Building Better through RFIs and Beyond
How Bergan is applying digitization and automation to a traditional construction process.
My first job in the industry was as an assistant project manager for a construction management company in New York City. I had grown up in the industry and spent a lot of time on the shop floor and on jobsites, which gave me the perspective of the real-world impact, and pain, of missing information. My new position was in an office, and I would learn how to manage a project from pre-construction to owner occupancy. It quickly became clear to me that the RFI (Request for Information) was a great tool to help throughout the project lifecycle. When done correctly, it can distill complex issues into a simple and direct question-and-answer chain.
Successfully completing complex construction projects requires great communication and I think we are in a time when the formal RFI process can really shine. As a construction manager, we tracked RFIs with an Excel spreadsheet. The RFIs were sent via email and not in any standard format. We also looked at using Prolog, which was a robust system, but difficult to use and only accessible on a desktop computer. Blackberries ruled the day and if someone was going to ask a question, it was likely going to be asked in an informal email using a Blackberry, either during a meeting or while walking the jobsite.
When I came back to Bergan, I tried to take the discipline around tracking RFIs on spreadsheets to this company. But with fewer administrative resources, the logging and tracking steps became too cumbersome for the typical project manager. At the end of the day, questions and answers that would otherwise be a RFI were instead loosely communicated in email. There was a lot of, “I remember getting that answer, but I just spent an hour searching my email and could not find it”.
If we looked at our own behavior, it became clear that email or a simple form that is available on desktop, laptop, tablet, and phone will be used 99% of the time compared to a system that is shackled to only one. But if we looked at what we really needed, a system that tracked and logged all of the questions and answers in a way that is searchable and communicable across the entire project team, and if we were honest with ourselves, we would see that email alone could not satisfy our needs.
So, when we decided to start building our own apps and automations, we we tackled RFIs first. We made it very easy for a project manager to ask questions and distribute answers to the entire team.
A project manager now has 2 or 3 things they need to do when asking a question. Choose the job number, type the question, and attach an optional file. The system is then designed to send the question to the appropriate parties internally and externally and add the question to a database.
We have iterated better ways of doing this since going live with the app. The latest feature update makes it easier for a project manager to nudge a client into answering questions. The goal is to push projects forward through greater transparency and collaboration and we believe this new feature advances us towards that goal.
The Follow-Up Process
Internally, we added a metric to our dashboard that shows the number of open RFIs on a project. The Bergan PM can then click through to see which questions need answering. And now we are taking it one step further, by adding a button for the Bergan PM to press which will send the open RFIs to the client’s PM.
If you are a client PM, you can expect to receive emails that look like this on a regular basis if there are open RFIs on a project:
Why not automate the follow-up process?
It is very tempting to automate this follow-up process, and one day we may add some automation, but right now we like to place a person in the middle of the process. Our internal dashboard nudges the PM into action by highlighting if there are open RFIs. The rest of the system is setup so it will be very easy to send the follow-up email. The human interaction with the data also allows for any revisions that need to be made before the list is sent to the client. It is possible that the client sent a response, the PM saw the response, but did not have a chance to review and include the response in our system. By reviewing this gap in the process, the PM can make the correction and send the true list of open RFIs to the client.
We think there is a more powerful reason to keep a person in the middle of the process too, disfluency. In Charles Duhigg’s book, Smarter Faster Better, the author spends a chapter on absorbing data. In our current world, we encounter a ton of data on a daily basis, but what do we do with it? He tells a few stories, one of a debt collector and a couple of schoolteachers, that reveal the benefits of not only putting a person in the middle of the data, but deliberately slowing down the processing of the data so people can absorb the information and come up with creative solutions around what the data actually means.
One story that stuck with me for several years after reading about it is the one about the elementary school teachers who were forced to sit in the “data room” for a couple of hours a week. Their school was given a ton of data on the students and their test scores, but the students scores were not improving. In the data room sessions, the teachers were forced by the school’s administrators, to work with index cards that had the students information and relevant test scores. By sitting with the data, they started to come up with creative combinations of the data that allowed for greater insight in how to improve the education of their students. Little-by-little, they noticed test scores improving.
Similarly, we want to place our PM in the middle of the issues that are delaying the project. Rather than have a robot send an email to a client at a set time, the PM needs to understand the open issues, live in that space, and perhaps find creative ways to drive to a solution to keep the project moving forward without delay or a slip in quality. It will also help the PM look out for those exact issues on future projects.
Imagine if we all combined forces
We are but one company and we do what we can with the data and resources we have. We work in a specialized sector of the industry, and we tend to see the same types of projects with the same cast of characters. We notice patterns in how architects specify a project and how contractors run a project. But what if we sat down with other woodworkers or other trades to expand our knowledge on how to nudge architects and owners into making decisions sooner or how to nudge contractors into running an even more efficient jobsite? What if we developed a greater understanding about the consistent missing information on a project that has a big impact to cost and schedule? Imagine if we focused our energy and combined all the data that we have collectively as an industry into making the industry and the construction process better.