Our story did not begin in a technology lab, a boardroom or a venture-capital office.

It began with a construction contract at Whiteman Air Force Base—and a lesson that changed the direction of our lives.

My husband, Dominick, had spent decades building a successful union subcontracting business. When we were asked to take over another subcontractor’s contract, we bonded the work and trusted that the contractor would keep its word and make us whole.

But we were being asked to price and perform work without access to the complete information.

You cannot bid what you cannot see.

You cannot accurately price an incomplete scope. You cannot manage risk when critical information is scattered, delayed or controlled by someone else. And you cannot defend a contract without the records showing what was known, what changed and who authorized it.

They could have made us whole. Had that happened, we probably would have continued operating the subcontracting business Dominick had spent 45 years building.

Instead, the day came when we chose to shut it down.

We Bet Everything on a Better Way

We did not leave construction with a comfortable safety net.

We burned every safe bridge behind us. We cashed in our 401(k), borrowed against the equity in our home and invested our first $15,000 in used equipment from a print shop that was going out of business.

At first, we thought the printer might be the problem.

Perhaps projects simply needed someone to produce cleaner sets, organize the documents properly and distribute information more effectively. If every stakeholder received the right documents, we believed the industry could work better.

It did not take long to discover that the printer was not the problem.

The problem was missing information.

Project knowledge was fragmented across drawings, specifications, emails, meeting minutes, RFIs, submittals, schedules and individual memories. Different stakeholders could receive different information. Revisions arrived without context. Decisions were made without a reliable chain of evidence.

The industry operated on the illusion that everyone could be caught up later.

But later is when the change order arrives. Later is when the schedule slips. Later is when the subcontractor is blamed. Later is when the owner discovers that the closeout record is incomplete. Later is when attorneys must reconstruct what happened.

By then, the damage has already been done.

The Idea Behind MySmartPlans

We asked a different question:

What if every authorized stakeholder could work from the same complete, current and verified project knowledge?

What if the person performing the work could see exactly what was required?

What if project leaders could determine what changed, when it changed and who authorized it?

What if owners—not contractors, consultants or disconnected software platforms—controlled the permanent record of the asset they were funding?

That idea became MySmartPlans.

We built the company around the belief that every stakeholder should be able to make a smart, informed and defensible decision. We combined technology with dedicated information professionals who capture, organize, verify, connect and preserve the project record.

We did not create another place to dump documents.

We created project memory.

From $15,000 to a Billion-Dollar Project

Within months of starting the company, we earned the opportunity to support a billion-dollar project.

There was no long runway and no room for theory. We had to execute—and we did.

That experience proved that independent information governance was not simply an administrative convenience. On a major capital project, it could become essential infrastructure: a governed source of truth connecting people, commitments, documents and decisions.

Nearly 20 years later, the idea born from one devastating project has supported complex work across government, aviation, healthcare, education, national security and other critical facilities.

The technology has evolved. Artificial intelligence can now interrogate connected project knowledge and return decision-ready intelligence in seconds. But the principle remains unchanged:

AI is only as trustworthy as the information behind it.

That is why MySmartPlans begins with the record.

Construction Should Not Require Blind Trust

The owner funds the project, carries the risk and inherits the facility. Yet owners are often expected to rely on information scattered across other organizations’ systems, inboxes and memories.

That is not transparency. It is dependency.

MySmartPlans gives the owner an independent, governed project record from planning and construction through commissioning, turnover and operations. Information is organized, date- and time-stamped, connected to its supporting evidence and preserved for the life of the facility.

When a question arises, the owner should not need another meeting, another spreadsheet or days of searching.

The project should be able to answer.

Look What You Made Us Build

They could have made us whole.

Instead, that experience exposed a problem affecting an entire industry—and gave us the reason to solve it.

We risked our retirement, our home and everything familiar because we believed construction could be better. We believed people should not lose businesses because they were asked to accept risks they could not see. We believed owners deserved the complete truth about the projects they fund.

Nearly 20 years later, we are still building that future—one project at a time.

We created project memory. We created information ownership. We created decision confidence.

The industry does not need more disconnected data. It needs knowledge that can be trusted, questioned and used.

Join the revolution. Own your project information. Build with the facts.

Talk to Shelley