How to Stop Working for Free
Lesson 4—The “Winning RFI”
Welcome back. In Lesson 3, you learned that you need some guidelines in order to use an RFI the right way—and that’s to send out only a “Winning RFI”. And we went over those guidelines. to send out only “Winning RFIs”. So, how do we do that? Well, that’s the subject for today. We’re going to look at an actual RFI.
As mentioned last time, our discussion has looked at several points, but it just touches the tip of the RFI iceberg. There’s a lot to learn beyond these few pages. But you should be able to take away from this course the confidence that you now have some choices in how you handle extra work: you don’t just have to roll over anymore and take it!
So let’s look at the RFI sample. It might look similar to others you’ve seen in the past. You might even have RFI forms that the architect included in your bid documents. Here’s my advice on the architect’s RFI forms: DON’T’ USE THEM! Use your own. Over the past few years, I’ve never used the architect`s RFI form, although the specs have frequently “required” their use! The “Winning RFI” form has all of the information that the architect’s form has–and then some. Trust me now: use this one!
Because you need to get the full story on RFIs, do yourself a big favor and research this subject in detail. As always, I suggest my book, “Get Paid for a Change!”, which is subtitled, “The Contractor’s Blueprint for Turning Extra Work into Extra Money—Through Change Orders”.
You can get the book by going to www.FullContactTeam.com. The information that follows actually comes from my book. The attached information is copyrighted, and is owned by Supreme Word Publishers. Duplication is prohibited, but you have permission to use a similar format for your own work.
If you want to be a great PM, then get serious about it. Learn all you can. Education for your career is normally tax deductible, and pays huge dividends. So also get access to the Full Contact Team, the private Website where you get ALL the inside scoop on how to deal with the issues that great PMs need to overcome if they are going to be successful with their projects, companies and their careers. Find out more on that at the Blog page, as well.
That’s it for today. See you next time for Lesson 5 when we’ll summarize what we’ve learned in this course, and where we go from here.
Copyright 2009 Gary Micheloni
www.FullContactTeam.com
