The record
This page covers three Australian records in which an outside party rules on building work. They earn different verdicts, given separately in the box.
Apartment bond inspection reports (New South Wales). The state government's page on the scheme says the developer of a new apartment building lodges a bond equal to 2% 1 of the contract price. An independent inspector then reports twice on a set form. The interim report, due 15 to 18 months 1 after the building may be occupied, lists defective work. The final report, by the same inspector, says for each listed defect whether it was fixed, and may not add new ones 1. The cost of what remains is paid from the bond.
Payment adjudications. Every state has a law that speeds up payment in the building trade. A subcontractor serves a payment claim. The head contractor replies with a schedule saying what it will pay and why not the rest. If they disagree, an adjudicator gives a written decision with reasons and a dollar figure within days.
Collapsed builders' files. When a builder is liquidated, its project files pass to the liquidator's control: contracts, claims, changes to the work, queries, programmes, defect lists and email.
A worked example for adjudication, using official New South Wales averages; the builder's offer is invented. A waterproofing subcontractor claims about six hundred thousand Australian dollars 2, the average claim in the state for one quarter of 2025. The builder's schedule offers far less, citing defects and changes it never approved. An adjudicator, appointed through an approved body, reads both sides and awards about two hundred and eighty thousand dollars 2, the average award that quarter.
Why it might matter for training AI
Vendors' pages show labs asking for construction records, for legal case files, and for expert judgement with reasons. Adjudication has the best shape: a claim and a reply go in, and a reasoned figure for each item comes out in days. The bond reports give an expert's list of defects and then a ruling on each. A collapsed builder's files are raw company records of the kind data brokers buy.
No purchase of any of the three by a lab was found.
Who holds it and who may share it
Bond reports. The scheme's page says each approved report goes to the state's building regulator, the building's owners and the developer, and that the inspector gives the builder a copy 3. The government's copy is not published. How many are lodged a year was not found. The Act itself was not opened, and who owns copyright in a report was not established.
Adjudications. The states differ.
- Queensland publishes adjudication decisions on the regulator's website, and its application form says the Act requires it 4. In the first half of 2025 it released 106 5 decisions, from 175 5 valid applications worth nearly a hundred and ninety-four million Australian dollars 5; about forty-eight and a half million 5 was awarded.
- New South Wales does not publish them. In 2024-25 there were 990 2 applications and 493 2 decisions released to the parties, with about five hundred and forty-seven million Australian dollars 2 claimed and about a hundred and seventy million 2 awarded. The parties and the appointing bodies hold them.
- Victoria publishes a spreadsheet with a row for each application under an open licence, with amounts and dates but no reasons 6.
The claim, the schedule and the two sides' submissions are published nowhere. They belong to the parties.
Collapsed builders. Construction leads the country's insolvencies: 898 7 construction companies entered external administration in one quarter of 2024. The files are the company's, under the liquidator's control. Procore's customer agreement says customer data stays owned exclusively by the customer 8. A third-party summary of Procore's developer terms says app makers may not bulk-export or train on data drawn through its connections 9; Procore's own page was not opened.
Who is already there
A legal research product offers more than 7,300 10 Queensland adjudication decisions in full text, with search by adjudicator, outcome and amount, and drafting help.
Construction software platforms are building AI on their own customers' live projects 11.
Brokers buy the data of closed companies elsewhere. None was found working with Australian liquidators.
What would have to be stripped
- Bond reports: unit numbers, occupants' names and photographs inside homes. A report also reveals a building's faults, which bears on what owners can sell for.
- Adjudications: mostly companies, with some sole traders and named people. Unpublished decisions are confidential to the parties.
- Collapsed builders: the most. Employee records, subcontractors' bank details, and home-owner customers' details and emails.
Whether Australian copyright law allows text to be mined without a licence was not established.
What stands in the way
- Collapsed builders: a liquidator may judge that privacy and other parties' confidentiality outweigh a modest recovery for creditors, and platform access can lapse before anything is exported.
- Adjudications: the valuable half, the claim and the schedule, is unpublished. Rebuilding the inputs from the published reasons leaks the answer. The public half is already a product.
- Bond reports: one state, modest numbers, private, and consent building by building.
- No lab has been shown to buy any of the three.