RFI (request for information)
An RFI is a formal question from the site asking the designer or the client to resolve a gap or a clash in the documentation. It carries a number, an addressee, a deadline and a trail, so the answer ends up next to the drawing instead of in somebody's inbox.
The abbreviation comes from international contracts and does not appear in Polish building law. It describes what happens on every site anyway: a foreman finds services clashing with the structure, or a detail missing from the drawing, and asks the designer what to do. On large contracts the question travels as a numbered RFI; on smaller ones it stays a phone call or an email.
The difference is what survives the conversation. A numbered RFI has a photo, a marked spot on the drawing, an addressee, a deadline and an answer pinned to a specific revision. A phone call leaves whatever the site manager remembers, and a year later, when the client asks who authorised the change, there is nothing to show.
RFIs connect to design supervision and to the construction log. The designer's answer often ends as a log entry, a new drawing revision, or a record of necessity (protokół konieczności) when the clarification turns into extra work. A question left unanswered usually means a work face standing idle, so the list of overdue RFIs says more about the schedule than the weekly report.
You recognise the problem when questions from sites live in chat threads, the same clash comes back on a second site, and in a dispute over delay nobody can show how many days the designer took to answer.