Every project has RFIs and submittals that hold the programme without anyone noticing. A shop drawing waiting for consultant comments. A material submittal sent back for a second revision. An RFI about a clash in the services zone that nobody has answered in two weeks. None of these appear as a delay on day one. They show up later as a crew with nothing to install.
RFIs and submittals are the formal questions and approvals that move a design from paper to site. An RFI asks the design team to clarify something in the drawings or specification, and a submittal asks the consultant to approve what the contractor intends to build or buy. When either stalls, the work behind it stalls too.
The problem is rarely one late approval. It is dozens of small ones that nobody is tracking against the programme.
More than most teams expect. The American Society of Concrete Contractors, summarising a Navigant Construction Forum study of 1,362 projects, reports an average of about 800 RFIs per project, with each one costing roughly $1,080 to review and answer. Projects in the region differ in size and contract form, but the pattern is familiar to any contractor running a building of real complexity.
Submittals add a second stream on top. Every material, every shop drawing and every method statement has to be submitted, reviewed, commented on and often resubmitted. On a mid-size project that is hundreds of items, each with its own status and its own clock.
Most contractors keep an RFI log and a submittal register. The trouble is where they live. The registers sit in spreadsheets owned by the document controller. The programme sits in planning software. The responses arrive by email to whoever sent the original. Nobody sees which open item is blocking which activity.
So a submittal that has been with the consultant for three weeks looks like any other open line in the register, even though the order behind it is now late. We covered how much of that chasing ends up in one inbox in our piece on why your procurement manager spends more time on emails than decisions.
The cost appears twice. First on site, as idle crews and resequenced work. Then at the end, when the contractor tries to claim the delay and cannot show when each question was asked and when it was answered.
An unanswered RFI is often the start of a variation. The design team’s answer changes the scope, the work gets done, and the paperwork trails behind. That is the same sequence we described in why variation orders turn into disputes at final account.
Under FIDIC-based contracts, delays caused by late drawings or instructions can support a claim for time and cost, but only if the contractor can show when it asked, what it was waiting for and what that held up. A register with dates, linked to the programme, is that evidence. A folder of emails is not.
An RFI is a question from the contractor asking the design team to clarify or resolve something in the drawings or specifications. A submittal is a package the contractor sends for approval, such as shop drawings, material samples or method statements, before building or buying.
It depends on the contract. Many contracts set a review period for submittals, and the clock should be tracked from the date of submission. Where the contract is silent, agreeing turnaround times at the start of the project avoids arguments later.
The document controller usually maintains it, but the project manager and planner need to see it against the programme. The register is only useful if open items are linked to the activities they are holding up.
The fix is a single register where each RFI and submittal carries its dates, its owner, its status and the programme activity it affects. Overdue items surface automatically, the people who need to chase them are told, and the record builds itself as the project runs.
That is what construction document management looks like when it is built into the ERP. Mismar works with contractors across UAE and KSA to track every RFI and submittal against the work it holds up. If your open approvals live in a spreadsheet nobody checks against the programme, let’s get on a call.
Start growing with Mismar today.
