RFI
RFI-032Answered
No contractual authority. A question is not a direction.
In the project's registers, with its own attachments and history.
because of RFI-032
Instruction
AI-014Rev 01 · Issued
Issued by the Contract Administrator.
Raised from RFI-032. It points at that record; it does not copy it.
because of AI-014
Variation
VAR-008Under assessment
Assessed by the Contract Administrator. Not yet determined by anybody.
Directed by AI-014. Claimed, and claimed is not approved.
Three records. None of them is a copy of another, and each one can say what caused it, who had the authority to issue it, and what changed because it exists.
AI is the architect’s instruction. The prefixes belong to the contract, and Mudo allocates the numbers in sequence, per contract, per record type.
A contract is not a folder of forms. It is a chain of consequences
What is claimed, what is assessed and what is determined are three different things
Contract administration
One quantity. Three values. Only one of them is the contract
Each record exists because of the one before it. This is not a schedule — nothing here is ordered by date.
- Where it lives
- Contract administration
- Because of what
- Raised from the RFI. It points at that record rather than copying it, so the question keeps its own attachments and history.
- Under what authority
- Issued by the Contract Administrator, under the permission to issue instructions.
- What followed
- Directs a change to the works. The money is not decided here — it is determined separately, as a variation.
Contract sum
ClaimedAssessedNot determinedAssessed at rather less than was claimed.
Contractual time
ClaimedAssessedNot determinedAssessed at under half the days claimed.
Contract sum ledger
OriginalStored once. Never rewritten.
No entries.
CurrentUnchanged. Nothing has been determined.
Contractual time ledger
OriginalStored once. Never rewritten.
No entries.
CurrentUnchanged. Nothing has been determined.
Nothing has been determined. Two values exist for each quantity and neither of them is the contract: what the contractor claims, and what the contract administrator assesses. Recording, assessing and determining are three separate authorities in Mudo, and only the third moves anything.
Mudo records determinations that people make; it makes none of its own, and gives no legal advice. Extents here stand for relative values only — no amount, date, project, client or person is real.
Two things this is not, and neither is a matter of discipline
Not the programme
A builder may forecast completion in February while the contractual date is in December. Both are true, they come from different places, and the distance between them is not an entitlement to anything. No import, no sync and no convenience in Mudo can turn programme movement into approved days — asserted by a test rather than left to good intentions, because the helpful feature that would break it is exactly the sort of thing added later to save a step.
Not your fee
Two amounts of money get called a variation. One changes what the builder is owed under the construction contract; the other changes what your practice is owed under its own appointment. Mudo keeps them in separate subsystems with no path between them, and a structural test fails the build if one ever appears — because an approved builder variation quietly inflating a fee forecast is the kind of error nobody finds until a report is wrong.
Four record types, and Mudo will not imply a fifth
Built
- Instructions
- Contractual notices
- Variations
- Adjustments of time
Not built
- Progress claims
- Payment certificates
- Retention
- Contract security
- A defects register
- The final account
Mudo shows no register for the second column at all. An empty certificates tab on a live contract reads as “no certificates have been issued”, which is a different and considerably worse claim than “not yet built”. A practical completion notice and a payment notice can both be issued today, because giving notice is itself the contractual act and needs no register behind it — but Mudo does not certify payment, and it does not determine practical completion.
In short
AvailableAvailable now to practices on a qualifying plan.- What it is
- The construction contract administered inside the project — instructions, contractual notices, variations and adjustments of time, each numbered, issued as a frozen revision, and linked to the record that caused it.
- Who it is for
- Architects and contract administrators running a construction contract from a numbered folder, a spreadsheet of variations and an email trail nobody can reconstruct.
- What is different
- Claimed, assessed and determined are three separate values, and recording, assessing and determining are three separate authorities. Only the third moves the contract.
- Availability
- Available on every plan. Who may record, assess and determine is set by your practice's permissions.
- How it connects
- It sits inside the Project Pod and raises instructions from the RFIs already in your registers. A determined adjustment of time moves the contractual date for practical completion — which is not the builder's forecast, and Mudo never lets one become the other.
Part of Deliver.
Verified against the Mudo application on .
What a record has that a document does not
A contract administered in a folder produces documents. Every one of them is complete, and between them they answer almost nothing.
A contractual record in Mudo carries four things a PDF in a folder cannot. A source — the RFI or site observation that caused it, pointed at rather than copied, so following it back lands on the original with its own attachments and history. An authority — who issued it, under which contractual role, and by what permission. A consequence — what it moved, and in which ledger. And a history — every revision it has been issued at, each frozen with the contract, the parties and the vocabulary as they stood at that moment.
A folder can tell you what a document says. Only the record can tell you why it exists and what followed from it.
Why three values stay three
A contractor claims a number of days. The contract administrator assesses a number. A determination approves a number. These are routinely all called "the delay", and they are routinely not equal — and the same is true of the money on a variation.
Mudo stores them as three columns, not as one field being revised. The three acts are three permissions, because they are separate contractual acts usually performed by different people at different moments. A practice grants them to whoever it chooses. It cannot collapse them by accident.
Common questions
What is contract administration software for architects?
Software for administering a construction contract between a client and a builder: issuing instructions, giving and receiving contractual notices, assessing and determining variations, and determining adjustments of time. It is distinct from project management because the records are contractual acts, with consequences for what the builder is owed and when the work must finish.
Which contractual records does Mudo support?
Four, and Mudo names them rather than implying more. Instructions, contractual notices, variations, and adjustments of time. Progress claims, payment certificates, retention, contract security, a defects register and the final account are not built, and Mudo shows no empty register for them. An empty certificates tab on a live contract would read as "no certificates have been issued", which is a different and worse claim than "not yet built".
How does contract administration connect to the rest of the project?
An instruction is raised from an RFI or a site observation that already exists in the project's registers, and points at that record rather than copying it. Every contractual record belongs to one contract, and one contract belongs to one project, so the whole chain sits inside the Project Pod alongside the drawings, the programme and the correspondence.
Does Mudo decide whether a variation should be approved?
No. Mudo records what was claimed, what the contract administrator assessed and what was determined, and keeps the three apart. Determining a variation is an authority a named person holds, granted in your practice's permissions, and the record carries who determined it and when. Mudo gives no legal advice and makes no determination of its own.
Which construction contracts does Mudo support?
Mudo ships one contract-neutral default that uses ordinary Australian contract-administration terminology and reproduces no published contract's wording. Where a record cites a clause, you type the reference yourself. Contract behaviour is data rather than code, so terminology, party roles and the mechanisms a contract provides are configurable, and every contract keeps the version it was set up under, so a document issued in 2026 still reads in the words it was issued with.
What this page is based on
Every capability described here was checked against the running application before publication. These are the parts of it you can open for yourself.
- /projects/:projectId → Contract AdminIts own Project Pod section, deliberately separate from Commercial, gated on the view_contract permission.
Stop reconstructing a contract from an email trail
Free for solo practices: one user, two projects, no card.