PileAxis Privacy Policy

In short

• Engineering work on your own computer needs no account. Building a pile analysis, running it, reviewing the results and the project files you save on your computer work offline, and nothing about them is sent to us.
• Signing in is optional. Signing in adds cloud projects and opens the Pro features. What you save to the cloud is stored by our service; a project that holds premium inputs (a user-defined p-y curve, or a driven pile type) is saved to the cloud only, never to a local file.
• The AI Assistant sends your question, and the project data it needs to answer it, to Microsoft's Azure AI service. We count how much you use it; we do not keep the conversation.
• No advertising, no analytics, no telemetry, and we never sell information. The program sends us nothing on its own: no usage data, no crash reports, and nothing about where your computer is.

Information that stays on your computer

• Project files you save locally. They are not sent to us unless you save the project to the cloud.
• Settings: theme, units, map background, window layout, and report preferences, including a company name and a logo file location if you enter them.
• A sign-in cache, when you sign in, encrypted by Windows for your Windows account alone, so the program can keep you signed in between sessions.
• Map overlays you open from a cloud project's attachments, unpacked on your computer so they need not be downloaded again.
• An error log, written to your Windows temporary folder if the program meets an unexpected error. It stays on your computer unless you choose to send it to us with a support request.

Information we receive when you sign in

• Your account. Sign-in is provided by Microsoft Entra External ID. We receive an account identifier, your name and your email address, and keep them in a profile together with each program's tier and the date its free trial started, the organizations you belong to, how much of the AI Assistant's monthly allowance you have used, and any company name, license number, display name or library nickname you add.
• What you save to the cloud, and only that: the project's details (project name and number, engineer, client name, address and telephone, site address and coordinates, scope of work, date), its pile analyses (each pile's inputs, its own coordinates where you give them, its soil, section and loads) and the versions saved of it, map attachments you upload (site boundaries as shapefiles or KML), the p-y curves and soil column models you save to the cloud library, and your client list. While a project is open for editing, the name of the person editing it is shown to others who can open it.
• Soil column models you publish. A soil column model you choose to publish can be found and loaded by every signed-in PileAxis user, together with its name, its layers, the location of its site and your library nickname. Models are private unless you publish them; p-y curves are never public.
• Searchable descriptions. The scope of work you give a project and the description you give a design are sent to Microsoft's Azure AI service to compute a search index entry for each, so that projects can be found by meaning. The words of a search by meaning, and of a search of the User's Manual or the reference library, are sent there the same way.
• The AI Assistant. When you use the AI Assistant, your question and the conversation so far are sent through our service to Microsoft's Azure AI service, together with what the assistant reads to answer you: the open project (including its name, engineer, client name and site coordinates), its analysis and pushover results, passages of the User's Manual and of the reference library, and the projects a search of your other cloud projects finds. We keep a count of your requests and of their size against a monthly allowance; we do not keep your questions, the project data sent with them or the replies. The conversation stays in the assistant's window and is gone when you clear it or close the program.
• Maps and addresses. When you look at a project's map or search for an address, the program sends the address you type, or the coordinates and the map area, to Esri's ArcGIS location services to find the place and draw the map. Esri handles them under its own privacy statement. The map shows the project's site, not your computer's location.
• An AI assistant you connect. You can let an AI assistant of your own (Claude, for one) work with your cloud projects by signing it in with your account through the cloud's assistant connector. It then acts as you: it can list and read your projects (their names, numbers, engineers, clients, sites and scopes of work), list the analyses and models in a project by name and description, create projects, and search the User's Manual. It cannot read, change or create a PileAxis pile analysis; the models it creates are FoundaTrix Studio's. What it reads from your cloud passes through the assistant's provider under that provider's own privacy terms, as does everything you tell the assistant; the provider is your choice, not our service provider, and we send it nothing ourselves. We keep a log of each action an assistant takes: your account identifier, the assistant's identifier and name, the action asked for, the project or model concerned, and how it ended. The log never holds the inputs themselves.

When you report a bug

Help > Report a Bug opens a new e-mail to us in your own e-mail program, with a case number and, when the open project holds no premium inputs, a copy of the project file attached (written to your Windows temporary folder for the purpose). Nothing is sent until you send that e-mail yourself, and we receive only what you send.

How we use it

To sign you in; to store, version, restore and share your cloud projects and library items; to answer your questions in the AI Assistant; to decide which capabilities your account opens; and to answer you when you contact us. We do not use it for advertising or profiling, and we do not sell or rent it to anyone.

Who else can see it

• Your organization: members of an organization you belong to can see the projects, clients, p-y curves and soil models you share with it.
• Every signed-in PileAxis user, for a soil column model you publish, as described above. Nothing else you save is public.
• Our service providers, who process it only to run the service: Microsoft (Entra External ID for sign-in, Azure App Service, Azure SQL Database and Azure AI, in the United States) and, when you use maps or address search, Esri.
• An AI assistant's provider, only if you connect one: what the assistant reads from your cloud passes through that provider (Anthropic, for Claude) under the provider's own terms. The assistant reads on your behalf; we send the provider nothing.
• The law: we disclose information when the law requires it.

How long we keep it

• Cloud projects are kept until you delete them.
• Saved versions of a project are kept for six months.
• Deleted projects stay in the recycle bin for thirty days, where you can restore them.
• A saved p-y curve or soil column model is kept until you delete it, and is deleted at once when you do.
• The log of an AI assistant's actions is kept for 180 days.
• After those periods, old versions, recycle-bin items and log entries are removed when old records are next cleared, which may be some time after the period ends. Write to us if you want something removed sooner.
• The AI Assistant's usage counts start again with each monthly allowance.
• Your profile is kept while your account exists. Write to us to have your account and its cloud data deleted.
• Everything on your own computer is yours to keep or delete. Uninstalling the Microsoft Store edition removes its settings, sign-in cache and unpacked map overlays with it.

Security

Information travels to and from our service encrypted (HTTPS). Cloud projects are reachable only through a signed-in session, by you and by the organizations you share with. The sign-in cache on your computer is encrypted by Windows. An AI assistant you connect signs in through the same Microsoft Entra sign-in page as the program, with your own account, and never holds a password of yours.

Children

PileAxis is professional engineering software and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13 (or under 16 where the law sets that age).

Your choices and rights

You can use the program without an account at all. If you sign in, you can sign out at any time, and you can delete any cloud project, p-y curve or soil column model yourself (deleting a published soil model withdraws it from everyone); a project that holds premium inputs can be kept only in the cloud, so deleting it there deletes it. You choose whether to use the AI Assistant at all. If you connect an AI assistant, you can withdraw its access at any time by removing the connector from the assistant's settings, and you can ask us to revoke it. You can ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it. Depending on where you live (for example in the European Union, the United Kingdom or California), the law gives you these and other rights, and we honour them for everyone.

Changes to this policy

We will post any change here, with a new effective date, and describe significant changes in the program's release notes.

Contact

The terms of use, including the engineering disclaimer, are at www.pileaxis.com/terms.