Eight Hours of Work, Ten Days of Waiting
Updated: 3 hours ago
ISSUE 13 · SEPTEMBER 10, 2026
Somebody on your job is standing around right now, waiting on an answer that will take two hours to write.
We have decent data on this. In 2013 the Navigant Construction Forum worked with Aconex to study 1,362 projects started between 2001 and 2012 — roughly 1.1 million RFIs. The median time to get a reply was 9.7 days. When Navigant asked design professionals how much work actually goes into answering one, the estimate came back at about eight hours: four hours of administrative handling — receiving, logging, routing — and four hours of technical review.
Eight hours of work. Ten days on the clock.
The other nine days aren’t work. That’s the RFI sitting somewhere.
There’s a tool built specifically to expose that gap. James Womack and Daniel Jones laid out five principles in Lean Thinking (1996): specify value from the customer’s standpoint, identify the value stream, make it flow, let the customer pull, pursue perfection. The second one is what we want here. Identify every step required to deliver the thing, then strip out the steps that don’t create value. Mike Rother and John Shook turned that into a drawing in Learning to See (1998), and the drawing has exactly one job — put total lead time next to actual value-creating time. Without that comparison you’ve made a flowchart, not a value stream map.
Nobody maps the RFI process, because it doesn’t feel like production. It is. It has a customer: the crew waiting on the answer. It has a trigger, a sequence of handoffs, and a deliverable.
So map it. Not the version in the general conditions. The version that actually happens.
The foreman spots the conflict Tuesday afternoon and mentions it to the PE Wednesday. The PE writes it up Thursday and holds it to send Friday with three others. It reaches the CM, gets logged Monday, goes to the architect. The architect routes it to the structural engineer. The engineer answers it in about two hours — after it sat in his queue for four days. Then back through the architect, back through the CM, to the PE, to the foreman.
Now write two numbers under every step: how long someone was working on it, and how long it sat. Add up the first column. Add up the whole timeline. Put that ratio in front of your team and you’ll spend the rest of the meeting on the right subject.
What the map turns up is usually boring and fixable. Navigant’s recommendations to contractors read like a list of things a map would have caught: submit each RFI as soon as the issue appears and at least ten days before you need the answer, limit each one to a single subject, and — their words — “avoid ‘batching’ RFIs for submittal to the owner.” Batching is invisible until you draw it. Then it’s four days of dead time that nobody worked and nobody chose.
The map also finds volume that shouldn’t exist at all. Navigant cites research finding that 13.2% of RFIs are not justifiable, meaning the answer was already in the contract documents. On a job running the study’s average of 796 RFIs, that’s roughly 105 questions, 840 hours, and $113,400 spent answering things nobody needed to ask.
Something to consider Most of this mapping is arithmetic on data you already have. Export your RFI log — submitted date, response date, ball-in-court, subject line — and hand it to an AI tool. Ask it to compute elapsed days at each stage, give you the median and the worst tail, and group the subject lines to surface questions that got asked more than once. Two things usually fall out: the queue isn’t where you assumed it was, and a slice of your log is the same question wearing different numbers. What it can’t see is the part that never got logged. The four days between the foreman noticing the conflict and the PE writing it up don’t exist in your data. And it can’t tell you whether the answers were any good. It’s a stopwatch, not a judgment.
So here’s the ask for this week. Pull the last ten RFIs your job closed. For each one write down the date submitted, the date answered, and your honest guess at hours of real work. Then compare the two totals.
You can’t shorten the two hours of engineering judgment. You can absolutely shorten the ten days.
Steel Market Snapshot
Early September 2026 — the list prices stopped moving. The surcharges didn’t.
WIDE-FLANGE BEAMS $1,700/ton ▶ Flat 5 weeks · mill list Aug 3, RMS incl. | MC CHANNEL $1,975/ton ▶ Flat · $98.75/cwt, MC12/13/18 |
PLATE $1,395/ton ▶ Flat · SMU average, Sept 7 | NYS FUEL SURCHARGE 47% ▲ from 44% · effective Sept 1 |
Wide-flange beams are $1,700/net ton. That’s $85.00/cwt on Nucor-Yamato’s price list dated Aug. 3, RMS included, covering most common sections — W8x8, W10x10, W12x4–x10, W14x5–x10, W16, W21x6.5/x8.25, W24x7. Steel Dynamics’ Columbia City list carries the same $85.00/cwt. Heavier sections run higher: W14x16 145–283 and W18x11 234–258 at $100.50/cwt, W27x14 217–235 at $105.25. C15 channel is $86.00/cwt. MC12, MC13 and MC18 are $98.75. L8 angles are $96.25. S-shapes are $109.75 — about $2,195/ton. A588 adds $6.50 to $7.00/cwt.
Those are the same numbers as a month ago. After four merchant bar increases in July and August, $50–80/ton on beams, channel and angle effective Aug. 3, and two HSS hikes totaling $140/ton, structural has been quiet for five weeks. Gerdau’s most recent beam and merchant announcements are from August. Nucor Tubular’s is Aug. 7.
