Pile Capacity Privacy Notice

Pile Capacity performs its analysis on hetGE's servers, not in your browser. When you run an analysis, the inputs you have entered (borehole and ground-water elevations, soil and rock layer parameters, pile geometry, cut-off levels, target loads and factors) are transmitted to our servers, solved there, and the results returned to you. The PDF calculation report and the Excel data report are generated on the server in the same way.

We say this plainly because it is the opposite of a browser-only tool: your engineering inputs do leave your device when you use the application.

Your account's work is held in our database so that it persists between sessions and devices:

• Projects: the project name and the site's map location (the coordinates and address you pin), with the date it was created.
• Designs: the soil profile and pile schedule you entered, the analysis mode and the unit system.
• Results: the full stored output of each analysis, and a link to any generated report.
• Your user record: an internal identifier linking the above to your hetGE account. We do not keep a second copy of your name, email or credentials; those live with hetGE Account.

Generated PDF reports are written to object storage operated for the application, and are served back to you through it.

We keep your projects, designs and results until you delete them or close your account. There is no schedule on which they expire.

Deleting a project or design marks it deleted and removes it from your workspace; ask us at [email protected] if you need data erased outright.

Authentication is handled by hetGE Account (account.hetge.com). After you sign in we set session cookies on capacity.hetge.com: an application token and the access and refresh tokens, all httpOnly and therefore unreadable by page scripts, plus short-lived values used to complete the sign-in exchange securely.

One further cookie is deliberately readable by the page, so the header can show who is signed in. It holds the profile hetGE Account returns for you (your name, email address, account identifier, and your profile picture if you have one), and nothing your hetGE Account profile does not already hold.

Like every web service, our servers keep standard technical logs (IP address, timestamp, requested URL, user agent) for security and operations. We keep these logs for up to 30 days. Pile Capacity contains no advertising and no third-party analytics or tracking cookies.

The project map is provided by Apple MapKit. When you view the map or search for an address or coordinates, those requests go to Apple and are governed by Apple's privacy policy. hetGE issues the map token from its own credentials; we do not receive a copy of your map interactions from Apple, but Apple does receive the requests your browser makes.

The optional "Describe with AI" feature turns a free-text description of a ground profile into analysis inputs. There are two paths, and which one runs determines where your text goes:

• Server path (default): the text you type is sent to a language model hosted by hetGE and processed there. It is used to produce the extracted inputs and is not used to train models.
• In-browser path (opt-in): where your browser supports it, you can choose to run the model in the page instead. The model file is downloaded to your device and your text is processed locally; it does not reach our servers on this path.

The feature is optional. If you do not use it, no free-text description is sent anywhere.

Pile Capacity can be connected to an AI assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT over the Model Context Protocol. The connector, and how to add it, are documented at capacity.hetge.com/connect.

When you use it, the assistant sends us the design inputs it extracted from your conversation, and receives back the resolved inputs, the assumptions made for anything you did not specify, the analysis results, and a report link if you asked for a report.

What we send back also carries identifiers: the identifier of each project and design the tools touch, and the report link itself. The assistant holds them so that it can refer back to the same project, design or report later in your conversation.

When it asks us to check a design before running it, the assistant may also pass one sentence of your own wording about the piles. It is meant to do so only when that wording contains unit words, such as metres, millimetres, feet, inches, kilonewtons or kips. We use the sentence for one thing only: to check that the units in your words agree with the numbers in the design, so we can warn you if they do not. It is not stored and not written to our logs. The rest of your conversation never reaches us.

A report generated this way is stored under a signed link that stops working one hour after it is issued, so the file is unreachable from then on. The file itself is deleted from our storage a day after it was made, the next time the connector renders a report for you. Projects and designs are written to your account only when you ask the assistant to save them; running an analysis or rendering a report through the connector stores nothing.

You can revoke an assistant's access at any time, either from your hetGE account or from the assistant's own connector settings. The assistant's own processing of your conversation, including anything it retains, is governed by its provider's privacy policy rather than this notice.

The application stores one value in your browser: your light or dark theme preference. Anything you export (PDF reports, Excel workbooks) is an ordinary file under your control once downloaded.

Your hetGE account (profile, credentials, purchases) is operated by hetGE Account and governed by its Privacy Policy at account.hetge.com/privacy.

Pile Capacity is professional software and is not directed at children under 16. We do not knowingly process personal information of children under 16.

You can withdraw work and access at any time. Delete a project or a design in the app to remove it from your workspace. Revoke a connected assistant's access from your hetGE account settings, or from the assistant's own connector settings. Write to [email protected] if you want data erased outright, including anything that a deletion in the app only marks as deleted.

We will post any changes to this notice on this page with a new "Last updated" date. Questions, or requests about your data: [email protected].