A building services archive as an asset
Can an MEP firm sell its design records to AI?
Updated
Years of load calculations, ductwork and pipework layouts, electrical studies and specifications sit on most MEP firms' servers. What can be licensed comes down to three things: who owns each drawing, what the software allows, and what a buyer wants.
What a buyer's own listing asks for
Mercor's Construction Company listing, published on 17 October 2026 and read by us on 28 October 2026, asks for records from completed projects: drawings, specs, RFIs, submittals, change orders and daily logs, and says inspection reports and punch lists tied to the same projects are especially useful. It lists small crews without project documentation as not a fit.
What the MEP tools say
3 of the 9 MEP design, analysis and coordination vendors on our board say the customer owns what it puts in. Procore's terms describe your content as content that you own or have the right to provide.
Source: MEP software terms on an engineer's data, vendor by vendor
Kept back from any licence
Client names, building occupants and site contacts are stripped before anything leaves the firm, and drawings of controlled or secure sites are not offered at all. What is licensable is the engineering itself: the calculations, the layouts and the reasoning in the specifications.