The movement was in the adders. Nucor-Yamato’s raw materials surcharge came down $10/ton on Aug. 18, to $298. Its truck fuel surcharge went from 44% to 47% on Sept. 1. Steel Dynamics held its September truck surcharge at 44%. Same base price at both mills, different freight — worth checking on a long haul.
Plate is flat at $1,395/ton on SMU’s average. Hot-rolled coil averages $1,205, cold-rolled $1,430, galvanized $1,440.
What to watch: The USW and both U.S. Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs agreed to 30-day contract extensions on Aug. 31 rather than let the Sept. 1 expiration become a work stoppage. Crews stayed on the job, and the new deadline lands around Oct. 1. Rocky Mountain Steel Mills settled a five-year deal on Sept. 4. U.S. Steel restarted the No. 14 blast furnace at Gary Works on Sept. 3 after a $350 million reline. AISI put mill utilization at 78.7% for the week ending Aug. 29, with year-to-date output up 5.5% over last year. Contract season is opening in what SMU calls one of the tightest markets since 2021 — smaller discounts, tighter min-max ranges, less freight equalization. On the demand side, the Dodge Momentum Index reached 291.7 in July, up 11.7% year over year, but pull the data centers out and commercial planning is down 16.2%. For precon: the beam list has held five weeks, the longest pause since spring. Price off the current list plus the current surcharge, and keep bid validity windows short until the labor talks close. For live data, visit our Market Informer page.
Sources & Further Reading
1. Womack, James P., and Daniel T. Jones. Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation. Simon & Schuster, 1996. ISBN 0684810352. (The five principles: value, value stream, flow, pull, perfection.)
2. Lean Enterprise Institute. “Lean Thinking and Practice.” lean.org
3. Rother, Mike, and John Shook. Learning to See: Value Stream Mapping to Create Value and Eliminate Muda. Lean Enterprise Institute, 1998. (The mapping method; lead time vs. value-creating time.)
4. Lean Enterprise Institute. “Value Stream Mapping.” lean.org
5. Lean Construction Institute. “Value Stream Mapping [Definition, Process & Examples].” leanconstruction.org
6. Navigant Construction Forum. Impact & Control of RFIs on Construction Projects: A Research Perspective. Navigant Consulting, April 2013. cmaanet.org (1,362 projects, ~1.1 million RFIs, 2001–2012, Aconex data; median reply 9.7 days and average first reply 6.4 days; estimated 8 hours per RFI split 4 administrative / 4 technical at $1,080; 796 RFIs per average project; 13.2% not justifiable, or 105 RFIs, 840 hours and $113,400 per project; the batching, single-subject and ten-day recommendations.)
7. Nucor-Yamato Steel Company. ASTM A992/A572-50 Price List, August 3, 2026 (replaces June 8, 2026). nucoryamato.com (All beam, channel, angle and S-shape transaction prices; pricing includes the RMS surcharge. Confirmed current as of Sept. 7, 2026.)
8. Nucor-Yamato Steel Company. Raw Material Surcharge and Fuel Surcharge. nucoryamato.com (RMS $14.90/cwt, or $298/ton, effective Aug. 18, 2026, down from $308; truck fuel surcharge 44% for August, 47% for September.)
9. Steel Dynamics, Structural & Rail Division. Beam Price List, August 3, 2026, revised 8/26 for September fuel surcharge. steeldynamics.com (Same $85.00/cwt on common wide-flange sections; September truck FSC 44%.)
10. Gerdau Long Steel North America. Pricing Announcements. gerdau.com (Most recent beam and merchant announcements dated August 2026; none in September as of Sept. 7.)
11. Nucor Tubular Products. Price Announcements, July 21, 2026 (+$60/ton) and August 7, 2026 (+$80/ton) on HSS, mechanical and piling. nucortubular.com (No September announcement as of Sept. 7.)
12. Steel Market Update. Flat-Rolled Steel Prices. steelmarketupdate.com (HR $1,205 avg, CR $1,430, GI $1,440, plate $1,395, as posted Sept. 7, 2026.)
13. Steel Market Update. “Final Thoughts: Contract talks edition.” September 4, 2026. steelmarketupdate.com (Lower discounts, tighter min-max ranges, less freight equalization; tightest market since at least 2021.)
14. United Steelworkers. “Bargaining Will Continue Past Expiration with U.S. Steel and Cleveland Cliffs.” August 31, 2026. usw.org (30-day extensions; workers remain on the job.)
15. Steel Market Update. “Rocky Mountain Steel Mills, USW agree to new 5-year agreement.” September 4, 2026. steelmarketupdate.com
16. Steel Market Update. “U.S. Steel restarts Gary Works No. 14 furnace after $350M reline, upgrades.” September 3, 2026. steelmarketupdate.com
17. American Iron and Steel Institute. Weekly Raw Steel Production, week ending August 29, 2026. steel.org (1,818,000 net tons at 78.7% capability utilization; YTD 62,829,000 net tons at 79.0%, up 5.5% from 59,540,000 tons and 77.0% a year ago.)
18. Dodge Construction Network. “Dodge Momentum Index Improves 7% in July.” August 6, 2026. construction.com (DMI 291.7, +6.9% month over month, +11.7% year over year; excluding data centers, the commercial segment would be down 16.2% from a year ago.)
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