How a project really got built

Records with a story to tell

A completed building conceals the many choices that shaped it. You can find those choices in your project files:

• Every revision of your drawing sets and models
• RFIs and the answers that went back to the field
• Coordination logs, submittals and changes to orders
• Punch lists and daily logs up to closeout

The concern: who owns these drawings?

Drawings and models may belong to the building owner, or your contract may limit how they are used. Your contracts and your own counsel decide whether a project can go in; legal advice is not something we give. Owner-controlled material is reviewed project by project in scoping, and anything restricted can simply stay out. Any project under security limits, like a government site, can be excluded in full.

Your bids stay private

Estimating files show how you price work, and you may want to keep them close. Exclude them. Whatever you include is de-identified, and owners, subcontractors, suppliers, staff and project addresses all become placeholders.

What a buyer actually sees

Say a beam and a duct are drawn into one space. Someone catches the clash, the field submits an RFI, a revised layout gets priced as a change order, and the daily log notes how it was fixed. A buyer follows that chain from first question to closeout, every company and person swapped for a placeholder. A model learns from that reasoning, not from your client list.

Quick answers

Do we have to include every project?

No. A small set of well documented jobs can get things started.

Who should join the call?

Normally an owner or principal, along with whoever manages your project platform and file servers.

Does this hold up our projects?

No. Your originals stay where they are, and your teams keep working in them.

Who tends to qualify

Architects, contractors and design build firms of 20 or more full-time staff with 3 or more years of project history kept in Microsoft 365, shared drives or a project platform. Smaller firms with a long archive may qualify too.

How we build the copy

First comes an NDA. The de-identified copy comes from License Your Data, passwords are never requested, and originals never leave your systems. Leave out whatever project, folder or client you want, and approve a sample before anything is shared. You pay nothing.