(Navigant, 1M+ RFIs)
average project
Every project manager knows RFIs are a tax on the schedule. Fewer can put a number on it. The most-cited dataset is the Navigant Construction Forum study, which analyzed more than one million RFIs across about 1,300 projects worldwide. It found the average RFI costs roughly $1,080 to review and respond to, with a median response time of about 9.7 days. At an average of ~796 RFIs per project, that's about $859,000 of RFI labor on a single job.
Those figures are conservative and over a decade old. More recent 2024 industry estimates put a single RFI at $2,000–$3,000 once you include the indirect costs — schedule delay, idle crews, and rework when an answer arrives late or wrong.
Where the money actually goes
Here's the part most cost breakdowns miss: the expensive part of an RFI is not the decision. It's the search. The engineer's or PM's judgment call takes minutes. What takes 9.7 days is everything around it:
- Finding which sheet, detail, or spec section governs the question.
- Confirming you're looking at the latest revision — not a superseded set someone emailed three weeks ago.
- Checking whether a change order or addendum already moved the answer.
- Catching the cases where the spec and the drawing disagree — and routing that to a human instead of guessing.
- Drafting the reply, citing the source, and getting it back to the asker.
That's clerical archaeology, and it's where your most expensive people spend their day. Cut that and you cut the cost — without cutting the diligence.
How to cut RFI cost and turnaround
1. Centralize the latest revision — and make it obvious which one it is.
Most wasted RFI time is answering from the wrong set. A single source of truth for current revisions removes a whole class of rework.
2. Make answers cite their source by default.
An answer without a citation just starts a second argument. "Per E-2.1, Rev 3, detail 4" ends it. Insist every answer name its sheet, detail, spec section, or change-order number.
3. Put a grounded answer layer in front of the documents.
This is what IntelMS does. Your team emails a project question — "what's the panel rating on E-2.1?", "did the latest CO move the slab pour?" — and it replies in minutes with a grounded answer that cites the exact sheet or spec section, always from the latest revision. It flags conflicts between documents instead of silently picking one, and it escalates anything contractual, cost, code, or safety to a human rather than guessing. Every reply is drafted for a person to send — a human always makes the final call.
See what one RFI is costing you
Two-minute calculator. Put your own numbers in and see the annual figure — then see a real cited answer from a live job.
Open the RFI cost calculator →Preguntas frecuentes
How much does an RFI cost in construction?
The Navigant Construction Forum study of 1M+ RFIs found an average of about $1,080 to review and respond, ~796 RFIs per project (~$859K/project). Recent 2024 estimates put a single RFI at $2,000–$3,000 including indirect delay and rework costs.
How long does an RFI take to answer?
Median ~9.7 days per the Navigant study. Most of that is locating and confirming the governing document in the current revision — not the decision itself.
How can I reduce RFI cost and turnaround?
Cut the search time, not the diligence. A grounded, cited document-answer tool like IntelMS returns the answer from your latest revision in minutes, so a person reviews and sends instead of hunting — turning a 10-day loop into a same-day one.
What's the difference between an RFI, a submittal, and a change order?
An RFI asks for clarification of the contract documents; a submittal proposes a product/material for approval against the spec; a change order alters scope, cost, or time. All three are document-grounded questions — exactly the kind IntelMS answers with citations.