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Use cases RACI and team contracts

Use case - RACI and team contracts

Stop chasing work nobody owns: agree the RACI and get each team to sign for its part

A RACI matrix, or responsibility matrix, shows who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed for each deliverable. Under ISO 19650 it sets out which task team delivers what, and when. In Plannerly the RACI sits on the work itself, each team signs for its own part, and deliveries are tracked against it.

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Plannerly Scope: Quick Assign giving each of the architect's deliverables in the information production schedule its responsible team and status, from the drawing set and room data sheets to the 3D model

The problem

Your RACI matrix is complete. So why are you still chasing everyone?

Sound familiar?

Signed off in the BEP appendix, then ignored

The RACI lives in a BEP appendix, apart from the work. Everyone is Consulted on everything, nobody remembers agreeing to their row, and when a deliverable goes missing there's no record of who owned it. The three steps below fix that.

How it works

Stop arguing about who owns what: make each deliverable accountable, get it signed, keep the evidence

  1. Make it accountable

    Everyone is Consulted and nobody is Accountable. Put the RACI on the work itself - one accountable team and a responsible person on every task and document section - and role charts show the gaps and doubles.

    No gaps, no doubles

  2. Get it agreed and signed

    Silence gets taken as agreement. Bring each team into the documents with a review deadline, then one click makes each team a contract with only its own work, RACI and timeline, sent for e-signature.

    Each team signed for its own part

  3. Keep the evidence

    When a deliverable goes missing, nobody can say who owned it. Compare requested and delivered files team by team, each delivery linked to the work it fulfils, and click any chart to see what's outstanding.

    Proof of what each team delivered

Free webinar replay - Episode 2

Watch the RACI taken out of the BEP appendix and put on the work itself

Building on Episode 1's MIDP, on a real project: roles on every task, reviews with deadlines, a contract each team signs and the evidence of what it delivered. It runs about 45 minutes, and the RACI kit below has what it uses.

  • Accountable: roles on tasks and document sections
  • Agreed: reviews, one-click contracts and e-signatures
  • Evidenced: requested versus delivered files
  • Preview: asking the project assistant about gaps

9 chapters

Skip to the part you need

  1. Surviving the RACI00:00
  2. Why responsibility matrices stop working02:56
  3. From the MIDP to RACI responsibilities09:11
  4. Assigning roles and finding gaps12:58
  5. Reviewing documents and agreeing requirements18:20
  6. One-Click Contracts and electronic signatures25:42
  7. Tracking commitments, delivery and dashboards31:35
  8. Project assistant preview37:27
  9. Recap and the RACI Survival Kit40:51

Free download

Don't start from a blank RACI table: get the starter project and the responsibility matrix PDFs, free

Free download

RACI Survival Kit: a starter project and the ISO 19650 responsibility matrix PDFs

Skip the blank RACI table. Start from the approach Episode 2 built, with two PDFs from our free ISO 19650 training on who is responsible for what.

  • 1 starter project
  • 2 PDFs
  • Free

RACI starter project

Episode 2's approach as a project of your own: RACI roles on the Scope tasks, document sections ready to review and a contract per team, ready for your own task teams.

Open in Plannerly Free account, no card needed.
PDF ISO 19650 Detailed Responsibility Matrix.pdfWho produces each information container, when and to what level - the matrix behind every team's contract PDF ISO 19650 Roles and Responsibilities.pdfThe appointing party, lead appointed party and task teams, and what ISO 19650 makes each responsible for

Free live webinar · Episode 3

Surviving ISO 19650 Information Requirements with AI

Build it. Connect it. Just ask Javis. Most owners aren't sure what to ask for, and requirements copied from the last job create work nobody needs. Three ways into your project's information requirements - build on the Plannerly API, connect your own AI with Plannerly MCP, or just ask Javis - on one structure your supply chain can check against.

Oct22Thu

Free webinar on Zoom · 45 minutes · How to survive as a BIM Manager

Thursday 22 October 2026

10:00New York 15:00London 18:00Dubai

You'll leave with

  • Requirements your supply chain can check against
  • The ten building blocks every requirement hangs on
  • Questions to ask Javis, Claude and ChatGPT about your project
  • The example project and the MCP setup guide

Fill this in to carry on.

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Free. One sign-up covers every episode this season, and the replay comes to you if you can't make it. We pass your name and email to Zoom to register you, and Zoom sends your link.

You're in.

Your Zoom link is on its way to your inbox. See you on Thursday 22 October 2026.

