Procore projects at firm closure: archiving RFIs, submittals and drawings

What has to happen to Procore projects before a firm closes?#

Procore projects need to be exported, checked and handed to a named custodian before the firm's subscription and user accounts end. The people who know which projects matter tend to leave as a closure proceeds, so the archive belongs early in the wind-down plan, not in the final days.

For a design firm, closure has a liability side as well. Professional liability claims can arise long after a building opens, and the archive is the firm's evidence of what it was asked, how it answered, what it reviewed and what it issued. The records that matter most are the RFI log with responses, the submittal register with review actions, and every issued drawing set with its revisions.

Treat the work as three jobs: capture, verify and hand off. Capture gets each project out of Procore in a durable format. Verify opens a sample of exported items to confirm that attachments and responses came through. Hand-off produces a written record of who holds the archive, where it lives and until when.

Hosted projects versus projects you were invited to#

Hosted projects are the ones your firm's own Procore company account created, and those you can extract yourself. Many architecture and engineering firms, though, work mostly inside projects hosted by a general contractor or owner, where the firm is a collaborator with limited permissions.

On invited projects, access usually ends when the host deactivates your users or closes the project. Write to each host now and ask for a project download covering the RFIs, submittals and drawings your firm took part in. In parallel, gather your own copies of everything the firm authored, such as RFI responses, submittal review comments and sketches, from the firm's file server and email.

Procore lets users export the company's list of projects from the portfolio as a PDF or CSV file, with filters that include inactive projects. Run that export first. It becomes the master index for the whole archive and the list against which completeness is checked.

Which Procore export routes exist, and what comes out?#

Procore offers two archive routes, and both have limits to understand before you start. Procore says its Extracts desktop app saves an archive of a project's information, needs Admin-level permissions on each tool being extracted, and should run on a computer that stays on and online. Most items download as PDFs, while documents and photos keep their original file type, in a folder organized by project name, extract date and time, tool and item.

Procore's FAQ also lists the tools its Project Archive tool can export from, including Correspondence, Daily Log, Documents, Emails, Change Events and Prime Contracts, and notes that for some tools you cannot choose whether attachments are included. Check the current list for your account before relying on either route for RFIs and submittals.

Because most items arrive as PDFs, an extract is strong evidence and a weak search tool. Where a tool can export its list view to a spreadsheet, save that log beside the PDFs so a future reader can find a specific RFI or submittal without opening every file.

Archive-by-project checklist with a repose column#

The archive-by-project checklist turns a pile of exports into something a successor, insurer or lawyer can use. One row per project, carrying the dates that decide how long the records must survive, is enough.

The repose column needs care. Statutes of repose for design and construction claims are set state by state, are often measured from substantial completion and have exceptions, so ask counsel to confirm the end date for each state where the firm practiced instead of applying one period across every project.

Getting RFIs, submittals and drawings out intact#

RFIs, submittals and drawings are the record sets where partial exports do the most damage. An RFI without its response, a submittal without its stamped review, or a drawing log missing one revision can weaken the firm's position years later.

Markups need their own pass. Comments made in Bluebeam sessions or on PDFs outside Procore may never have been uploaded, so pull them from the firm's server into the same project folder.

• 1Confirm Admin-level permission on each tool before scheduling an extract, and assign a workstation that will stay on and online.
• 2Extract RFIs with responses, distribution, attachments and the ball-in-court history where it is available.
• 3Extract submittals with every revision cycle, reviewer comments and the final review action, not only the last approved package.
• 4Download drawings by set and revision, including superseded sheets, so the archive shows what was current at each point.
• 5Export list views to spreadsheets where offered, and save them in the same project folder.
• 6Open a sample of items per project and confirm attachments, markups and response text came through.
• 7Record the result in the checklist, then move to the next project.

Illustrative: a mechanical engineering firm closes its doors#

Illustrative: a fictional mechanical and plumbing engineering firm decides to close after its founding principals retire. It hosts a handful of its own Procore projects and was invited into many more by general contractors.

The managing principal runs the project list export with inactive projects included and builds the checklist from it. Hosted projects go through Procore Extracts on a dedicated workstation. For invited projects, the firm writes to each contractor asking for RFI and submittal downloads and pulls its own response files from the server. Counsel fills in the repose column state by state.

The finished archive goes to encrypted storage controlled by a designated former principal, with the checklist as its index, and the firm's professional liability broker receives the custodian letter. When a records request about a hospital project arrives after closure, the custodian answers it from the index without reopening any account.

Can a closed firm's Procore archive be licensed?#

A closed firm's Procore archive can sometimes be licensed, but only after the rights question is answered project by project. Owner-architect and owner-engineer agreements often reserve the design firm's ownership of its instruments of service while granting the owner a license, and project confidentiality clauses can narrow what may be reused.

Platform terms matter too. ENR reported in November 2025 that Procore's terms of service now say marketplace partners cannot bulk-download data from its platform for commercial purposes, including training large language models. A firm's own exports are a different route from a third-party app, but read your own subscription terms and document how each export was made.

SourceX treats preservation as the first job and licensing as optional. In a wind-down, the SourceX five-step transaction starts with Supply, a metadata-only fit check on systems, years and record families with nothing shared. Rights, Preparation, Approval and Delivery follow only if the firm, or whoever is winding it down, decides to proceed, and each approved package is documented in a SourceX Evidence Packet.