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Custom RFI software: from question to official response
Short answer
An RFI, a request for information, ends only with an official answer passed to the team. RFI software keeps the subcontractor's question beside the drawing and revision, the designer's comments and the approved answer with a record of who received it. First check the RFI module in your current construction platform. At Syntalith the application costs from €3,000 net. At 150 RFIs a month of 30 minutes each, it pays back in 1.4 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net per application, fixed price before contract
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 4–10 weeks
- free prototype on your documents
- €0
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
Construction and AI: statistics 2026
1.4 mo.
payback of a €3,000 application at 150 RFIs a month: €2,618 of work today, €525 with checking and the model. Scenario.
10.8%
According to Eurostat (2025), 10.8% of EU enterprises in construction used AI.
20.0%
According to Eurostat (2025), 20.0% of EU enterprises with at least 10 employees used AI.
50%
According to the European Commission (2026), half of EU SMEs and mid-caps name high investment costs as a barrier to AI.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
25.1%
According to a Harvard Business School study (2023) of 758 consultants, tasks within the model's capabilities were done 25.1% faster with AI.
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
A comment on a new drawing does not close the case
A subcontractor asks about the mounting position of a unit marked on a drawing in revision A. The designer adds a comment and refers to revision B. The project manager sees that remark, but the team still needs an official answer: which revision applies and what follows from it for the installation. If such cases travel between the construction platform and email, the answer easily reaches only some of the people.
In the proposed flow, both revisions and the designer's comment stay with the subcontractor's question. A named person checks the content and the document, records the official answer, and the manager sees who received it and when. The project team agrees who reviews questions and who issues answers, and the technical assessment stays with the people responsible.
- 01Questionthe subcontractor, at a specific drawing and revision
- 02Reviewthe named person with the reviewers' comments
- 03Answerthe official clarification with a reference to the document
- 04Distributionwho received the answer and when
- 05Archivethe question, the revisions and the answer together
- Open questions with their references to drawings
- Comments and the person leading the case
- The distribution history of answers already issued
- Ownership of code and data, and documentation for a successor
What it costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 150 RFIs × 30 min = 75 h (€2,618)
- With the system, a person checks the output in 20% of the time
- €524
- Model, 1 call per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €1
- Cost of one case
- €17.45 today, €3.50 with the system
- Saving
- €2,093 a month
Payback of €3,000
1.4 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 3,000 input tokens and 400 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
The count covers the work around a case: searching, reading, writing and handing over. What remains is the time to check the result, 20% of today's work in the scenario. Before the quote, we measure both times on 20 to 100 cases the team has already handled, in a free test that takes 5 working days.
Looking after the connection covers the case where an answer was recorded but did not appear where the subcontractor looks. We price that support alongside the build and the migration.
A platform module or your own flow
Autodesk Build lets you prepare an official response based on the reviewers' responses, add attachments and references to sheets. Before you order anything, go through with the administrator the last case where the answer had to be sent around outside the platform: perhaps fixing the roles or the access option for subcontractors is enough. An extension makes sense when the team works well in the platform and subcontractors need a simpler place for the question and the answer. A form, assigning a person and passing on the answer need no AI. A model helps find earlier comments in scattered correspondence.
The team and subcontractors work in the platform
configuration of roles and the RFI module
no build
Subcontractors need simpler access
a question portal connected to the platform
from €3,000
RFI handling joins several places by hand
your own narrow RFI flow
€3,000–€7,000
Where to start
The first scope covers one project and subcontractors' questions about drawings. A list of changes after a new revision is described in AI in construction: a list of design changes. We build this kind of rollout as part of AI applications. For the free analysis, a description of one case from recent weeks and of the tools it passed through is enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: construction documents
We run the same count for your project in the free analysis.
€3,490
a month for quoting 50 enquiries by hand
Payback: 1 mo.
2 hours to quote an enquiry with a bill of quantities and checking in 15% of the old time are our assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: reading the enquiry in our quoting system (about €0.0008) plus pricing the lines (Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 4,000 + 1,500 tokens), at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026. The extra margin is a scenario: we assume 1 in 100 enquiries quoted before the deadline ends in an order that a slow reply loses today, with a margin of €3,442. In the review we count it on your sales process.
See the full calculation →
