What is "ball-in-court" RFI tracking?
"Ball-in-court" in RFI tracking means knowing whose turn it is to act on an open request — the contractor waiting for an architect's answer, or the engineer waiting for a contractor's clarification. Tracking ball-in-court status tells you where bottlenecks are building before they cause delay.
In construction project management, "ball in court" (BIC) describes the current responsible party for an open action item — most commonly an RFI (Request for Information) or a submittal. When the ball is in the architect's court, the contractor is waiting. When it is in the contractor's court, the design team is waiting. The term comes from the idea that only one party can act at a time.
Ball-in-court tracking matters because:
- Delay liability — if the ball is in the employer's team's court for longer than the contract allows for a response, the contractor may have grounds for an extension of time and delay costs.
- Bottleneck visibility — a high number of open RFIs sitting with one party ("the structural engineer has 23 RFIs outstanding") signals a coordination or resource problem before it becomes a claim.
- Programme linkage — RFIs on critical-path activities carry a higher urgency than those on float activities; BIC tracking combined with the schedule shows which overdue items are actually affecting the programme.
Procore and Aconex both track BIC status as a field on each RFI. Bildstak reads that field live from both systems and federates the registers, so you can ask:
- "How many RFIs have been in the client's court for more than 7 days and are linked to critical-path activities?"
- "What is the average response time for structural RFIs this quarter?"
Every answer is cited back to the source RFI record.
Updated 2026-06-19