Keep the whole project record after closeout, not just the final drawings.

What goes wrong with project records at closeout?

• A Procore Project Archive download is available for 30 days, and only the person who created the archive or a user with Admin permission on the project Directory tool can download it.
• Autodesk says access to cloud documents continues for about 30 days after a subscription ends. In Autodesk Forma and BIM 360, only account administrators can archive or deactivate a project, and once they do, project admins and members lose access.
• Oracle closes an Aconex project in not less than 30 days once it ends. After that, every organisation loses access unless another subscription or a paid Aconex archive covers the project.
• Subcontractors and consultants working in a head contractor's or owner's project lose access when that company closes it. Their side of the record goes with it.
• Closeout exports done by hand in the last weeks miss tools, revisions and attachments. Procore Project Archive delivers most items as PDFs, so the trail from an RFI to the revision it changed is hard to follow.
• Questions keep coming after handover. Limitation periods for building claims run for years after completion and vary by jurisdiction, so the record is needed long after the project closes.

What are your options for keeping a closed construction project?

There are five common ways to keep a project record after closeout, and many companies use more than one. The right mix depends on how long you need the record, who will need to find things in it, and whether it has to hold RFIs, submittals and mail as well as files. Native exports are the right format for an owner's handover package, but each depends on someone acting inside a window of about 30 days.

How early should you start the closeout copy of a construction project?

Before practical completion, and ideally from the first weeks of the job. Every native closeout window on Procore, Autodesk and Aconex is about 30 days, and the people with the right permissions and project knowledge often move on at handover.

Leaving it to the last month is when archive links expire unread and the person who could run the export has already left. Our project closeout checklist covers each platform in detail.

• Name who owns the closeout copy, and where it will be stored.
• Ask the hub or project owner when the project will be archived, deactivated or closed.
• Capture files with every version, plus RFIs, submittals, transmittals, daily logs and mail.

How SIINC keeps a closed project searchable

A copy that builds up through the job

The first run is a Full backup of every record and file version in the modules you choose, and for a mid-sized project it completes the same day. After that, Sync runs copy only what changed, hourly as standard, so by practical completion the record is already in your storage.

Storage your company owns

Backups land in an Amazon S3 bucket or Azure Blob container in your own account and region, as the original files plus JSON metadata in a documented folder structure. You keep the copy if you stop using SIINC.

Searchable without a platform login

The Procore Workbench, Autodesk Portal and Aconex Portal read straight from your bucket. Search a closed project by module and record, open an RFI with its responses and attachments, and download a file, a folder or a ZIP.

Your side of another company's project

SIINC backs up the Procore projects your account is a member of, and the Aconex projects your connection can see, including ones another organisation owns, subject to your permissions. What it captured stays in your storage when that company closes the project.

Archived Autodesk projects on Enterprise

Autodesk Forma and BIM 360 projects that are already archived can be brought into backup scope on Enterprise, when you start it or automatically, in batches with pause, resume and retry.