Who owns your project records
Before a firm licenses any records, it needs to know whether it has the right to. Ownership of project records depends on the contract, the type of record and the system that holds it. There is no single answer, but there are patterns.
This is general information, not legal advice. Have your own counsel review the contracts that govern your records.
The AIA B101 position
Under the AIA B101 standard owner-architect agreement, the architect is generally the owner and author of its instruments of service and retains copyright in them. The owner receives a license to use the instruments of service for the project.
That arrangement is why many architects can say they own the work product of a project even though the owner paid for it. The exact language depends on the edition of the agreement and on any changes the parties negotiated. Check the version you signed.
Copyright and confidentiality are separate
Owning copyright in a document does not remove confidentiality duties. Many agreements require a firm to keep client information confidential, and those duties can restrict how the information is used even when the firm wrote the document.
A submittal log may be firm work product that names a client, a site and a contractor. The log may be yours. The client details inside it may carry restrictions. Preparation has to account for both.
Information the owner provided, such as program documents, site data and financial details, belongs to the owner. A firm should treat it as outside any license unless the owner agrees in writing.
Other contract families
Engineering agreements follow their own forms. EJCDC documents and many firm-specific engineering agreements address ownership of documents and data differently from the B101. Some give the engineer ownership of its documents. Others restrict reuse or require owner consent.
Design-build and construction agreements, including ConsensusDocs, have their own terms on work product, records and confidentiality. A contractor holding daily reports, RFI logs and change-order files should read what the prime agreement says about them.
Software platforms and federal work
Records often live in a platform, and the platform has terms of service. Those terms usually say who owns the content a customer uploads, and they may limit exports or bulk use. Read the export provisions of your Procore, Autodesk Construction Cloud, Newforma or Deltek agreement.
Federal work can add Controlled Unclassified Information rules and security requirements. Records from those projects are excluded from Archeon licenses.
Where this leaves a firm
Firm-owned process records are usually the cleanest to license. These include QA/QC standards, office procedures, estimating methods and internal accounting workflows. They describe how the firm works, and the firm typically owns them without restriction.
Project threads sit in the middle. They are often licensable after personal data and client identifiers are removed, but each depends on the governing contract. Start by having counsel review your top contracts by volume, and agree which record types are in scope before any preparation begins.
Archeon represents your firm in licensing its records. It does not give legal advice, and it does not replace your attorney. Every license is reviewed by your counsel before you sign.