How RFI and Submittal Volume Erodes A/E Fees —
And How to Track It Before the Fee Is Gone
Most CA fee erosion does not happen through a single large scope change. It happens through the accumulation of individually small, individually manageable demands that collectively consume the fee before anyone has named them as a problem. RFIs and submittals are the primary mechanism. Here's how that accumulation works, what it costs, and how to build a tracking system that surfaces the problem in time to act on it.
The Mechanism Nobody Talks About
Ask a principal why a CA phase lost money, and the answer is usually a story — a difficult contractor, a program change, a schedule that ran long, an owner who couldn't make decisions. All of those things are real.
But the underlying mechanism that converts those conditions into fee erosion is almost always the same: RFI and submittal volume that exceed the scope assumption embedded in the CA fee, absorbed quietly over many months, then discovered at project closeout when the fee is gone and the project still has work remaining.
The reason it goes unnoticed is that each individual demand is small. An RFI takes 45 minutes. A submittal resubmittal takes an hour. No single event is alarming. No single event triggers a scope conversation. The accumulation of 40 above-scope RFI responses and 25 above-scope submittal reviews does not look like a problem from the inside — it looks like a project that is keeping the team busy.
From the outside — from the perspective of the CA fee balance — it looks like a 30% overrun, with three months of construction remaining.
Why does the tracking not happen
The absence of RFI and submittal tracking in most A/E firms is not a deliberate choice. It is the absence of a system that makes tracking automatic.
When RFI management is handled via email, the running count is in the inbox. When submittal review is done on paper or in PDF format, the log is in a file. When the project manager is the only person who knows the cumulative totals, those totals exist only when the project manager has time to reconstruct them.
Most project managers do not track RFI and submittal volume against original scope assumptions — because doing so manually is additional work on top of a role that already carries significant coordination and management responsibility. The tracking that would protect the firm's fees is not implemented because the system was never built to do so automatically.
→ Read: Construction Administration for A/E Firms: The Complete Guide
RFI and submittal volume erodes CA fees through accumulation, not through any single large event. The individual demands are small.
The aggregate is what exhausts the fee. Tracking makes the aggregate visible while there is still time to act on it.
How RFI Volume Accumulates Against the CA Fee
The relationship between RFI volume and CA fee is direct, but it is almost never stated explicitly in the proposal or contract.
Most CA proposals include some language about RFI response as part of the base CA scope. Very few define how many RFI responses are included before the firm is in additional service territory. The assumption is implicit — the project manager who scoped the CA fee had a number in mind when they set the fee. That number is not in the contract.
When the project produces more RFIs than the implicit assumption, the additional responses are delivered against the base fee. The contractor does not know there is a volume limit. The owner has no basis for discussing one because it was never documented. The firm absorbs the additional work because the contract does not provide a clean basis for billing it.
The compounding factors
RFI volume is not uniformly distributed across the project. It focuses on specific phases of construction — at structural framing when field conditions diverge from the drawings, at mechanical and electrical rough-in when coordination issues arise, and at finishes when specification interpretations become contested.
When volume concentrates in a short period, the project manager is responding to RFIs under time pressure while also managing submittals, site observations, and other CA responsibilities. The tracking that would surface the scope accumulation is the last thing that happens when everyone is managing the project.
The concentration also creates a cognitive bias: each individual RFI arrived in a period of high activity and was handled as an urgent need. In retrospect, it is easy to characterize it as routine CA work — because it was handled alongside everything else that constituted routine CA work at the time. The cumulative volume that would justify an additional services conversation is invisible unless the tracking exists to surface it.
What a scope assumption looks like in practice
Consider a CA proposal for a mid-size institutional project — a school addition of 24,000 square feet, 14-month construction schedule, fixed fee CA of $42,000. The project manager who set that fee had an implicit RFI assumption — perhaps 80 to 100 responses across the full construction period.
The project produces 165 RFIs. The contractor has a limited documentation discipline. Field conditions diverge from the structural drawings in three locations, each requiring engineering analysis and response. Mechanical coordination generates more RFIs than anticipated because the specified equipment requires more detailed installation guidance than the drawings provided.
The additional 65 to 85 RFI responses — at an average of 45 to 60 minutes each — represent 50 to 85 additional hours of engineering time. At billing rates, that represents $7,500 to $12,750 in additional scope that was delivered against a $42,000 fixed fee.
That scope was not identified as additional services. It was not billed. It was absorbed — partially offsetting what would otherwise have been a profitable CA phase.
What tracking changes
When RFI volume is tracked against the original scope assumption from the first week of construction, the project manager can see the trajectory before the fee is exhausted.
At 60 RFIs with six months of construction remaining, the project is on track against an 80-response assumption. At 85 RFIs with six months remaining, the project is already above the original assumption and trending toward a final count well above 100. That visibility — available in week 24 of a 60-week project — enables a conversation that is not available in week 55.
The additional services conversation that is straightforward at 85 RFIs with six months remaining becomes a dispute at project closeout after 165 have been delivered.
