RFIs and submittals are how a job officially asks a question and officially gets an answer. A good log does more than store PDFs. It shows what is open, who has the ball, when a response is due, and whether the field has seen the answer. When that slips, people keep building from the last thing they were sure of.

Procore’s RFIs and Submittals tools exist to facilitate that habit. They show what is open, who needs to act, and what the official response was. A spreadsheet log and a filed PDF do the same work, as long as someone actually keeps them current. The process matters more than the platform.

That is why large general contractors treat RFIs and submittals as controlled documents, not as casual email. I kept those logs at Mortenson Construction on a mission-critical data center project, including the Procore onboarding. You do not need that platform. The habit is what pays for itself, and on a job without a document control hire, a spreadsheet can carry it.

What a good log is actually doing

A list of PDF filenames is not a log. A real log is a picture of the work still in play.

For each RFI, you should be able to see the number, the date it went out, the subject, who has the ball, the due date, the date it closed, a one-line summary of the answer, whether the answer changes the work, and who in the field received it. For each submittal, you should be able to see the status, and whether any notes on the return made it to the installer.

From that sheet, on a phone, a superintendent should be able to answer three questions: what is still open, who owes us a response, and did the field see the answer? If the only copy is a thread in someone's inbox, it is not controlled.

"Approved as noted" belongs in this conversation, too. A stamped return with comments is not a clean approval. If the notes never leave the office, the installer builds what they submitted, not what was accepted. I walk through that miss in "Approved as Noted — and Nobody Read the Notes."

How the habit pays for itself

Paperwork does not pour concrete. It does decide whether the concrete goes in after the right question was answered, and whether the product in the wall is the one that was actually approved.

The expensive misses are rarely dramatic. They are ordinary. An RFI was answered, but the answer sat in an inbox and the crew worked off the issued set. A submittal came back with notes, and the notes never reached the field. A pour went ahead, and nobody had looked at the open list for that area. Each of those is a tracking miss that shows up as labor, material, schedule, and a dispute about who pays.

In "The Missed RFI: How One Unanswered Question Turns Into a Rip-Out," I walk through a typical case, not a named client. The short version: a log you actually update costs far less than the rework it is meant to catch.

A log a busy week can survive

A Google Sheet or Excel file in the same job folder as the drawings is enough. Color or filter the open rows so they jump out. Review the open items the afternoon before a pour, a cover-up, or an inspection. In an Arizona summer, that review happens before the early pour, not at 4 a.m. in the dark.

Treat a closed RFI that changes the work like a drawing. File it and post it where the current set lives. When an answer or a stamped submittal arrives, a short note goes to the superintendent and the affected subs: the number, what changed, and where the file is. A column in the log that says "field received, date, by whom" closes the loop.

I go through log columns in "A Procore-Level Job File With Google Drive (or Dropbox) and a Spreadsheet." Used carefully, an AI tool can summarize a long RFI response. A person still has to check it against the source PDF.

If the log is more than the week can hold

Your superintendent should not have to choose between watching the work and hunting through email. If the questions are coming fast, or someone is requiring a platform you do not live in every day, that is a reason to get help, not a reason to feel behind.

When the habit will not hold on its own, I can set up the job file, run the RFI and submittal logs on a retainer, or prepare closeout. If you want, I can look at how questions are moving on your current job and tell you whether a simple log will hold. Bring a recent RFI thread and a look at your submittal returns. That is enough to start.

If you want help, not just a checklist

Some jobs run fine on a clean file and a superintendent who gives the log fifteen minutes twice a week. Others do not: revisions are moving fast, closeout is already behind, or the field simply has no hours left for paperwork.

That is where I come in. I set up the job file, run the logs on a retainer, or prepare closeout before the scramble starts. Your files stay yours, and there is no software contract to sign.

Email travis@builtonrecord.com Get the free Job File Kit