Setting up a contact list and responsibility matrix that ends confusion
The millwork shop calls the site: the revised boardroom cabinet drawings need approval before cutting starts Monday. The superintendent thinks the interior designer approves them, the project manager thinks the architect does, and the owner's representative believes they were approved last week. Three days pass before anyone discovers that nobody has approved them.
Confusion about who decides is rarely carelessness. On a job with an owner, consultants, a general contractor (GC) and a dozen trades, each person brings a picture of who does what from their last project, and the pictures do not match. A contact list tells you how to reach someone; a responsibility matrix tells you whom to reach.
The RACI matrix is one simple format. For each task or decision it marks who is Responsible for doing the work, who is Accountable for it — one person only — who must be Consulted before or during the work, and who is Informed afterwards.
Build the matrix and the list
- List decisions, not routine tasks: approve shop drawings, accept a substitution, sign a T&M ticket, issue a site instruction, book an inspection, approve overtime.
- Put the roles across the top: owner's representative, consultants, project manager, superintendent, foremen and key trades.
- Mark exactly one A in every row. Where the contract names who decides, follow the contract; where two people claim a row, settle it now, not during the first dispute.
- Add R, C and I sparingly. A row with five Cs will be slow; keep only the people whose input changes the answer.
- Build the contact list from the same roles: name, company, role, mobile, email, a backup for absences, and any approval limit the person holds.
- Review both at the start-up meeting, post them where people look, and date each new version when people change.
Common mistakes
- Mapping the tasks nobody disputes and leaving out the contested decisions.
- Marking a company, not a named person, as Accountable.
- Letting the matrix contradict the contract.
- Building it once and never updating it when people change.
Action list
Do this week
- List the 15 to 25 decisions that stall your job
- Mark exactly one Accountable person per row
- Check each row against the contract
- Add a backup for every key contact
- Note approval limits beside names
- Post both lists, dated
Check your understanding
Why does each row need exactly one Accountable person?
