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What are RFIs really costing you?
The average RFI takes about $1,080 and ten business days to resolve — and roughly a third of them were preventable before construction started. Three sliders, your number.
Industry benchmark: roughly 10 RFIs per $1M of construction value
Navigant/industry studies put the average around $1,080 in combined review and response time
Your annual RFI processing cost
$518,400
Where that number comes from
Industry studies put the average cost to process a single RFI at roughly $1,080 in combined contractor and design-team time, with typical resolution taking about 10 business days. Research consistently attributes around a third of RFIs to preventable causes — drawing conflicts, missing information, and coordination gaps that existed before construction started.
That preventable share is what AI drawing review targets: tools that cross-reference entire drawing sets for conflicts and scope gaps before bid or GMP, so issues get fixed on paper instead of surfacing as RFIs in the field.
See AI drawing review tools in the directoryWant help cutting the preventable third?
In a free one-hour AI strategy workshop we look at your document workflows and identify which review and coordination tools actually fit your projects.