Digital Project Management: Slaying the RFI Dragon

How Can You Build Buildings Faster?... My August 23 Dispatch, New Economy Lesson #99: It's Hard to Make Money Online, challenged subscribers to describe their experience digitizing a workflow.  This triggered a detailed response from Charlie Kuffner, SVP and Northern California Region Manager for Swinerton Builders, a major commercial builder in the West.  Swinerton has experience using three major project management applications: Buzzsaw, Citadon and ConstructWare.  

"The biggest savings that these tools have to offer is time and efficiency of process.  We all know time is money, so the challenge for these firms is to demonstrate value in their usage.  There are other neat things, like printing and shipping less documents, which saves money and is also very good to our environment.  Digital file sharing is a lot faster and 'greener' than truckloads of 200-sheet contract drawings that get printed and shipped.  Four pages are used and 196 are tossed -- multiplied times 100 vendors on a typical job. ...

"We calculated that a 'normal' RFI (Request for Information) process went something like this:  RFI was handwritten by sub-supplier.  Faxed to General Contractor.  Reviewed, rewritten or covered with transmittal and faxed to architect.  If it required a sub consultant review (structural, electrical, mechanical), faxed to sub consultant.  If it requires sub-sub consultant input (lighting, acoustical), faxed.  Evaluated by these parties.  Responses formulated and documented.  Faxed back to sub consultant.  Reviewed by consultant and approved.  Faxed back to architect. ... [Well, you get the idea.] ... The traditional RFI process averages one and one-half weeks ... our actual turn around time averaged one-half week.  This is a two-thirds reduction in response time for each issue.   On this project [a 440,000 sf, 18-story tenant improvement assignment], there were 124 RFIs.  Any one of these issues could have potentially impacted the cost and schedule."  ... Kuffner's case study, "The Birth and Development of a Collaborative ExtraNet," was written in the spring of 2000 and is a little dated.  But it's still interesting reading.  To view it, go to Swinerton's home page, then Online Project Management, and you'll see the title toward the bottom of the page. ... Or click here.

--Peter Pike / ppike@pikenet.com