Case studies

Teams that agreed who delivers what

Teams that moved responsibilities out of spreadsheets and into agreements: a design firm that can't imagine writing a BIM contract in Word again, 50 companies coordinated on one development, and cross-company conversations months before they would have caused problems.

  • Hungary

    8x growth

    6 → 50+ engineers · −10% costs

    From Excel chaos to ISO 19650 at scale

    BuildEXT · General design firm

    Grew from 6 employees to 50+ engineers across 4 departments. Now handles projects 30x larger with 10% lower construction and FM costs.

    I cannot imagine using Excel or Word to start writing a BIM contract anymore.
    András Ábele-Nagy, Head of BIM · BuildEXT
    • SME
    • ISO 19650
    • Scale-up
  • Portugal

    $4.5M / €4M

    Saved · 310,000 sqm project

    How one team saved over $4.5 million

    LIMSEN Consultants · BIM management

    Coordinated 50 companies and 45 BIM models on one of Portugal's largest mixed-use developments. BEP planning time dropped from 100+ hours to under 30.

    Using Plannerly was a cornerstone for us. There is no going back.
    Filipe Lima, Managing Partner · LIMSEN
    • 50 companies
    • ISO 19650
    • BEP
  • United States

    53% fewer clashes

    $130M residential project

    53% fewer clashes on a $130M project

    Major Real Estate Developer · 800+ O&M team

    A $130M apartment project achieved 16.5% time savings and 53% fewer clashes, with 98% of constructability issues solved vs 31% on the control project.

    The Plannerly process prompted critical cross-company conversations months before they would have caused problems.
    • Lean BIM
    • $130M
    • Residential

See all case studiesOwners, design teams, contractors, consultants and educators - filter them by your kind of organisation.

Setup guides

Set up your RACI in Plannerly, step by step

Short Help Center guides that walk you through each step in Plannerly. Open one beside the app and follow along.

Start here

Accountable

Agreed

Evidenced

Learn it properly

Level 3 - ISO 19650 Expert

Creating the Detailed Responsibility Matrix

Open the lesson

Free lessons

Learn the RACI properly, one short lesson at a time

Level 3 lesson - roles

ISO 19650 Roles and Responsibilities Explained

Who the appointing party, the lead appointed party and the task teams are, and what each one is accountable for.

 Boot Camp lesson - contracts

The Secret to BIM Accountability: Structured Collaborative Contracts

How responsibility matrices and work packages turn into contracts each team actually reads and signs.

 Level 2 lesson - tracking

Tracking Project Progress and Delivery

How to see what each team has delivered against what it agreed, without building a report by hand.

 Level 3 - free certificate

ISO 19650 Expert

The whole ISO 19650 process, responsibility matrices included, with a free certificate. 16,600+ people have taken our free training, rated 4.9 out of 5 from thousands of ratings.

4.92 (1,919 ratings) 2h 30m

Read more

RACI matrix examples and guides

RACI matrix examples

Three examples you can copy: information management, design responsibility and model checking.

Examples

Creating a responsibility matrix

How the matrix is structured, and how to build one from scratch or from a CSV.

Guide

Run the MIDP

The delivery plan your RACI sits on: every deliverable named, dated and owned.

Use case

Assign document responsibilities

Who writes, reviews and approves each part of a document, tracked section by section.

Guide

BIM coordinator roles and responsibilities

What a BIM coordinator does, and where the role sits next to the BIM and information manager.

Guide

The BIM execution plan template

The BEP where the high-level responsibility matrix lives, already structured for ISO 19650.

Template

Learn ISO 19650 step by step

Free PDFs and videos for every step, roles and responsibility matrices included.

