Data Ownership in Construction: Protecting Your Critical Assets in the Digital Age

Why Retaining Control of Your Data is Essential for Protecting Your Competitive Edge and Ensuring Long-Term Success

In the modern construction industry, data is one of the most valuable assets. From resource libraries and pricing data to project specifications, the information you collect and manage during the pre-construction and estimating phases is essential to winning projects and ensuring profitability. As construction companies increasingly embrace digital tools, the volume of data produced grows exponentially. However, as the reliance on digital tools and software solutions grows, questions around data ownership, access, and privacy have become pressing concerns.

Data ownership is a topic that is too often overlooked. Clients, Contractors, Consultants and Sub-Contractors may trust their software vendors, but not everyone fully understands the potential risks when it comes to their data. Who truly owns your data, and what happens to it once it's in the hands of a vendor? The way your data is handled, shared, and potentially sold can have far-reaching consequences, not just for day-to-day operations but for long-term business success.

In this article, we’ll explore the potential risks of allowing software vendors access to your critical data and the importance of retaining control over your resources. We’ll also dive into Sterling’s commitment to ensuring that your data remains yours and only yours, with a contractually binding promise never to access or resell it.

The Growing Importance of Data in Construction Estimating

Construction estimating is a complex, data-intensive process. In the early stages of a construction project, accurate estimating is vital. This involves not just material and labour costs but also resource libraries and pricing data that can determine the competitiveness and accuracy of your estimates.

For many Estimators, Quantity Surveyors, Cost Engineers and Planners’, the resources, pricing data, and historical estimates they build up over years form the backbone of their competitive edge, which reflects how they price, execute, and procure projects. These libraries provide the foundation for future projects, helping companies to estimate accurately, quickly, and efficiently. Digital tools have helped streamline this process, making estimating faster and more precise, but this also comes with an unintended side effect, vendors gaining access to this critical data.

While these tools can make estimating easier and more accurate, they can also create vulnerabilities around data ownership. If a vendor controls the data, they gain a deep understanding of your estimating practices, resource usage, and even your pricing strategies. This is not just about convenience; this is about creating valuable insights that could be leveraged by the vendor to compete with you or to resell to other companies.

Who Really Owns Your Data?

When you choose a software vendor to help with your pre-construction and estimating processes, it’s often with the expectation that they will simply provide a platform for you to store and manage your data. However, as digital platforms evolve, more and more vendors are incorporating ways to access, use, and even resell the data their users create.

In many cases, software contracts or terms of service are vague about data ownership. You may assume your data is protected, but these contracts often contain clauses that allow vendors to collect, use, or even share anonymised data. Some vendors, even reputable ones, are known to gather anonymised data from their clients' projects data that includes valuable resource libraries, pricing data, and even workflows. This information is often sold back to the market, providing the vendor with another revenue stream.

While some companies argue that anonymisation makes this data harmless, this isn’t always the case. Anonymised data can still offer valuable insights into market trends, resource allocations, and project costs, which can be leveraged against the very contractors and QSs who created it. Moreover, anonymised data can often be "re-identified" through sophisticated techniques, creating a risk of exposing sensitive business information. This will increase as we must submit more transparently, but it must be done in commercial confidence.

This is a significant risk for any business, particularly in the competitive construction industry. Your intellectual property is your estimating process, pricing strategies, resource allocation, planning, and procurement decisions. Allowing a vendor access to that data without clear protections can undermine your ability to compete effectively.

