RFIs — Overview

Raise formal questions on your project and route them to an official answer of record — with a clear ball-in-court, a two-step review, and a guarded close.

An RFI — Request for Information — is how the field asks a formal question when a drawing, specification, or scope is unclear, and gets back a single official answer of record. PleoStack turns that back-and-forth into a tracked workflow: every RFI is numbered, routed to the right person, and closed only once there's an answer on file.

The RFI register showing numbered questions with status, ball-in-court, discipline, priority, and due dates — The RFI register — every question, who holds it, and when it's due, at a glance

Why RFIs Are Different from Comments

A comment is a conversation. An RFI is a contract artifact. It has a number, a due date, a discipline, and exactly one authoritative answer that everyone can point to later. That's why the official response is separate from the clarification thread — the thread is for back-and-forth, the response is the answer of record that closes the loop.

The Ball-in-Court Model

Every RFI is always sitting with one party whose turn it is to act. The register shows this in the Ball-in-court column so nothing stalls silently.

Ball	Whose Turn	What They Do Next
Initiator	The person who raised it	Draft, submit, or revise a returned RFI
Coordinator	The RFI coordinator (or owner)	Screen a submitted RFI and route it to a responder
Responder	The assigned answerer	Write the official response

Two-step review by default

Out of the box, RFIs use a two-step review: a coordinator screens each submitted RFI before it reaches a responder, and reviews the answer before it closes. You can switch to single-step (straight to the responder) in policies.

The Lifecycle at a Glance

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What You Can Do

Action	Who	What Happens
Raise an RFI	Anyone with RFI access	Creates and submits a numbered question
Route to responder	Coordinator / owner	Assigns the answerer and opens the RFI
Add a clarification	Any participant	Appends a non-binding note to the thread
Submit response	Responder / owner	Records the official answer of record
Accept & close	Coordinator / owner	Closes the RFI (needs an answer on file)
Reopen	Coordinator / initiator	Re-opens a closed RFI for follow-up

Accessing RFIs

Click RFIs in the sidebar navigation to open the register
Click any row to open the RFI detail — question, response, thread, and activity
Policies live under Admin → RFIs → Policies

Next Steps

New to RFIs? Start with the Getting Started guide for the full raise-to-close walkthrough. Then dig into:

Raising an RFI — the capture panel, field by field
Statuses & Ball-in-Court — the workflow in detail
Answering & Clarifications — the official response vs. the thread
Policies — review mode, SLAs, and close-out gates