DM CIVIL PRIVACY STATEMENT

DM Civil recognises the importance of protecting the privacy of personal information and sensitive information collected in a number of ways including:

  • from publicly available sources of information;
  • when you visit our website;
  • when you use our services or contact us directly;
  • when you sign up to receive information from us, such as via our E-Newsletter;
  • from third parties;
  • from our own records; and
  • when legally required to do so.

Personal Information and Sensitive Information

Personal information refers to information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable.

Sensitive Information refers to information or an opinion about an individual’s personal preferences and characteristics (such as race, ethnicity, political opinions, memberships, religious or philosophical beliefs and sexual preference), health information about an individual, genetic information and/or biometric information. Sensitive information is afforded a higher level of protection than other personal information.

Kinds of information held and collected by DM Civil

Personal information held by us is collected only when knowingly and voluntarily submitted by you. When you register your interest or otherwise in the course of us providing our services to you, we may need to collect personal information which may include your name, address, telephone/mobile phone number, e-mail address, credit card details, your business name, your user id or password.

Sensitive information held by us is collected only when knowingly and voluntarily submitted by you. Although we will rarely hold and/or collect this kind of information, the information we may hold includes your racial or ethnic background, your family status and/or financial information about you, such as your tax file number. At all times, we will take reasonable steps to obtain your express consent where we propose to handle your sensitive information.

Collecting information from you

Generally:

  • We will tell you why we are collecting information when we collect it and how we plan to use it or these things will be obvious when we collect the information; and
  • We will only use your personal information if and when we need to contact you.

For example, we may need to collect such information to provide you with further services or to answer or forward any requests or enquiries. It is our intention that this policy will protect your personal information from being dealt with in any way that is inconsistent with the Australian Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

If you choose not to provide personal information to us, we may not be able to provide you with access to the parts of this Site or to certain content and services available on or from this Site or generally from DM Civil.

Use of Information

Purpose of collecting and holding information

We use your information to provide our services to you, to work with you or to fulfil administrative functions associated with these services. Personal information is used only for the primary purpose for which it is submitted or for such other secondary purposes that are related to that purpose, unless we disclose other uses in this Privacy Statement or at the time of collection.

Primary purpose refers to the particular purpose for which the information in question was collected. For example, if we were to provide you with a newsletter and we asked for your address to send it to you, the primary purpose for the collection of your address would be to send the newsletter to you at your address.

Secondary purpose is any purpose other than the primary purpose for which we have collected your personal information. Personal information will only be disclosed or used for a secondary purpose where:

  • you have consented to the use or disclosure;
  • you would reasonably expect DM Civil to use or disclose the information for that secondary purpose;
  • the use or disclosure is required by or under an Australian law or a court/tribunal order; and
  • a “permitted general situation” exists, such as lessening or preventing a serious threat to life, health or safety, locating a missing person or to undertake a confidential alternative dispute resolution process;
  • DM Civil reasonably believes that the use or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary for one or more enforcement related activities conducted by or on behalf of an enforcement body.

We usually collect personal information such as your name, address, telephone number, and in some instances, some of your business details. When you are on our website, we may collect information regarding the pages within our network which you visit and what you click on. As a general rule we do not collect sensitive information. However, if we do, it will usually be for the purposes of providing our services and if the law requires us to, we will seek your consent to collect it.

If you subscribe to receive promotional or other material from us or are registered for any services, then the personal information you provide will be recorded. Your email address will only be used for the purpose for which you have provided it (which may include being added to our mailing list, and in the instance when we are delivering a project in partnership with another company it may also include being added to the partner’s mailing list for that particular project) but otherwise it will not be added to any other mailing lists.

Parties who will have access to personal information

Generally, your personal information will only be accessed by DM Civil staff and officers when and where it is appropriate or necessary. However, your personal information may also be accessed, from time to time, by:

  • DM Civil sub-contractors;
  • DM Civil project partners; and
  • DM Civil suppliers.

Where a party, other than an employee or officer of DM Civil, has access to the personal information of individuals, they will be required to comply with Australian Privacy legislation and, where appropriate, to enter into Privacy Agreements with DM Civil

Use Of Aggregate Data

We may use personal information in aggregate form to improve our services and make them more responsive to the needs of our customers. This statistical compilation and analysis of information may also be used by us or provided to others as a summary report for marketing, advertising or research purposes.

Information Retention And Destruction Practices

We have a policy in place for determining whether we will retain or destroy records of personal information. We periodically review the records of the personal information we hold.

Where we have held such records for 5 years or have records for a project or development which was completed 5 years ago in our possession, we will take reasonable steps to determine whether it is appropriate for DM Civil to retain or destroy that information.

Anonymity or pseudonyms

Where we make use of personal information for statistical or marketing purposes, we will endeavour to make use of pseudonyms and/or to make the applicable personal details anonymous.

