Is It Safe to Put Your Drawings and Rates Into ChatGPT or Claude?

It’s usually the first question on our calls, and it should be. Your rates took years to get right. Your markups decide whether you win work or win it at a loss. And the drawings aren’t yours: the builder sent them to price their job.

So before a tender pack goes into an AI chat, ask where it goes, who sees it, and whether it helps someone price against you.

Is it safe to put your drawings and rates into ChatGPT or Claude?

It can be. The account it runs in matters more than the AI.

We set up your plugin in your own business Claude or ChatGPT account. Your files stay in your private setup, never in anyone else’s plugin. On a business plan, your data isn’t used for training by default. We sign an NDA before you send anything.

What’s the real risk for a subcontractor?

Not a movie-style hack. Ordinary things:

• The wrong account. Someone signs up for a personal plan and pastes in tender documents. Different terms, nobody checked.
• Files everywhere. Drawings in email, rates on a desktop, a copy in a chat nobody can find.
• Costs on the wrong page. Your internal pricing and markups end up in what the builder sees.
• Your setup feeding someone else’s. Your rates and rules reused in a shared tool, including by competitors on the same tender.

Each is a setup problem. Decide up front where the work runs and where files live.

What do you need to check before you use AI on a tender?

Question to ask	Why it matters	How our setup handles it
Whose account does it run in?	A personal plan is under different terms from your business	Your own business Claude or ChatGPT account, paid by you, directly to them
Is my data used to train their models?	You don’t want your pricing shaping anyone else’s answers	On a business plan, your data isn’t used to train their models by default
Who else uses my rates and rules?	Your rates are your edge on every tender	Kept in your own private setup, never used in anyone else’s plugin
Where do the files live?	Copies in random chats are hard to track or delete	Where they already are: your computer, or synced from SharePoint, OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox
Do my costs and markups reach the builder?	Your margin is nobody’s business but yours	The quote template keeps your costs and markups off it, and nothing goes out until you approve it
What do the people setting it up agree to?	They’ll see your jobs and your numbers	We sign an NDA first
Who owns the result?	You shouldn’t be locked in to us	You own everything: your plugin and files, in your own account

Check your own plan’s terms and settings too. We confirm the right plan on your call, but it’s your account.

Where does your plugin actually live?

In your own Claude or ChatGPT account, made of skills you can open and read. A sample plugin’s skills folder:

Sample data. A sample plugin’s skills folder: each estimating skill is an ordinary folder you can open, read and change.

Your rates, rules, templates and workflow are fully editable, any time. They sit in your account, so they stay with you, not us.

What do you send us, and what happens to it?

What you already have: three quoted jobs (tender documents, your BOQ and the quote you sent), your pricing sheet and your quote template. Messy is fine. No pricing sheet? We set one up with you, and you confirm every figure.

From them we set up your BOQ template, your pricing template with rates, labour and markups as rules, and your quote template on your letterhead. Then we prove it on those completed jobs. The test is in what AI estimating costs and what you get.

Isn’t it simpler to paste the drawings into a chat and ask for a price?

Simpler, yes. It’s also where most of these risks start: a one-off chat, maybe the wrong account, none of your rates, no record of what it measured. Why one prompt can’t do the job: can ChatGPT or Claude do construction estimating?

A proper setup runs the 15 estimating stages in your own account, from files that stay where you keep them. Every BOQ line shows drawing, page and revision. Your estimator signs off the BOQ before pricing, and nothing goes out until you approve.

Is it worth a conversation?

If you quote commercial work from drawings and data has held you back from AI, bring it to the call. We’ll cover where your files live, which plan you need and what we sign first.

See how our estimating plugin works, and bring a recent tender.