Construction ops: put the agent on RFIs, not on the bid deck

Jobs do not stall because nobody has a language model. They stall because an RFI lived in a superintendent's inbox for eleven days. The question was already written. It was never a tracked item with an owner.

An agent can read the email or PDF, extract project, question, due date, and attachments, then create a row in the log you already use. Procore, a spreadsheet, a custom tracker — the point is the log matches reality.

Submittals follow the same pattern: classify the document, pull the spec section if it is there, and stage an assignment. Garbage in still happens. Photos with no context should go to a human lane, not a fake spec number.

Do not let the model invent a response to the architect. Drafting a cover note is fine. Sending it is a PM decision. Construction has enough risk without silent emails.

Measure RFI cycle time, unassigned submittals, and hours PMs spend copying email into the log. Schedule slippage has many causes. This workflow only claims the paperwork delay you can see.

Start with one project, not the whole portfolio. If the log stays current for thirty days, expand. If people keep a shadow inbox, the agent is not in the real process yet.