Holding Personal And Sensitive Information And Security

Holding information securely

We strive to ensure the security, integrity and privacy of personal and sensitive information of our clients. We use a variety of physical and electronic security measures including restricting physical access to our offices and firewalls and secure databases to keep personal information secure from misuse, loss or unauthorised use or disclosure. In relation to personal information provided through our website, unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be totally secure.

Receipt of unsolicited personal information

Unsolicited personal information is information received by an APP entity where the entity has taken no active steps to collect the information.

When and where DM Civil receives unsolicited information, DM Civil will need to determine whether it could have collected the information under Australian Privacy Principle 3 (which governs the collection of solicited personal information). Where DM Civil could not have collected the information under Australian Privacy Principle 3, DM Civil will destroy or de-identify the information as soon as practicable, so long as it is lawful and reasonable to do so.

Accessing And Correcting Personal Information

Accessing personal Information

You have a right to access most personal information we hold about you and if we deny access in some circumstances we will tell you why. You can make a request for access to your  personal information under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) or under the Freedom of Information Act (1992) (WA). Should you experience difficulty in determining the correct route by which to request access to your personal information, please contact us and we will provide you with assistance.

To request access, please contact our Freedom of Information and Privacy Officer as set out at the end of this document.

We reserve the right to charge a fee for locating and providing you with your personal information.

Correcting personal information

You have a right to request the correction and/or amendment of your personal information. Applications to have personal information held by DM Civil corrected or amended should be made in writing to the our Freedom of Information and Privacy Officer (see details set out at the end of this document), should provide enough information to determine what changes are required, and should provide current contact details.

Cookies

Cookies are data that a website transfers to an individual’s hard drive for record-keeping purposes. Cookies can facilitate a user’s ongoing access to and use of a site. They allow us to track usage patterns and to compile data that can help us improve our content and target advertising.

If you do not want information collected through the use of Cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to deny or accept the Cookie feature. But you should note that Cookies may be necessary to provide you with features on this Site.

Information that may be collected.

DM Civil may record your visit through the use of cookies and may log the following information for statistical purposes:

  • Your server address;
  • Your top-level domain name (eg. .com, .gov, .au, .uk etc.);
  • The date and time of the visit to the site;
  • The pages accessed and documents downloaded;
  • The previous site visited; and
  • The type of browser used.

Information Provided To You

Information contained in any materials or services provided to you by any means including though use of our website may be subject to the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and must not be used for direct marketing of goods and services or be released to any person or third party for the purpose of direct marketing of goods and services. DM Civil takes no responsibility for any breaches of Australian Privacy legislation by any person in relation to information obtained from the material or products supplied to you by any means including through our website.

Third Party

Via our website

In relation to use of our website, we may establish relationships with business partners that allow visitors to our website to link directly to sites operated by these partners. Some of these sites may be “co-branded” with our logo; however, these sites may not be operated or maintained by or on our behalf. These sites may collect personal information from you that may be shared with us. This Privacy Statement will apply to any personal information we obtain in this manner.

We are not responsible for the content or practices of websites operated by third parties that are linked to our sites. These links are meant for the user’s convenience only. Links to third party sites do not constitute sponsorship, endorsement or approval by us of the content, policies or practices of those third party sites. Once you have left our site via such a link, you should check the applicable privacy policy of the third party site.

Generally

DM Civil has taken steps, and will continue to take steps, to ensure that and/or to encourage any domestic third parties it has dealings with to comply with Australian privacy legislation when collecting, holding or using personal information provided to them by DM Civil.

Likely Overseas Disclosure

It is not standard practice for DM Civil to disclose personal information to overseas recipients.  However, there is a possibility that, on occasion, your personal information may be disclosed to an overseas recipient. The location of any potential recipients will vary depending on the project or purpose concerned. Should you have any queries about the potential disclosure of your personal information to an overseas recipient, please contact our Freedom of Information and Privacy Officer.

Disclosure

DM Civil will disclose personal information when it permits that information to become known outside DM Civil and where it releases it from its effective control. For example, DM Civil would be said to have ‘disclosed’ your personal information where:

  • it shares that your personal information with another entity;
  • it publishes your personal information on the internet so that is accessible by others;
  • where one of its staff reveals your personal information in the course of a conversation with a person who does not work for DM Civil; or
  • where one of its staff sends a document containing your personal information to someone who is not you.

Apart from where you have consented or disclosure is necessary to achieve the purpose for which it was submitted, personal information may be disclosed in special situations where we have reason to believe that doing so is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against anyone damaging, injuring, or interfering (intentionally or unintentionally) with our rights or property, users, or anyone else who could be harmed by such activities. Also, we may disclose personal information when we believe in good faith that the law requires disclosure.

Notification Of Changes

If we decide to change this Privacy Statement, we will post those changes to our website and other places we deem appropriate so our users are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

Problems Or Questions

If you have any queries relating to this Privacy Statement, or you have a problem or complaint, please contact our Freedom of Information and Privacy Officer Stephen Hall on 9492 1800.

Should you wish to lodge a complaint with an external body, please refer to our full Privacy Statement for the appropriate steps to take.