Professional and Career Topics

Two different companies that I work with recently let me know that their email retention policies have changed, and that any emails older than 2 years at one company, and a measly 6 months at the other, would be deleted automatically.

For many people who have to occasionally reference correspondence or project-related information that was shared with them many years ago, this is understandably not a welcome change.

I was wondering if other places are beginning to introduce this email retention policy as well and what solutions have been explored, if any.

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Christopher Seigel P.E., M.ASCE
Civil Engineer
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I have not heard of anything like that. My last company had an automated system that indefinitely saved & filed all project related emails so everyone on a project could access everyones correspondence; I loved it. My current employer retains emails indefinitely & encourages us to download & file any important correspondence in our project folders. I can't imagine losing my emails every 6 months, I'm still working on the first project I started here two and a half years ago...

Can you just download any important emails & save them locally or to shared project drives?

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Renn Henry, PE
Staff Engineer
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Government emails have to follow a certain retention policy. These are usually defined in state statutes. If you are working on local or state projects your company probably should follow those retention schedules. Check with your point of contact at the agency.

I sometimes print out important emails to include in a paper project folder. There are also workarounds. In Windows, you should have a pdf print that you can use to "print" your emails and then store them in network project folders. There may be a "print to evernote" virtual printer if you have that installed. Thunderbird email client can be set up to mass export emails into pdf's. Check with your IT department to have them install and configure Thunderbird and the plug-ins you need to do this. There are step by step guides online.

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Yance Marti P.E., M.ASCE
Civil Engineer IV
City of Milwaukee
Milwaukee WI
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Christopher:

I one time heard a federal government employee who dealt with situations like yourself.  She elected to use a personal hard drive to back up her emails on a regular basis and then store the hard drive(s) for long term archiving.  She reported that she maintained around 10 years of emails.

In your case, I would suspect that the companies have not been getting good legal counsel on the importance of document retention. 

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Douglas MannP.E., BC.CE, M.ASCE
Lake WorthFL
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I have not come across those types of policies, but I am uncertain to the legality of deleting work emails, especially after so short of a time.  My understanding was that most firms keep most records for 7 years and anything like employee files, contracts, etc. indefinitely.  What happens if those emails are needed for a legal purpose?

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Angela Hintz P.E., M.ASCE
Senior Project Engineer
Buffalo NY
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Christopher, I'm a sole proprietor so not in the same situation, but I do save all of my emails for the exact reason you state. I organize the saved emails by year and month. There have been multiple occasions when finding that 10-year-old email saved me a lot of time and trouble (especially if it's for legal reasons).  I use an email saving app, there are several of them out there. 

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Jill Butler P.E., M.ASCE
Principal Owner
River Science LLC
KOSCIUSKO MS
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I stand corrected....the IRS requires certain documents be kept, but individual state law also applies and usually there is a statute of repose that starts upon the Date of Substantial Completion and may vary from state to state.  Usually records must be kept for that long, and sometimes longer, depending upon the type of project, the level of risk, etc.

I did come across this general guideline white paper from NSPE:  Microsoft Word - Document Retention White Paper - cwk comments2.9.16.doc

As for correspondence that may be helpful to individual engineers but may not pertain to a particular projects, what I have done is copy that information into some other format (save email as pdf), add info to Notes, etc.  That way I can still reference it if I need it.

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Angela Hintz P.E., M.ASCE
Senior Project Engineer
Buffalo NY
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I would hate to lose my emails for several reasons.

We have projects that go on for a long time (one of my current projects started in 2019), and I would hate to lose that project correspondence automatically.

I sometimes go back through really old emails to find something that I remember corresponding about years ago but have no idea which project it would have been for.  

It makes me uneasy for the only record of correspondence to be in someone else's hands. Unethical as it is, someone can edit text you write in email chains, delete the original, and now it looks like you said something you never said. I think it is beneficial to have that original in your "sent" folder in the event that something becomes a legal dispute. I have thankfully never been involved in litigation, but I think it is best to have control over your own information.

I'm curious if others are experiencing this trend of not retaining emails, and I'm also curious what the motivation is. Is it not wanting to pay for the storage? Is it the (in my opinion false, if you're acting ethically) idea that keeping the records opens you up to them finding things you don't want them to find?

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Heidi C. Wallace, P.E., M.ASCE
Tulsa, OK
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Printing the emails makes as much sense as the companies that want to delete them.  Your Outlook is a PST file.  Save a copy of your entire email to an external harddrive.  Then, when you need an old file or folder or email, open that PST in Oulook and it will all be there.

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Nicholas Albergo P.E., DEE, F.EWRI, F.ASCE
Senior Advisor/Adjunct U of South Florida
GHD SERVICES LIMITED
Tampa FL
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We do not have such a short term retention policy at our office. We actually don't have a policy to delete emails, but it seems I usually can't recover ones over about 4 years old. We do however have a policy to copy project related emails regarding scope, fee, schedule, or issues into the project directory on our server. Would those emails also be deleted at those companies?

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Sam Pappas P.E., M.ASCE
President
Macarthur Associated Consultants, LLC
Edmond OK
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Thanks for all of the comments so far. A few colleagues from one of the affected companies are getting errors when trying to export .PST files, stating that exporting their emails is not allowed. 

Some of the other suggestions may be worth looking into. (I was joking about printing all of my emails). Thankfully my own employer has yet to institute this policy. 

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Christopher Seigel P.E., M.ASCE
Civil Engineer
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