Communication & documents
What this covers
Section titled “What this covers”Work stops when a question goes unanswered. Someone on site hits an ambiguity, a client asks whether a fixture can move, a decision made in a meeting needs to be confirmed before material is ordered.
This area is how those exchanges become tracked records with a named owner and a date, instead of a text message someone remembers differently.
Issues
Section titled “Issues”An Issue is a tracked question or problem on a project. It is raised, routed to whoever can answer it, answered, and kept on the project’s permanent log.
Issues are typed by what they concern — design, construction, quality, project controls, or client request — so the log stays readable as it grows and the right person picks up the right question.
There is no separate RFI module on this instance, and that is a widening rather than a rename. In commercial general contracting a request for information, or RFI, was a formal question in one direction — from the contractor to the architect or owner. An Issue covers that and also the requests that come the other way, from the client to the team. One channel, both directions, one log.
Punch-list work is one of these types. Closeout defects and unfinished items are logged as quality Issues and tracked until closed; there is no separate punch list record.
Issues raised in the Field App appear in the Admin Portal’s Construction section.
Your daily digest
Section titled “Your daily digest”KI does not send an email per event. It sends one digest, daily or weekly depending on what you have chosen, and it leads with the Issues that moved.
New means the previous day: issues raised then, and existing issues you were made responsible for, copied on, or tagged in during it. They are listed by project with the issue, its due date and its priority, urgent first and then by due date, split by which of the three applies to you.
Under that is where you stand overall: how many open issues you are responsible for, how many you are copied on, how many of each are urgent, and how many you closed. These are given as counts rather than lists, so a long backlog does not bury the part that changed.
Four records, not four views of one
Section titled “Four records, not four views of one”Issues, Project Updates, Communications and Documents are four separate records. Each is created, listed and read in its own place, and none of them is a facet of another.
| Record | What it is |
|---|---|
| Issue | A tracked question or problem, with an owner and a status |
| Project Update | A dated post from site, with photos and written notes |
| Communications | The log of every message the system has sent the client, with delivery and open status |
| Document | A file attached to the record it belongs to |
This matters when writing code as much as when using the software: how the data model underneath represents them is not documented, so check before assuming they share a table.
Documents
Section titled “Documents”Documents attach to the record they belong to rather than to a separate document system. A drawing set attaches to the project, a signed contract to the contract, a photo to the issue it illustrates. There is no parallel filing structure to keep in sync, and nothing to go searching for in a second place.
Every document carries a flag for whether the client can see it. That flag is set one document at a time, not by a blanket rule — so posting a document and sharing it with the client are two separate decisions. In the Final Design section in particular, client visibility is set document by document.
The Communications tab
Section titled “The Communications tab”At the top of every project is a Communications tab showing every message the system has sent the client, including whether each one was delivered successfully and whether it was opened.
It is the answer to “did they get it?”, and it is a separate record from the Issues log and from project updates.
What the client sees
Section titled “What the client sees”Project updates as they are posted, the schedule, their contracts and invoices, and the documents that were marked client-visible — a deliberate set rather than everything the team has accumulated.
The Issues tab is currently hidden in the Client Portal. It is a documented main section and the client’s route for logging problems, but it is held back until it has been tested internally, which is why the navigation shows six tabs today. It will be exposed once testing is complete.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Part 4 §13.3 — Construction — Issues in the guide
- Contracts and change orders — how a priced change gets agreed
- Field operations — the daily site record questions often come from
- Glossary — Issue, RFI, Project Update, Communications tab