- [Instructor] Now, RFIs, or requests for information,
are as common on a construction project as plan revisions.
Throughout the project we see RFIs sent
between the trade contractors and the general contractor,
and then from the general contractor to the designer.
And this has typically involved something like an RFI form
or a cover sheet where the person looking for information
gives a description of their question,
and then probably attaches that RFI form to a plan sheet
or a copy of a cutout view of that plan sheet
where they clouded some issue that needs clarification.
Then the RFI form is used to track the progress
on who's okay with what, when, and what the answers are.
And this is definitely a process that can be improved.
And in fact, we should be able to adopt a process now
that lets us initiate and respond to RFIs
right from our phone or tablet as we walk the jobsite.
Let's see how.
So I opened up PlanGrid on my iPad.
And I'm going to navigate to my sample job
that we created earlier, and tap on that.
And I'm going to open up all of my drawings.
So let's stick with
our foundation plan for now.
I'm going to tap on the foundation plan
and zoom in, and we're going to find a sample problem.
You see here it says I have an eight inch concrete slab
this section under base of basement stair.
So basically there's supposed to be a footing right there,
and it tells us it's three foot 11 1/2 inches
from the edge of the stem wall.
I'm going to say
that the issue here is that the framer just told us
that's in the wrong place.
So we need to send an RFI to the designer
saying, which drawing is correct?
Is it the foundation plan that's correct,
or the framing plan that's correct?
So the way I'm going to do that,
and the process that I'm going to suggest,
and the process I'm going to demonstrate here,
is going to start right here in PlanGrid on the tablet.
Now, I'm going to go ahead
and jump out of this sheet for a minute
by clicking back on Sheets.
And that gives me at the bottom of the screen,
I click three dots that says More.
And that gives me up at the top an RFI menu.
So I'm going to click on RFIs.
I've already got a sample one in there,
but let's go ahead and create a new one for our new issue.
We're going to create a new RFI by tapping on that.
We're going to call this the
stair footing RFI.
And we're going to set this to an open status.
Now, here's where I can assign it to a team member.
So right now it's unassigned.
If I tap on that, this would list all of the team members
who are assigned to my project.
So I would want to assign this to the person
who can give me an answer.
I'm just going to pick myself right now and go back.
I'm going to say that we sent it on the 22nd,
and I want it back
in five days, on the 27th.
And now we need to tell them what our question is.
This dimension does not match the stair location
shown on framing plan.
Engineer of Record please verify.
Now, if we scroll down
you see that they have a place for an answer.
I can also add some references and comments.
So add references, if I tap that just to show you,
I can add photos.
So if I needed to take a photo of something with my iPad,
I could do that right now.
Sheet Snapshot is going to let me go back to that sheet
and take a digital cutout of the section that we looked at
and attach it right to this form.
So that's one option,
but that's not the option I'm going to use here,
and I'll show you why in just a minute.
I could also attach a separate document
if there was some other document
or a sketch that somebody else did
that I wanted to attach to this RFI.
I can do that all right here.
But I'm not going to do any of that.
I'm going to show you a different way to do it,
and click on Cancel.
So that's all I want to do.
I want to tap Back,
and I've now created new stair footing RFI.
And that's in the open status.
Let's go ahead and go back.
I want to get back to that Sheet view.
So I want to open the foundation plan again, Sheet A102.
And I want to zoom back in to the area that's in question.
Now, the job is active right now,
so I want everybody to be aware,
particularly since the concrete contractor
is out there starting work.
I want everybody to be aware that we're not quite sure
where that footing goes yet.
That's why I didn't just take a cutout of this
and attach it to the RFI.
Instead, what I want to do is I want to attach the RFI
to this drawing.
So the way I do that is by going over to my menu bar
and clicking on the links icon.
And I'm going to pick the cloud tool.
Tells me to tap and drag to create a link,
so I'm going to cloud right over our issue.
And it asks me what I want to link to.
In this case I want to link to that stair footing RFI.
Now, I can click on Done,
but if I do that, then I'm the only one that sees it,
so I'm going to click on Publish.
It's now published to the project.
And I click on Done.
So at this point now,
not only have I attached a cloud
that alerts anybody that opens these drawings
to the fact that we have a question as to what happens here.
So make sure it's answered before you do anything
or before you place concrete there
that we might have to tear out later.
We've attached it to the RFI.
And if we go back to our Sheets,
we can always look at our RFI list
and find the status, whether it's opened or closed.
And again, any time
we open Sheet A102, foundation plan,
that big red cloud is going to jump right out.
And we're going to see that it's a request for information.
And I can tap on that at any time
and jump right to the RFI to see,
oh, there's a question on the dimensions,
so I better make sure this gets answered
before I build anything.
Now, you can see using this process,
there is no need for paper.
And I can initiate the RFI right from the jobsite
before I walk away and forget about it.