Free PDFs

Questions

RACI and responsibility matrix questions, answered

What is a RACI matrix in BIM?
A RACI matrix is a responsibility matrix that gives each piece of work four kinds of role: Responsible (does the work), Accountable (owns the outcome and signs it off), Consulted (gives input before it's done) and Informed (is told when it's done). On a BIM project the rows are the deliverables or information containers and the columns are the companies and people, so everyone can see who models, reviews and approves what. It only works if each row has exactly one Accountable party. See three worked RACI matrix examples.
What is a responsibility matrix under ISO 19650?
ISO 19650-2 uses two. The high-level responsibility matrix goes into the pre-appointment BEP and says which task team is responsible for each part of the information model. After appointment the lead appointed party turns it into the detailed responsibility matrix: who produces each information container, to what level of information need and by which milestone. That detailed matrix is where every task team's TIDP and the MIDP start. The standard also has an information management assignment matrix (Annex A) that uses the same RACI roles for the information management tasks themselves. The Level 3 lesson on the detailed responsibility matrix walks through it.
What's the difference between Accountable and Responsible?
Here's how we see it: accountability stops at the company. Accountable is the organisation that signs up to the work - where the buck stops - so there should be exactly one per deliverable. Responsible is the team member actually doing it, so responsibility is about people, not companies. Consulted and Informed are the people who review the work and the people who need to know. Our lesson on ISO 19650 roles and responsibilities puts names to each role.
What's the difference between a RACI matrix and a design responsibility matrix?
A design responsibility matrix (DRM) is a responsibility matrix for design work: for each element or system, who designs it at each stage - the architect, an engineer, or a contractor or specialist subcontractor under a design and build contract. A RACI adds who approves it, who's consulted and who's informed. On an ISO 19650 project both feed the same detailed responsibility matrix. There's a worked example in our RACI matrix examples.
Do I still need a separate RACI spreadsheet?
No. In Plannerly the RACI roles sit on the tasks in your Scope delivery plan and on the document sections in Docs, so the matrix is the plan itself. Filter it, chart it, or export it as a table whenever someone needs one, and it can't drift out of step with the work. The Help Center shows where the responsibility matrix lives in Scope.
How do I stop everyone being marked as Consulted?
Use the role charts and filters to see who is consulted on what, and take people off the lines where they don't add anything. Then give each review a deadline in Docs: the people consulted are notified, and the section publishes automatically when the time is up, so one silent reviewer can't hold up the plan. Step 2 of the RACI Survival Kit guide shows how.
Can each team sign only its own part of the plan?
Yes. One-click contracts filter the package for each team - its own document content, RACI matrix and timeline - and send it for e-signature. When a contract is full of everyone else's work, people tend not to read it at all. Showing each team only what it's signing up to means it actually reads it, and knows exactly what it agreed. Watch it in Episode 2, from the One-Click Contracts chapter.
What happens when a signed contract needs to change?
Create a new version of the existing contract from File Manager and send it for signature again. Earlier signed versions are kept, and each version shows its own signature status, so you can always show what was agreed and when. Steps 3 and 4 of the RACI Survival Kit guide cover it.
Is there a free RACI matrix template?
Yes. The RACI Survival Kit on this page gives you a starter RACI project for a free Plannerly account, with the ISO 19650 responsibility matrix PDFs from our free training. If you'd rather start from a table, copy one of our RACI matrix examples, then put the roles on your own tasks. Start free.
Who is responsible for the responsibility matrix in ISO 19650?
The lead appointed party - usually the main contractor or lead designer - writes the high-level matrix for the tender and the detailed matrix after appointment, with each task team confirming its own lines. The appointing party, the client, doesn't write it but should see it agreed, because it's how the client knows who to hold to each deliverable. More on what the appointing party does, and the clauses themselves in ISO 19650-2.
Will Plannerly remind each team about its own deliverables?
Yes. Everyone assigned to a task is reminded 7 days before it starts, 3 days before it's due and again if it's overdue, and you can adjust the timings. So the accountable team hears about its own deadline from Plannerly, not from you. See how to schedule your scope.
Can I run the RACI on the Free plan?
Yes. Assign roles, review documents and invite every task team to view the plan and comment on it, on up to five projects. Free includes two e-signatures, so you can try a signed contract; Pro makes editors and e-signatures unlimited. The 14-day Pro trial includes everything, with no card and nothing to cancel. Compare the plans.

Pricing

Start free, then pay per project when you're ready

Free $0forever
  • Five projects included
  • The account owner edits; everyone they invite can view
  • 100 MB of project files
  • Explore Docs, Scope and Verify
  • You assign the roles, and everyone you invite can view and comment
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5 projects included free Pro
Choose your modules
$249/ month
  • Five projects included
  • Unlimited editors and viewers
  • 50 GB of project files
  • Your branding on everything you export
  • Each project beyond five: $49 a month
  • Every task team edits its own lines, at no cost to them
  • Unlimited e-signatures, so each team signs its own contract
  • Try every Pro feature free for 14 days, model checking included, no card
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Your next job

Next, write the BEP every team works to

The RACI says who's accountable for each deliverable. The BEP says how the team will deliver it - methods, standards, software and the responsibility matrix itself. Write it with the teams that own each section, and keep it the plan everyone works to.

  1. Run the MIDP (done)
  2. Agree the RACI (done)
  3. Write the BEP (next)
  4. Set the information requirements
Write the BEP next