Data licensing advisors

Sell construction company data to AI companies

Construction is one of the industries AI companies want most right now. The value sits in your office – estimating, bids, project management, RFIs, submittals, change orders and accounts – not in the field. Here is what carries the value, how to count your staff and how a deal works.

By Linus Näslund, Co-Founder

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  • Nothing shared without your approval
  • Reply within 48 h
Contents06
  1. 01Why AI companies want construction data right now
  2. 02What carries the value
  3. 03Who fits and how to count your staff
  4. 04What is handled separately
  5. 05What construction companies typically receive right now
  6. 06How a deal works

Why AI companies want construction data right now

Construction runs on coordination. An estimator turns a set of drawings into a bid, a project manager chases RFIs and submittals, a superintendent flags a problem, and someone negotiates the change order that follows. AI companies are building agents for exactly that work – reading plans, drafting RFIs, checking submittals against specs, tracking cost against budget – and they need to learn from how real teams handle it.

Little of this is public. Bid results and permits show the outcome; the thinking happens in email threads with subcontractors, in Procore logs, in spreadsheets of takeoffs and in the internal chat where the office and the site sort out what changed. That is why construction ranks among the industries in highest demand today, together with law firms and banks and lenders.

Selling construction data to AI companies in practice means licensing it: the buyer gets a limited right to train on an agreed, cleaned selection, and you keep your records.

What carries the value

The most valuable construction archives show a project from first estimate to closeout, across the systems the office team uses every day:

SystemWhat it holdsWhy it matters
EmailEstimators', PMs' and accounts' mailboxes with subs, suppliers, owners and design teamsThe real negotiation behind bids, scope gaps and change orders
File storage (SharePoint, Google Drive, Dropbox, Egnyte)Estimates, takeoffs, bid packages, schedules, meeting minutes, drafts with version historyHow a number or a schedule was built and revised
Internal chat (Teams or Slack)Office-to-site coordination, project channels, quick decisionsWhat actually happened between the formal documents
CRM or bid management (Salesforce, HubSpot, BuildingConnected)Leads, bid invitations, win/loss and owner relationshipsLinks pursuit and estimating to outcomes
Accounting (QuickBooks, Sage 100 Contractor, Sage Intacct, Viewpoint Vista, Foundation)Job costing, pay apps, retainage and transactions through the yearsTies every decision to cost
Project management (Procore, Autodesk Construction Cloud, Buildertrend)RFIs, submittals, change orders, daily logs, punch listsThe structured workflow AI agents are trained to follow

A project is most useful when its pieces come linked: the RFI, the answer, the change order it caused and the cost that hit the job. Years of history across many projects – three years at least, five or more is better – push the value further. Different project types help too: commercial, multifamily, healthcare, civil and specialty trades each add something new.

If your firm also does heavy design work in CAD, that is valued in its own right – see CAD and engineering data and architecture firm data.

Who fits and how to count your staff

  • General contractors and construction managers with commercial or public work.
  • Home builders and multifamily developers with a central office.
  • Specialty and trade contractors – mechanical, electrical, concrete, steel – with their own estimating and project management teams.
  • Design-build firms, where estimating and design sit in the same company.

Construction deals typically start from about 50 office staff. Count the people at desks: estimators, project managers, project engineers, schedulers, purchasing, accounts, HR and admin. Field crews and craft labor don't count, because their work rarely lives in the systems above. A builder with 200 people in the field may still have about 50 in the office – that is the number that matters. Bigger office teams get bigger offers, and 100 or more office staff get the largest.

Internal communication should mainly be in English, and the company needs to own its records. Where a joint venture partner or an owner controls a project's files, that project is checked separately.

What is handled separately

Sensitive content is filtered inside each system, not by dropping systems:

  • Design documents owned by others – architects', engineers' and owners' drawings and specs – are checked against the contract and usually left out.
  • Personal data about employees, homeowners and subcontractor staff is removed or replaced before delivery.
  • Payroll, certified payroll details and HR records are filtered out.
  • Bank account details for subs and suppliers are removed.
  • Projects under confidentiality terms, for example some public, defense or private owner work, are reviewed project by project.

This describes how it generally works today, not legal advice. What can be included depends on your contracts and your records, and every deal is assessed case by case. Leaving out a whole system lowers the offer, because the links between the RFI, the email and the cost are lost.

What construction companies typically receive right now

Full-time US staffIndicative range
20–49$200K–$500K
50–149$400K–$900K
150+$800K and up

Smaller companies in high-demand industries are quoted individually. These are indicative ranges from what we see in the market right now, not offers – the real number comes in a written offer after a review, and depends on your industry, years of history, which systems are included and demand at the time.

With construction in the highest demand right now, builders with a full project record across their systems tend to land toward the top of their band. Our data value estimator gives a first estimate in about two minutes.

How a deal works

  1. You describe the company – office staff, systems, project types and years of history. About two minutes, nothing uploaded.
  2. We review fit, ownership and demand, and get back to you within 48 hours on business days.
  3. You approve a written offer, or decline. Nothing is shared before you say yes.
  4. Clean-up and delivery. Personal data, design files owned by others and other excluded content are filtered, then the agreed records are delivered and payment is made.

Deals move fastest when a decision maker can sign within about two weeks of the first call. The review is free – we only get paid when a deal goes through. More on how it works. For the full picture across industries, see how to sell data to AI companies.

Questions and answers

Frequently asked questions

Do field crews count toward our team size?

No. Count the people who work at desks – estimators, project managers, project engineers, schedulers, accounts and admin. A builder with 200 people in the field may still have about 50 in the office, and those 50 are what the size is based on.

What about drawings and models from the architect or engineer?

Drawings you produced yourself, such as shop drawings or your own models, can usually be included. Drawings from the design team often belong to the architect, engineer or owner under the contract, so they are checked project by project and usually left out.

We use Procore. Is that enough?

Procore holds much of the project record, which is valuable, but the full picture also includes email, file storage, internal chat, CRM and accounting used by the same team. Leaving whole systems out lowers the offer.

Do we hand over our project records for good?

No. You license them. By default the license is non-exclusive and limited in scope, time and use, and the company keeps ownership of its records.

More pages

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Next step

Find out what your data could be worth

Describe the data you have – it takes about two minutes. You don't send any files and nothing is shared without your approval. We get back to you within 48 hours on business days.

  • You own the data
  • Nothing shared without your approval
  • Non-exclusive licenses