What a main contractor typically holds
By handover, a general contractor's records usually cover the whole life of the job:
- Pre-construction: tender drawings and specifications, programmes, and the information you priced from.
- Construction: RFIs and technical queries, submittals, change orders and variations, site diaries, progress photos, drone surveys, delivery records and meeting minutes.
- Quality and safety: inspection and test plans, inspection records, non-conformance reports and observations.
- Handover: snag lists, as-built drawings, O&M manuals and the health and safety file required under CDM 2015.
The connections between these records are what makes a contractor's archive useful. A drawing revision, the RFI that prompted it, the change order that followed and the photos of the work as built tell a story that no single consultant's files can.
Sorting your records by who created them
Expect to be asked about rights in scoping, and the simplest way to answer is to split your archive in three:
| Created by | Examples | Rights position (typical) |
|---|---|---|
| Your own staff | Site diaries, daily logs, progress photos, RFIs you raised, internal inspections, programmes, minutes you wrote | Usually the clearest to license, subject to client confidentiality |
| Consultants | Architectural and engineering drawings, specifications, design responses to RFIs | Copyright usually stays with the designer, so check appointments and any licence you were granted |
| Subcontractors and suppliers | Shop drawings, submittals, RAMS, test certificates, O&M content | Usually the subcontractor's or manufacturer's, so check the subcontract |
This is a general picture, not legal advice: contract terms vary, and some clients take assignment of copyright. But it gives you a sensible order to work in.
Contract points worth checking
- Client confidentiality. Main contracts and client amendments often restrict sharing project information. Check whether anonymised records would fall outside those restrictions.
- Frameworks and public sector clients. These may have their own information-handling or security terms.
- Higher-risk buildings. Records for buildings within the Building Safety Act 2022 regime form part of the "golden thread" of building information, and some of it may be security-sensitive. Treat these projects with extra care.
- Joint ventures. Records may belong to the JV rather than to your company alone.
Where to start
- List completed projects from the last several years with their client, sector, value band and the system the records live in.
- Flag the ones to exclude, such as sensitive clients, secure sites or strict confidentiality terms.
- Note what imagery exists for each: photos, video, drone surveys.
- Check who controls the platform account. If a client hosted the project in their own Procore or Autodesk account, your access may be limited or may have ended at handover.
A one-page list like this is usually enough for a first scoping conversation.
Personal data in contractor records
Contractor archives are personal-data heavy: operative names in daily logs, signatures on permits and sign-in sheets, faces in progress photos, and residents' details on occupied refurbishment and housing projects. This has to be removed or protected before data is shared. Under Mercor's process, Mercor removes or protects personal information as part of preparing the export.
Can we license records from projects where we were one of several contractors?
Usually only the records your firm created or has rights to. Records belonging to the client, the JV or other contractors need their permission.
Do we need records from every project?
No. A well-documented subset is more useful than a patchy whole, so start with the projects that closed out properly.