Resources · Documents
The RFI register,
usable straight off this page.
Every column a working RFI register carries, the states a question moves through, and the one discipline that makes the whole thing worth keeping, a response-by date worked back from when the trade actually needs the answer. Set your own register up against it, or audit the one you have. Everything here is general information, not legal advice, and your contract governs the notice requirements.
Written by Brad Caldon, Founder, VIABUILD. Licensed builder (NSW) · Registered Building Practitioner (Class 1 to 9) · B.Construction Management (Hons) · Last reviewed 20 September 2026
The ten columns on this page as an empty, editable register, with what each column records on a second sheet.
Excel spreadsheet (.xlsx), 13 KB. No form, no email address.
01 / How to use this
A register, not an inbox
An RFI register is the single dated list of every question a job is waiting on an answer to, with who owes the answer and when it is needed. It is not the email thread, although it points at it. The distinction is the entire value: an email thread records that a question was asked, and a register records that a question is still open, which is the only one of those two facts that changes what anybody does today.
Residential builders often run this informally and get away with it for a long time. The point at which it stops working is recognisable. Somebody asks the designer a question in a text message, the answer is promised and then overtaken by something else, and three weeks later a trade turns up to a detail nobody ever resolved. Nothing failed loudly. The question simply stopped being visible to anyone, and the programme absorbed the consequence.
Work the columns below against your live jobs. What an RFI is, and why an unanswered one is a delay rather than an inconvenience, is covered in the RFIs and site queries reference, the revision discipline that prevents a good half of them is in the drawing revision control guide, and the change process an answer often triggers is in the variation register. Everything here is general information, not legal advice.
02 / The register
What every entry must capture
Ten columns. Nine of them are administration and the tenth, the consequence column, is the one that decides whether the register protects your margin or merely files your correspondence.
- RFI number. Sequential per job, assigned when the question is raised, never reused. The number is what lets an email, a marked-up sketch and a variation all point at the same question without ambiguity.
- Date raised. The day the question appeared, not the day it was formally issued. The gap between those two dates is the builder's own delay, and the only way to shrink it is to be able to see it.
- Raised by. Supervisor, carpenter, estimator, subcontractor. Recording the source shows patterns worth knowing, the trade whose questions always arrive late, the documentation package that generates three times the queries of any other.
- Subject and location. What it concerns and where, in terms a person who was not on site can find. "Bathroom 2, wall junction at the shower screen" is findable in eight months; "that thing upstairs" is not.
- The question, with its drawing reference. The conflict stated precisely, quoting the drawing and revision, the specification clause or the detail it relates to. Precision here is what gets the question answered once instead of twice.
- Proposed answer, where you have one. Optional, and the single highest return column on the register. A question that offers a solution asks the consultant to approve rather than to design, and approval is dramatically faster than design.
- Issued to, and the date issued. A named person and the date they received it. A question issued to a company has not been issued to anybody.
- Response required by. Worked back from when the trade or the order needs the answer, including the lead time. This is the column that makes the register a management tool rather than a filing system, because it is the only one that can be breached.
- Status and date answered. Raised, issued, answered, closed, with the answer or a reference to the written response attached to the entry. The gap between response required by and date answered is your delay evidence, produced automatically by keeping the register honestly.
- Consequence. Whether the answer triggered a variation, an extension of time claim, both or neither, with the reference number where it did. An RFI closed without this column being considered is the standard way a builder ends up building somebody else's change at their own cost.
03 / The status ladder
The states a question moves through
Four working states. The register's job is to show where every open question sits today, and in particular which ones are past their date.
Raised
The question exists and has a number, a date and the name of whoever needs to answer it. Entering it at this moment, before it is polished, is what stops it living in a text message. Most RFIs that hurt a job were never raised, they were just asked.
Issued and running
The question is with the architect, engineer, certifier or client, and a response-by date is set and visible. This is the state a register earns its keep in, because an RFI sitting here past its date is a delay accruing in silence while everybody assumes somebody is dealing with it.
Answered
A written response exists and is attached to the entry. An answer given on the phone is not this state; it is a note to yourself. Confirm verbal directions back in writing the same day, and record the confirmation, because on a residential job the phone call is where the evidence usually stops.
Closed, with its consequences booked
The answer has been read for what it costs and what it delays, and any variation or extension of time it triggers has been raised through its own process. An RFI closed without that read is the most common way a builder absorbs somebody else’s change for free.
04 / The discipline
From question raised to consequence booked
Seven steps. Step three, setting the response-by date from the work rather than from politeness, is the one that changes how quickly answers come back.
- 01
Raise it the day the question appears
The moment a drawing, a specification and a site condition fail to agree, an entry is made. The habit is the whole technique. A question carried in someone’s head for a week is a question that will be answered a week later than it needed to be.
- 02
Write the question so it can be answered once
State the location, quote the drawing and revision, describe the conflict, and where you can, propose an answer. A well-posed RFI with a proposed solution is answered in a day; a vague one produces a clarifying question and a fortnight.
- 03
Set the response-by date from the work, not from politeness
Work backwards from when the trade needs the answer, allowing for the order and the lead time, and put that date on the register. A date chosen by what feels reasonable to ask for is a date nobody has any reason to meet.
- 04
Issue it in writing, to a named person
To a person, not to a company or a group inbox, and in a form that produces a record. An RFI issued into a group chat has been asked and not raised, and the difference will matter when the programme is examined.
- 05
Chase against the register, not against memory
Work the open list once a week, oldest first. Two minutes on the register replaces the whole class of Friday afternoon where a supervisor discovers that the thing holding up Monday has been sitting unanswered since the month before.
- 06
Read every answer for cost and for time
An answer that changes what gets built is a variation and must be priced and signed before the work. An answer that arrived late enough to move the programme may support an extension of time under the contract. Both have their own process; the register is what triggers them.