The information that enables the conversation is the same. The timing determines whether it is a billing event or a write-off.
How Submittal Volume and Resubmittal Cycles Erode the Fee
Submittal review scope is driven by the contractor's procurement process and fabricator relationships — both of which are outside the A/E firm's control and largely outside the firm's visibility until the submittals start arriving.
The CA fee assumption for submittal review is based on a typical submittal count for the project type and a typical first-submission approval rate. Both assumptions can diverge significantly from reality on any individual project.
First-submission approval rates
A submittal that arrives complete, coordinated, and consistent with the specifications can be reviewed and approved in the expected time. A submittal that arrives incomplete, inconsistently formatted, or for a product that was not specified requires additional review time — confirming what is missing, preparing a response that documents the deficiencies, and waiting for the resubmittal.
When a contractor routinely submits incomplete packages — as some do, either because of their own procurement practices or because of fabricator documentation standards — the submittal review time per item is higher than the fee assumed. When resubmittals are required for a significant percentage of the submittal log, the review time approximately doubles for each affected item.
On a project with 120 submittals where 35% require resubmittal, the firm reviews approximately 162 packages rather than the 120 assumed. The additional 42 reviews are an additional scope delivered against the base fee.
Specialty submittals
Some project types generate specialty submittal categories that carry higher review time than the average — structural steel shop drawings, curtain wall system coordination packages, mechanical equipment with complex performance specifications, fire alarm systems requiring detailed review against the life safety code.
When a CA fee is estimated from general submittal volume assumptions without accounting for the review time required by specific specialty submittals, the fee may be structurally underfunded for the project type before the first submittal arrives.
A mechanical CA fee estimated at basic submittal review time for a project with complex HVAC equipment packages, BAS integration submittals, and full commissioning documentation requirements will exhaust its submittal review budget significantly before the submittal log is complete.
Tracking submittal scope in practice
An effective submittal tracking system logs every submittal as it arrives — discipline, submittal number, date received, review time estimate, date returned, and action taken. The log captures resubmittal cycles against each original submittal number.
At any point during construction, the submittal log shows the total number of packages reviewed, the total number of resubmittals processed, the cumulative review time charged against the project, and the comparison against the original scope assumption.
When that comparison shows the project has consumed its submittal review budget with significant construction remaining, the project manager has the information — and the documentation — to initiate an additional services conversation while the project is still active.
The conversation is not comfortable. It is easier than the conversation at closeout.
→ Read: Construction Administration Management: How to Control Scope and Protect the Fee
A submittal log that captures resubmittal cycles is worth more than a submittal log that only captures first submissions.
The resubmittal is where the fee erosion happens — and it is invisible without a tracking system that records it.
Building a Tracking System That Actually Gets Used
The tracking system that protects CA fees does not need to be complex. It needs to be consistent, which means it needs to be simple enough that it happens automatically as part of CA delivery rather than as a separate administrative task.
The minimum viable CA tracking system
Four logs, updated in real time as activity occurs:
An RFI log that captures: RFI number, date received, discipline, brief description, date responded, and estimated response time. Updated when each RFI is closed.
A submittal log that captures: submittal number, discipline, date received, date returned, action taken, and resubmittal history. Updated when each submittal is processed.
A site visit log that captures: date, duration, attendees, observations, and any follow-up items. Updated after each observation.
A change order and additional services log that captures: date identified, description, estimated value, authorization status, and billing status. Updated when each additional service is identified.
None of these requires specialized software. A well-maintained spreadsheet is sufficient for firms with moderate CA volume. What matters is not the tool — it is the discipline of updating each log at the time the activity occurs rather than reconstructing it at month-end.
Connecting the logs to the fee balance
The four logs are most useful when they are connected to the CA fee balance — when the running totals can be compared against the original scope assumptions in a way that surfaces the gap between priced scope and delivered scope.
This connection can be built into a spreadsheet — columns that show the running RFI total against the original assumption, the running submittal count against the original count, and the running site visit count against the number included in the fee. When any column approaches the scope assumption, it triggers a review.
In a project management system that tracks CA activity natively, this comparison is automatic — the system surfaces the gap between scope and delivery without requiring the project manager to update a separate spreadsheet. That automation is what determines whether the tracking actually happens consistently or only when someone thinks to check.
What changes when the tracking exists
The most direct impact is on additional services capture. Firms with active CA tracking bill more additional services because the tracking surfaces the basis for billing while the project is still active. The conversations happen at the right time. The documentation supports them.
The second impact is on future fee-setting. A firm that reviews completed project CA logs — comparing original scope assumptions against actual RFI, submittal, and site visit counts across its project portfolio — builds the historical data that makes future CA estimates more accurate. The firm that consistently overruns on institutional projects because RFI volume exceeds assumptions can adjust its institutional CA fees before the next project starts, rather than absorbing the same overrun again.
→ Read: Billing & Profitability for A/E Firms
→ Read: Project Management for A/E Firms
→ Read: Proposals & Fees for A/E Firms
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