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The Risks of Vendors Reselling Your Data

When your data is in the hands of a vendor, you lose control over how it is used, stored, and shared. The risks are numerous:

• Competitive Disadvantage: If your pricing data and resource libraries are being resold or used by the vendor to analyse trends or help other companies estimate, you may inadvertently help your competitors get ahead. The more data a vendor collects from multiple clients, the better they can refine their own products and services, potentially using your own data as part of their competitive strategy.
• Data Leakage: Even anonymised data can sometimes be traced back to its source, potentially revealing sensitive information about your estimating practices, which could be detrimental if exposed to the wrong parties. Imagine a scenario where an anonymised data set about project costs or resource use is inadvertently leaked. That leak could provide competitors with insights into your operations or bidding strategies, putting you at a competitive disadvantage.
• Loss of Trust: If your clients or business partners find out that your data is being shared or sold, even under the guise of anonymisation, it could undermine trust and damage your reputation. Trust is paramount in construction projects, and any breach of that trust can result in lost business, reputational damage, or even legal action. The risk of losing clients and partners due to the mishandling of their data is a threat that should not be underestimated.
• Intellectual Property Theft: The custom-built databases, resource libraries, and pricing strategies you’ve worked years to refine are valuable intellectual property. If they are misused or sold, it represents a loss of control over your assets. These resources are essential to your ability to win work and execute projects efficiently. If this intellectual property is misappropriated, your competitive advantage could be lost.

The Sterling Commitment: Your Data is Yours

At Sterling, we understand the importance of data ownership and the risks of not knowing what happens to your data once it leaves your hands. That’s why we have made it a core part of our business to ensure that your data remains yours, without exceptions.

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We provide a contractually binding promise that Sterling will never access, use, or resell your data. We believe that you, the client, should have full control over your resources, pricing, and estimating information. Our platform is designed to enhance your workflow without compromising the integrity or privacy of your data. Here’s how we do it:

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• No Data Access: Unlike many vendors, we do not access your data beyond what is necessary for providing the service. We do not extract or use your data for any purpose other than supporting your use of Sterling’s features. Our systems are built with security and privacy in mind, ensuring that your data remains secure and private at all times.
• No Reselling: We will never sell or share your data with third parties. Your pricing strategies, resource libraries, and estimating history remain exclusively in your control. We value your trust and are committed to safeguarding your sensitive information. This commitment is baked into our core business philosophy.
• Transparency: We are committed to transparency around how we use your data. If there are any changes or integrations with third-party services, we will inform you and ensure that any data sharing complies with your requirements and preferences. You’ll always know where your data is and how it’s being used.
• Data Security: Sterling adheres to the highest standards of data security. We ensure that your data is stored securely and that you have control over its management at all times. Our commitment to data security includes both technological safeguards (such as encryption) and strict internal protocols to ensure that only authorised personnel can access your data.
• Sterling data: Our data has been procured, commercially sourced, or created with the consent of our partners.? Our partners are required to opt in, they determine what is shared, not us.

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Why Data Ownership Matters

In the competitive world of construction, your data represents a key differentiator. The ability to accurately estimate costs, resource needs, and carbon impact is critical to winning bids and managing projects efficiently. By retaining ownership of your data, you can ensure that it is used solely for your benefit and not exploited for the gain of a third-party vendor.

Furthermore, as the industry moves toward digitalisation, the risk of losing control over your data will only increase. Construction companies are increasingly relying on data to improve processes, make decisions, and drive efficiencies. At the same time, software vendors are gaining more control over the data they collect, making it more important than ever for you to retain ownership.

By prioritising data ownership now, you can ensure long-term competitiveness, security, and peace of mind for your business. Data is one of your most valuable assets, and you should treat it as such. Maintaining control over your data ensures that you can continue to make informed decisions, improve efficiency, and protect your intellectual property.

Conclusion

As digital tools and platforms continue to reshape the construction industry, it’s essential to consider who truly owns the data you work so hard to create. The risks of losing control over your data—whether through reselling, misuse, or data leakage, are real and can have a significant impact on your business.

?At Sterling, we are committed to protecting your data and ensuring that you remain in control. Our promise is simple: your data is your data. We won’t access, use, or resell it. We believe in building long-term relationships based on trust and transparency, and that starts with ensuring your data remains yours, now and always.

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Your data is your future, why allow other organisations to profit from your hard work?