What evidence should an architect preserve before submitting a proposal to a competition?

Q: What evidence should an architect preserve before submitting a proposal to a competition?

Keep a record of how your design developed, the exact files submitted and the uses permitted by the competition terms. Timestamp important design stages and the final submission package, and retain the organiser’s receipt. Together, these records help you show what your studio created, what the organiser received and what it was allowed to do with the proposal.

Preserve the choices that make the design yours

If an unsuccessful proposal later appears in another practice’s project, the final presentation may not tell the whole story. Earlier sketches, plans and models can show how your studio developed the disputed features before submitting them.

Keep the stages that explain significant choices: the first study of a façade, alternative layouts or the revisions that resolved a circulation problem. Retain editable drawings and models alongside readable exports. Identify the people responsible for the work and keep the agreements covering consultants’ drawings, visualisations and other contributions.

Record what submitting allows the organiser to do

Save the brief, competition rules and intellectual property terms, including amendments and written clarifications. Permission to assess a proposal, exhibit its images and develop it into a building are different things. Establish what is allowed for unsuccessful entries and what would require a separate agreement with your studio.

RIBA identifies copyright protection and clear post-competition commitments as principles of its managed competitions. Use those questions when reviewing the terms of your own competition, and preserve the answers you receive before entering.

Keep the exact package you submit

A last-minute export can leave the uploaded boards different from the files in your studio’s “final” folder. Set aside the actual submission: boards, reports, forms, supporting files and any archive uploaded to the portal. Connect it to the competition and entry reference.

For an anonymous competition, keep the connection between the entry code and your studio in your private records. Follow the organiser’s rules about names and identifying information in submitted files.

Timestamp the design history and submission

Digital timestamps can provide independently verifiable evidence that specific drawings and models existed by a given time. Create them at important design stages and for the final package before submission. Keep the matching files and certificates so that the dated record can be checked later.

For example, if a distinctive façade treatment later appears in another proposal, an earlier timestamped study can support your account of when that design was already present in your work. The development files and contribution records help explain how it came about.

The submission timestamp and the organiser’s receipt serve complementary purposes: one identifies the dated package you preserved; the other records its delivery. Keep both connected to the same entry.

Preserve the submission confirmation

Save the portal receipt, entry number, file list and recorded submission time. Where possible, download the accepted package and compare it with your preserved copy. If you replace a file before the deadline, retain the confirmation identifying the replacement. Keep correspondence about upload problems or agreed exceptions.

These records can matter even without a copying dispute, for example if there is disagreement over whether a required board was included or a revised proposal arrived in time.

Keep a separate record of any public reveal

If the organiser exhibits your entry, or you publish it in a portfolio, keep a copy of what became public, where and when. Check the competition’s confidentiality and publicity rules first. A private submission to a jury and a public exhibition are different events in the design’s history.

If the proposal includes a potentially patentable technical innovation, such as a new façade assembly system, consult your patent adviser before publishing its details. Public disclosure before filing can affect novelty under Article 54 of the European Patent Convention.

Before You Submit: How to Protect Your Architectural Work examines the concern behind these precautions: a studio shares a proposal to win work, then finds its design being used without the commission it expected. It explains why the design history, submission records and permitted uses need to be considered together.