Architecture and construction files, under your control

Every project leaves a long written trail at a building or design firm, from the drawings to the handover:

• Drawing sets, models and their revisions
• RFIs and submittals between trades and designers
• Change orders and the logs that coordinate them
• Bids and estimates, plus subcontractor comparisons
• Daily site logs and punch lists

You can leave out entirely any project where the drawings or site specifics are restricted. Whatever you mark never reaches the copy.

How you price work shows up in your estimates. Leave out the estimating files if you would rather hold that back. Placeholders take the place of names for owners, subs, suppliers and sites in what stays, as well as addresses.

A contract may restrict some drawings and models, or the owner may hold them. Those can be excluded project by project. Whether any of them fits your contracts is for you and your counsel to decide. We do not give legal advice about it.

Ask for the estimate first. On the short call, name the platforms that hold your project history and the jobs that must stay out. Preparation waits until the list is settled with you. Your originals stay put, and you see a sample first before anything is released. No one asks for passwords.

A buyer receives a prepared copy of the project records you approved. A typical example is the thread from an RFI through the response, the change order and the revised drawing, with owner, trade and site names replaced by placeholders. Hundreds of resolved questions of this kind are what make building records useful to AI labs. Nothing touches the project files in daily use, and no one ever needs a way into your project software.