Industry guide
Records from engineering firms
Here, the record of how a requirement became a released design is what matters. Export-controlled data and client designs can be excluded.
See my estimateShort answers
Do we have to give access to our PDM?
No. At no point are passwords asked for or shared.
Is it fine to start small?
Of course. One product line or one system works well to start, with the rest excluded.
What is the first thing we sign?
An NDA comes first. There is no cost, and nothing is shared without your approval.
Also worth knowing
- Your design methods remain yours. Any project, product line or period can be held back.
- Your engineers, clients and vendors all become placeholders.
- Nobody asks for logins, and originals remain in your vault.
Records that tend to qualify
- Models and CAD files
- Calculation sheets and bills of materials
- Simulation runs and test data
- Design reviews and revision history
- Schematics, board layouts and inspection data
Client designs under NDA
Plenty of engineering work belongs to clients, or is bound by confidentiality. That is a question for your agreements and your counsel. Legal advice is not something we give. Scoping can exclude client-owned work, and client names are swapped out of the copy regardless.
Export-controlled technical data, which is common in defense and aerospace work, gets flagged during scoping and can be left out in full.
A sensible place to begin
A practical place to start is internal work your firm fully owns, like design reviews, revision history and test records for your own products. Later, client programs can be reviewed individually with your counsel, or kept out for good. Anything added is up to you.
Every scope, large or small, goes through the same preparation. Our partner, License Your Data, sticks to the scope you approve, puts placeholders in place of names and identifiers and gets your approval on a sample first. Your originals never leave your systems.