Forward an RFI for Review
Objective
To forward a Request for Information (RFI) to a person on a project and add that person as a new assignee with Ball-in-Court responsibility on the RFI workflow.
Background
When a project manager creates an RFI and add assignees as members on the RFIs workflow, assignees are required to reply with an answer that clarifies the question being asked. As an assignee on an RFI, the need to forward an RFI to another user for additional clarification might occasionally arise. For those situations, an assignee with Ball-in-Court responsibility for replying to the RFI can now forward the RFI to that individual (or individuals) by email. This action adds that user to the RFIs workflow.
Example
You are a project manager for a general contractor and managing your project's RFI review process. You have created an RFI, added two (2) assignees to the RFI workflow, placed it in the 'Open' status and are now awaiting assignee answers. The first assignee on the workflow is an architect and the second assignee is a project engineer.
For this RFI, the architect assigned to respond to the RFI would first like a structural engineer (who is not named on the RFI workflow) to review the RFI and provide feedback, before passing the review authority to the project engineer.
In this scenario, the architect would use the steps below to forward the RFI to the structural engineer. This action would add the structural engineer to the RFI workflow. Next, the structural engineer would submit an answer and, once submitted, review authority would then be passed back to the architect on the workflow. After the architect submits an answer, review authority would then be passed to the next person on the workflow (i.e., the project engineer).
Things to Consider
- Required User Permissions:
- To forward an RFI, 'Standard' or 'Admin' level permission on the project's RFIs tool.
AND - You must be the assignee on the workflow who currently has Ball in Court (BIC) responsibility for the RFI.
- To forward an RFI, 'Standard' or 'Admin' level permission on the project's RFIs tool.
- Additional Information:
- An assignee is limited to forwarding an RFI to one (1) user at a time.
- If you receive a forwarded RFI, you are required to submit your RFI answer by the same due date as other assignees on the workflow.
- After the response is submitted, BIC responsibility will shift back to the original Assignee who forwarded the RFI.
- To learn the difference between the Add Assignee and Forward for Review functions, see What's the difference between adding an assignee to a RFI and forwarding an RFI for review?
Steps
- Navigate to the project's RFIs tool.
- Locate the RFI that you want to forward in the Items tab.
- Click View.
- Scroll to the Responses card.
- Click the
icon.
Note: This button only displays if you are designated as an Assignee on the RFI with the current Ball In Court responsibility. - Click Forward for Review.
- Select the individual that you want to review the RFI from the Forward To drop-down menu.
Notes:- For a name to appear as a selection in this list:
- The user must be added to the Project Directory. See Add a User Account to the Project Directory.
- The user must also be granted 'Standard' level permissions or higher on the RFIs tool. See Manage Project Permissions Templates.
- For a name to appear as a selection in this list:
- Click Forward for Review.
A green banner displays to confirm the Ball In Court responsibility shifted to the user selected. The user is added to the Assignees list and emails are sent according to the project's settings. See When does the RFIs tool send email notifications?