Privacy & Policy

Northern Beaches Consulting Engineers Pty Ltd (ACN 076 121 616) (trading as NB Consulting Engineers) (NB Consulting, we, us or our) provides engineering consulting services, including civil and structural engineering, inspections, and related advisory and project services. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, hold, use and disclose Personal Information in the course of our business, and how we comply with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

This Privacy Policy is published on our website and may be made available to clients and other individuals on request. By providing Personal Information to us, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy applies to all individuals whose Personal Information we collect in the course of our business, including clients and prospective clients, client representatives and contact persons, consultants and contractors, suppliers and service providers, strata representatives, owners or occupants (where we are engaged on strata or property-related projects), individuals who communicate with us, visitors to our website, and job applicants and employees. It also applies to Personal Information collected through our website, email correspondence, fee proposals, project engagements and other business interactions.

We are dedicated to respecting your privacy, handling Personal Information in a lawful, fair and transparent manner, and complying with the APPs. This Privacy Policy is designed to be clear and accessible for all individuals whose Personal Information we handle.

We collect information that is reasonably necessary for our functions and activities, including to operate our engineering consultancy business. The types of Personal Information we collect include:

1. (a) Identity and contact information, which may include your name, email address, phone number and postal or billing address.
2. (b) Project and engagement information, which may include details relating to the nature and scope of engineering or consulting services, project addresses, site access details, and strata or property-related information where relevant to an engagement.
3. (c) Business and financial information, which may include invoicing details, billing records and payment information.
4. (d) Communications, which includes emails, correspondence, enquiries and other communications between you and NB Consulting in the course of our business.
5. (e) Technical and device information, which may include IP address, device and browser type, operating system and similar technical data collected through our website.
6. (f) Sensitive Information – we do not generally seek to collect Sensitive Information (as defined in the Privacy Act), such as information about your race, religion, health or sexual orientation. If you provide Sensitive Information to us in the course of an engagement or communication, we will only collect it with your consent, or where otherwise permitted or required by law.

We collect Personal Information:

1. (a) directly from you when you make an enquiry, submit a fee proposal request, engage us for services, communicate with us, or otherwise interact with us in the course of business;
2. (b) through our website, including through cookies or similar technologies;
3. (c) from third parties, such as other project participants, professional referrals, or publicly available sources, where permitted by law.

We collect, use and disclose Personal Information for purposes reasonably necessary for, or directly related to, our functions and activities, including to:

1. (a)respond to enquiries and communicate with clients and prospective clients;
2. (b)prepare fee proposals;
3. (c)establish and administer client engagements;
4. (d)provide engineering and consulting services, including managing projects, arranging inspections and site attendances, and communicating with project stakeholders;
5. (e)invoice clients and manage accounts;
6. (f)manage relationships with consultants, contractors and service providers;
7. (g)maintain records relating to our business activities;
8. (h)comply with legal and regulatory obligations, and respond to lawful requests from authorities;
9. (i)manage insurance, risk and professional obligations;
10. (j)maintain and improve our business systems and services, including internal administration;
11. (k)send communications about our services, where permitted by law, which you may opt out of at any time.

We do not use or disclose Personal Information for purposes other than those described in this Privacy Policy, or as otherwise permitted or required by law.

We may disclose Personal Information to the following recipients, where reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy:

1. (a)our employees and personnel who require access for legitimate work purposes;
2. (b)consultants and contractors engaged to assist with projects or services;
3. (c)IT, cloud and software service providers, including providers of practice management, accounting and communication systems;
4. (d)professional advisers, including lawyers, accountants and auditors;
5. (e)insurers;
6. (f)project participants or client representatives, where reasonably required in the course of providing our services;
7. (g)government agencies, regulators or courts, where required or authorised by law;
8. (h)a third party in connection with any merger, acquisition, sale of all or a portion of our business or assets, or similar transaction, in which case we will take reasonable steps to ensure that the recipient handles Personal Information consistently with this Privacy Policy.

We do not sell your Personal Information to third parties.

We use a range of systems and service providers to store and manage Personal Information. Our primary data is stored on systems hosted in Australia, including Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint and OneDrive. Our internal archive storage is physically located at our Australian office.

Some services we use, including Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot, are currently hosted on servers within the Asia Pacific region. While Microsoft’s target data location for these services is Australia, migration to Australian data centres had not yet occurred at the date of this Privacy Policy. To the extent that hosting Personal Information on servers outside Australia through our service providers constitutes a disclosure to an overseas recipient for the purposes of the APPs, we take reasonable steps to ensure the recipient handles Personal Information consistently with the APPs, including through contractual data protection arrangements.

Our website uses cookies, tracking pixels and similar technologies for the following purposes:

1. (a) Analytics – we use Google Analytics to understand how visitors find and use our website, including traffic sources, pages viewed and user interactions. This helps us improve our website and services.
2. (b) Advertising – we use Google Ads, including tracking tags and cookies, to measure advertising performance and support remarketing. This may involve collecting information about your device, browser, how you arrived at our website, and your interactions with advertisements.
3. (c) Call tracking – we use Avanser call tracking to understand which advertising channels and campaigns generate phone enquiries. This may involve collecting the caller’s phone number and general location.

These services are provided by third parties, including Google and Avanser, who receive or process information collected through these technologies on their own systems. Some of this information may be stored or handled outside Australia, including in the United States.

You may adjust your browser settings to refuse some or all cookies. You can also opt out of Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, and manage your Google advertising preferences at adssettings.google.com. However, disabling cookies or tracking may affect the functionality of our website. For more information about cookies and how to manage them, you can visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

We implement reasonable technical and organisational measures designed to protect Personal Information against unauthorised access, modification or disclosure, and against misuse, interference and loss. These measures include the use of password protection, access controls, encryption technologies where available, and secure hosting arrangements.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. While we take reasonable steps to protect Personal Information, we cannot guarantee the security of information transmitted to or stored by us.

We retain Personal Information for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements.

When Personal Information is no longer required for those purposes, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify it, unless we are required to retain it for legal or regulatory purposes. Some information may remain in our backup systems for a limited period as part of our ordinary backup processes.

For the purposes of this Privacy Policy:

Personal Information has the meaning given in the Privacy Act and includes information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether the information or opinion is true or not and whether recorded in a material form or not.

Sensitive Information has the meaning given in the Privacy Act and includes, among other categories, information about health, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, membership of a political association, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and criminal record.