- 07
Close it with the answer attached
The written response, the revised detail, the marked-up sketch, stored against the entry. The register row points at the evidence rather than replacing it, so months later the answer to "who told us to do it that way" is a reference rather than a search.
05 / The failure mode
Why an unanswered question is a silent delay
Most delays announce themselves. Weather stops work, a supplier misses a delivery, an inspection fails. The delay caused by an unanswered question does none of that, which is what makes it expensive. Nothing stops on the day the question is asked. Work continues around it, other trades are brought forward, and the absence of the answer costs nothing at all right up until the moment the sequence arrives at the thing nobody resolved. Then the cost lands in one hit, as a stood-down trade, a resequenced programme or work built twice.
The second reason it is expensive is that responsibility for the delay is genuinely unclear by then. The consultant remembers being asked something informally. The builder remembers chasing. Neither can produce a date, so the argument becomes an argument about character rather than about facts, and the party who cannot evidence their position usually pays. A register makes that argument unnecessary rather than winning it, which is better: the question was raised on this date, issued to this person, required by this date, and answered on that one. Nobody has to be characterised.
There is also a quieter version worth naming. A question that never gets answered sometimes just gets decided, on site, by whoever is standing there when the trade needs to keep moving. That decision is usually sensible and occasionally expensive, and it is always made by the person with the least information and the least authority to make it. Where the answer changes what gets built, it has effectively become an undocumented variation, which is the subject of scope creep and variation control. The register does not prevent the site decision; it makes the pending question visible early enough that the decision does not have to be made under a carpenter's time pressure.
06 / FAQ
Common questions.
Ten. A sequential RFI number per job, never reused. The date raised. Who raised it, because on a residential job that is as often the carpenter as the supervisor. The subject and location, so the entry is findable by someone who was not there. The question itself, stated precisely enough to be answered once, with the drawing and revision it relates to. Who it was issued to, by name. The response-by date, worked back from when the trade actually needs the answer. The status, from raised through issued to answered and closed. The answer, or a reference to the written response attached to the entry. And the consequence, meaning whether the answer triggered a variation, an extension of time claim, both or neither. That last column is the one most registers are missing, and it is the one that decides whether the register protects margin or just tracks correspondence.
An RFI is a question and a variation is a change. The RFI asks what was intended where the documents are unclear, incomplete or contradictory; the answer either clarifies what was always required, in which case nothing changes commercially, or it directs something different from what was priced, in which case a variation exists. Keeping them apart matters in both directions. Treating every RFI answer as a variation makes you the builder who quotes for everything, and treating no RFI answer as a variation makes you the builder who absorbs other people’s changes for nothing. The discipline is to read every answer against what was actually priced, and where it differs, to raise the variation through the normal process, documented, priced and signed before the work proceeds.
It can, and the register is usually what makes it provable. Most residential building contracts treat a delay caused by an act or omission of the owner or their consultants, including late information, as a ground on which the builder may claim an extension of time, subject to the contract’s notice requirements. Whether a particular delay qualifies depends on the contract and on whether the RFI was genuinely on the critical path, so the evidence that matters is contemporaneous: the date the question was raised, the response-by date it was given, when the answer actually arrived, and what was waiting on it. A register kept as the job runs produces that automatically. A register reconstructed at the end produces an argument. Note that extension of time claims are almost always subject to strict written notice periods, so the claim itself has to be made when the delay occurs rather than at the end. General information, not legal advice, and your contract governs.
On a single renovation with one decision-maker, probably not; the questions get asked and answered the same day and nobody loses track. The register starts earning its keep at the point where questions outlive the conversation, which in practice is when a job has an architect and an engineer as well as a client, or when a builder is running enough jobs at once that no single person holds all the open questions. The honest test is whether you can name, right now, every question outstanding across your live jobs and who is sitting on each one. If you can, your register is your head and it is working. If you hesitated, the questions have not stopped existing, they have just stopped being visible.
The party responsible for the information the question is about, named as a person rather than a firm. A design intent question goes to the architect or designer, a structural question to the engineer, a compliance question to the certifier, and a selection or allowance question to the client. Sending an RFI to whoever is easiest to reach is how it gets forwarded twice and answered by nobody. Where the answer is likely to cost the client money, copying the client into a consultant RFI at the time it is raised is usually worth it, because the answer will not be a surprise and the variation that follows will not be either.
Yes. The download near the top of this page is an editable spreadsheet with the ten columns above as its header row and nothing else filled in, plus a second sheet that repeats what each column records. It is deliberately empty, because the columns take ten minutes to set up and the discipline takes a job to build, and a spreadsheet template quietly encourages the failure this page is about, a register updated in a burst rather than as the job runs. Any spreadsheet, notebook or system carrying the columns above will work if entries are made the day the question appears and the open list is worked weekly, and none of them will if that does not happen. If the part that keeps failing is the register keeping pace with several live jobs, that is an administration problem software genuinely solves, the question raised against the job, the drawing and the trade waiting on it, with the answer stored where the next person will look.
07 / Keep reading
The references behind this register
The knowledge nodes, guides and sibling registers each column draws on.
08 / Cite this
How to cite this page
To reference this page, use the wording below and link the page rather than copying it, so readers reach the current version. Corrections to hello@viabuild.au.
Citation
Brad Caldon, VIABUILD, RFI register template for residential builders, https://www.viabuild.au/resources/rfi-register-template, last reviewed 20 September 2026.
Or stop keeping the register by hand.
VIABUILD holds the question against the job, the drawing and the trade waiting on it, tracks the response-by date across every live job, and keeps the answer where the next person will look for it. Where an answer changes the work, the variation starts from the RFI rather than from memory.