that other trades have already released, and the room next door is frequently in the same condition.
So a question about a reveal detail, a transition at a threshold, or which of two profiles the architect intended does not cost you an hour of thinking. It costs whatever the crew was going to install that day.
They are predictable, which is the useful part. Almost all of them can be raised during the scope review instead of during install.
Shortening response time helps. Removing the question entirely helps more. A scope review before the crew is scheduled surfaces most of these while there is still a week of float, and a week of float turns an emergency into an email.
This is the whole argument for reviewing drawings before the award rather than after. The questions exist either way. You are only choosing whether they arrive when they are cheap or when they are expensive.
An RFI that asks a yes or no question gets answered faster than one that asks for guidance. A photo of the actual condition, the relevant drawing reference and a proposed solution turn a design exercise into a confirmation.
The version that stalls reads: please advise on trim at corridor transitions. The version that moves reads: at unit 214 the corridor base meets the tile at an uneven line, drawing A-501 does not detail it, we propose a flush transition with a quarter round in matching finish, confirm by Thursday and we hold the schedule.
A short list of open questions in the weekly update, each with the area it blocks and the date it is needed, does two things. It gives you a clean way to escalate, and it makes visible the connection between an answer sitting in someone's inbox and a crew standing still.
That is usually enough. Most late answers are not refusals, they are items that lost their place in a queue because nobody attached a cost to the delay.
Send us the scope and we review it. No commitment required.
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