How to Streamline Reviewing RFIs and Submittals

Keeping project documents moving smoothly is necessary for todays fast-paced construction projects. RFIs and Submittals are two key documents that facilitate and track decision making between the Owner and Contractor teams. Too often, the projects team is forced to spend their time managing the process, leaving too little time to manage the substance, of these documents.

Email is a great tool for communicating ideas in a written format between two people however when used to facilitate the complex review and approval between multiple parties there are some noticeable drawbacks like:

• Forgetting to include the correct personnel on the email
• Forgetting to hit Send
• Emails captured by a SPAM or Junk filter
• Manually creating correspondence logs in Excel that take considerable effort to keep accurate
• Difficulty finding all related emails to a single RFI/Submittal
• Difficulty sharing previously submitted RFIs/Submittals with new team members
  
  

Today, there is better mechanism for managing critical project documents - project management software. The FACS Platform was designed specifically to streamline the review and approval of these documents with its dedicated document control features.

To field showing project users who have access to an entry and the BIC field which shows the identified as responsible for the next step.

Each document, like RFIs and Submittals, can automatically add the project team and can be routed based on the projects desired workflow. As the document's status changes, the document can be automatically assigned to the next person in the process. With a dedicated Ball in Court (BIC) field used to identify the next person in line, the entire project team always know who is responsible for each document.

Submittal Log

As each entry is created or updated the workflow, the corresponding document log page automatically updates to reflect the documents current status. This eliminates the need to create manual logs and improves document visibility to all team members - especially field users.

Project dashboard showing average time documents remain in an Open status and a bar chart of all Submittals, by status, on the project.

Simple, easy to read, project or program level dashboards provide a helpful guide for weekly or monthly review meetings. These dashboards allow for a rolled up view of  the projects documents flow overall health. These types of dashboards are especially helpful for upper management to ensure projects are staffed sufficently.

Optional email notifications can be sent to your inbox when key events occur like, the status or BIC changing or a comment being added, ensuring you are always aware of changes to these key documents.

Allow FACS to help you ensure your project documents are moving smoothly and information is flowing quickly. FACS' dedicated document control features automate many of todays manual processes providing you, and your team, more time to ensure accurate information is being shared. Best of all, document management in FACS is standard - no add on modules or other software needed. Reach out today to learn how FACS can help streamline your projects documents.