Numbered before it is issued
A draft is ASI-4 from the moment it exists, not when it goes out. That matters because the consultant needs the number to cloud the revised drawings, and the drawing revision block cites the bulletin it belongs to.
ASI, Proposal Request, Construction Change Directive, Change Order — four instruments with four different authorities, and only some of them can move money. Answer two questions and BuildCycle picks the right one, numbers it, and renders the bulletin that goes out. Nobody opens Word.
Deciding the change takes a conversation. Issuing it takes an afternoon — the template opened and saved under a new name, the number looked up, the sheets attached, the distribution list rebuilt, the log updated afterwards if anyone remembers. None of that is judgment. It is formatting, and it is billed against the same fixed fee as the thinking.
A draft is ASI-4 from the moment it exists, not when it goes out. That matters because the consultant needs the number to cloud the revised drawings, and the drawing revision block cites the bulletin it belongs to.
Does it change cost or time? Price it first, or direct it now? That is the whole wizard. You cannot send cost out on an ASI, because an ASI has no authority to carry it — under A201 §7.4 the contractor is instructed to stop and notify you rather than proceed.
A change order that settles a directive points back at it. An RFI that spawned a proposal request shows it. At closeout the question is never what changed — it is why, and what it came out of, and that is already written down.
Watch ninety days of a job run in four seconds. Most RFIs never become money — plenty are a GC who missed something already drawn. And a change does not have to cost anything to hurt: some of them are paid for in days.
Change value by the reason it was created under.
Questions raised, against the ones that ended in a change order.
The number an Owner remembers, while it can still move.
Not every change costs money. Some of them cost the calendar.
RFIs tell you where to improve. Change orders tell the Owner. An RFI log is a private diagnostic — which discipline gets asked the most, where coordination slipped, what the set did not answer. Plenty of RFIs are simply a GC who missed something already drawn, and those cost nothing but time.
A change order is that same information with dollars attached, and it is not private. Percent change at closeout is the number an Owner remembers, and it is read as a verdict on how well the contract documents were prepared — yours, your consultants’, and what the GC missed at bid. Watching it while it can still move is the difference between managing that number and explaining it.
Answering an RFI with “see forthcoming ASI” is chasing paper with paper. It defers an answer the contract requires promptly, and it moves cost through a document with no authority to carry it. BuildCycle has no button for it — the RFI response is itself the instruction, and the revised sheet points straight back at the answer that changed it.
Traceability is native here, so the cleaner contractual position is also the better-documented one. You are not choosing between doing it right and doing it fast.
You’ll land in a live CA project with real RFIs and real numbers already in it. Poke around; we’ll follow up once you’ve had a look, not spam you.