Process simplification · 5 min read
Horizon Construction: RFI answers in hours, not days
Six weeks. One critical process. A 43% faster RFI response — and a team whose decisions no longer wait on inboxes. The full story of one measured win.
Every strong result we can point to starts the same way: not with a transformation programme, but with one process that was quietly bleeding hours. For Horizon Construction, that process was RFIs — the requests for information that decide whether a site moves or waits.
The situation
RFIs lived in inboxes. A question from the site arrived by email, waited for the right person to notice it, got forwarded, got answered, got lost, got asked again. Each one was small. Together they set the pace of decisions — and the pace was days, when the work needed hours.
Nobody at Horizon was slow. The information was. It sat in the gaps between the site, the office, and the people approving things — and people spent their mornings carrying it across those gaps by hand.
The approach
We did what we always do first: one conversation, mapping how an RFI actually travelled — not how the process chart said it should. Then we connected the tools they already used so an RFI had one home: raised once, visible to the right person immediately, answered in the same record, visible to everyone who needed the answer.
The team practised on a safe copy first. Nothing about their daily tools changed. What changed was that the question and the answer finally lived in the same place.
The result, measured
Six weeks later, RFI response time was down 43%. Not estimated — measured, from their own records. As their Director of Operations put it: "In six weeks our team's RFI response time dropped 43%. Decisions now happen in hours, not days."
Notice what the number actually describes: not software adopted, but time returned. Fewer mornings spent chasing. Fewer decisions waiting on a thread. The site and the office finally moving at the same speed.
The lesson we keep reusing
Horizon didn't start with ten processes. They started with the one that hurt most, proved it with a number, and let that number make the case for everything after. That's the entire method: one critical process, made to flow, measured — then expand.
If your version of the RFI is the quote, the change order, or the invoice, the shape of the fix is the same. The first step is simply naming yours.
Why this piece sticks
Sticky copy
Six weeks. One process. Forty-three percent.
Visual idea
Two stopwatches above the same desk — before reading 'days', after reading 'hours'.
15-second film
A hard-hat worker sends a question from site; a split-screen clock spins; the answer arrives before his coffee cools.
Why it sticks
One named company, one named process, one measured number — specificity is what makes a claim believable and repeatable.
See the two or three places your business could simplify first.