What are purpose-of-issue codes (IFC / IFA / IFI)?
They state what a document may be used for — not what a reviewer thought of it. Issued for construction means you may build from it. Issued for approval means it is awaiting a verdict. Issued for information means look, do not build. Building from a “for information” issue is a classic and expensive site failure, and the code on the transmittal is what makes the error attributable.
A permission, not an opinion
The code answers one question: what am I allowed to do with this document? It is a permission. It is not a quality judgment, and it is not a reviewer’s verdict — those are a separate system.
A consultant’s review code (approved, approved with comments, revise and resubmit) says what a reviewer thought. A purpose-of-issue code says what the document may be used for. A drawing can carry a review comment and still be suitable for construction once that comment is incorporated. Conflating the two systems is how “approved” gets read as “build it”.
The same idea, two conventions
You will meet this discipline under more than one naming scheme. IFC, IFA and IFI are the plain-language abbreviations most sites use. The ISO 19650 convention encodes the same logic in suitability codes: S0 work-in-progress, S1–S5 shared for coordination, information or review, and the A-series published and accepted for a stage.
Different letters, one purpose: the document carries, on its face, the limit of what you may do with it. The convention matters less than whether anybody enforces it.
Terms
References
- module: /modules/transmittals/ and /modules/document-register/ — purpose-of-issue and ISO 19650 suitability codes
Zepth is the construction project delivery platform — it runs construction, procurement and asset management on one record, and does the work: reading the drawings, reviewing the submittals, matching the invoices and flagging the risks, with a human sign-off on anything consequential.
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