Privacy Policy

Date: August, 8 2024

This Privacy Policy applies to personal information that we collect through our corporate website at www.aecinspire.com and application app.aecinspire.net (together, the “Website“) and when you use or interact with our Services. This Privacy Policy does not apply to third party products or Services that you may choose to integrate with AECInspire’s product or Services. You should always review the policies of third party products and services to make sure you are comfortable with the ways in which they collect and use your information. By using or accessing our website in any manner, you acknowledge that you accept the practices and policies outlined below, and you hereby consent that we will collect, use and share your information as described in this Privacy Policy.

Your use of AECInspire services (“Services”) is at all times subject to our Terms and Conditions which incorporates this Privacy Policy. Any terms we use in this Policy without defining them have the definitions given to them in the Terms and Conditions.

As we continually work to improve our Services, we may need to change this Privacy Policy from time to time. Upon such changes, we will alert you to any such changes by placing a notice on the Website, by sending you an email and/or by some other means. Please note that if you’ve opted not to receive legal notice emails from us (or you haven’t provided us with your email address), those legal notices will still govern your use of the Services, and you are still responsible for reading and understanding them. If you use the Services after any changes to the Privacy Policy have been posted, that means you agree to all of the changes.

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, then please contact us using the contact details provided at the bottom of this Privacy Policy.  You may print a copy of this Privacy Policy by clicking here. If you have a disability, you may access this Privacy Policy in an alternative format by contacting privacy@aecinspire.com.

What does AECInspire do?

AECInspire is the leading platform that helps construction project teams manage and procure building materials. 

What Personal Information does AECInspire collect?

The personal information that we may collect about you broadly falls into the following categories:

Categories of Sources of Personal Information 

• You 
  • When you provide such information directly to us:
    • When you create an account or use our interactive tools and Services.
    • When you voluntarily provide information in free-form text boxes through the Services or through responses to surveys or questionnaires.
    • When you subscribe to marketing communications from us
    • When you send us an email or otherwise contact us.  
    • The personal information that you are asked to provide, and the reasons why you are asked to provide it, will be made clear to you at the point we ask you to provide your personal information.
  • When you use Services and such information is collected automatically:
    • Through Cookies (defined in the “Tracking Tools, Ads, Advertising and Opt-Out” section below).
    • If you visit or use our Website, we may receive information about your location via your IP address, and may receive and collect information transmitted from your computing device for the purpose of providing you the relevant Services, such as information regarding when you are logged on and available to receive updates or alert notices.
• Administrators. In some cases another user (such as an administrator) may create an account on your behalf and may provide your information, including personal information.  If you are an employee of one of our customers and would no longer like us to process your information, please contact your employer. If you are providing information (including personal information) about someone else, you must have the authority to act for them and to consent to the collection and use of their personal information as described in this Privacy Policy.

Other Third Parties. Information from third party services. From time to time, we may receive personal information about you from third party sources (e.g. sales and marketing database and data enrichment platforms), but only where we have checked that these third parties either have your consent or are otherwise legally permitted or required to disclose your personal information to us.  The types of information we collect from third parties include account and/or contact information and we use the information we receive from these third parties to, including but not limited to, market and sell to you, and/or maintain and improve the accuracy of the records we hold about you, etc.

Disclosure of Personal Information

We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of recipients:

• Service Providers. These parties help us provide the Services or perform business functions on our behalf. They include:
  • Hosting, technology and communication providers.
  • Support and customer service vendors.
  • Security and fraud prevention consultants.
  • Product fulfillment and delivery providers.
  • Payment processors.
    • Our credit card payment processing partner Stripe, Inc. (“Stripe”) collects your voluntarily-provided payment card information necessary to process your payment.
    • See Stripe’s terms of service and privacy policy for information on its use and storage of your personal data.
• Advertising Partners. These parties help us market our services and provide you with other offers that may be of interest to you. They include:
  • Ad networks.
  • Data brokers.
  • Marketing providers.
• Analytics Partners. These parties provide analytics on web traffic or usage of the Services. They include:
  • Companies that track how users found or were referred to the Services.
  • Companies that track how users interact with the Services.
• Business Partners. These parties partner with us in offering various services. They include:
  • Businesses that you have a relationship with.
  • Companies that we partner with to offer joint promotional offers or opportunities.
• Parties You Authorize, Access or Authenticate
  • Third parties you access through the services.
  • Social media services.
  • Other users.

In addition, we may disclose information about you for the following purposes: 

Legal Obligations

We may share any personal data that we collect with third parties in conjunction with any of the activities set forth under “Meeting Legal Requirements and Enforcing Legal Terms” in the “Our Commercial or Business Purposes for Collecting or Disclosing Personal Data” section above. 

Business Transfers

All of your personal data that we collect may be transferred to a third party if we undergo a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy or other transaction in which that third party assumes control of our business (in whole or in part). Should one of these events occur, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you before your information becomes subject to different privacy and security policies and practices.

Data that is Not Personal Data

We may create aggregated, de-identified or anonymized data from the personal data we collect, including by removing information that makes the data personally identifiable to a particular user. We may use such aggregated, de-identified or anonymized data and share it with third parties for our lawful business purposes, including to analyze, build and improve the Services and promote our business, provided that we will not share such data in a manner that could identify you.  

Our Commercial or Business Purposes for Collecting or Disclosing Personal Information

This section describes how we may use your Personal Data:

• Providing, Customizing and Improving the Services
  • Creating and managing your account or other user profiles.
  • Processing orders or other transactions; billing.
  • Providing you with the products, services or information you request.
  • Meeting or fulfilling the reason you provided the information to us.
  • Providing support and assistance for the Services.
  • Improving the Services, including testing, research, internal analytics and product development.
  • Personalizing the Services, website content and communications based on your preferences.
  • Doing fraud protection, security and debugging.
  • Carrying out other business purposes stated when collecting your personal data or as otherwise set forth in applicable data privacy laws.
• Marketing the Services
  • Marketing and selling the Services.
  • Showing you advertisements, including interest-based or online behavioral advertising.
• Corresponding with You
  • Responding to correspondence that we receive from you, contacting you when necessary or requested, and sending you information about AECInspire or our Services.
  • Sending emails and other communications according to your preferences or that display content that we think will interest you.
• Meeting Legal Requirements and Enforcing Legal Terms
  • Fulfilling our legal obligations under applicable law, regulation, court order or other legal process, such as preventing, detecting and investigating security incidents and potentially illegal or prohibited activities.
  • Protecting the rights, property or safety of you, AECInspire or another party.
  • Enforcing any agreements with you.
  • Responding to claims that any posting or other content violates third-party rights.
  • Resolving disputes.

We will not collect additional categories of personal data or use the personal data we collected for materially different, unrelated or incompatible purposes without providing you notice.

Personal Data Use and Processing Grounds (EEA Users)

This section describes our lawful bases for processing your personal data. The “Our Commercial or Business Purposes for Collecting or Disclosing Personal Data” section above explains how we use your personal data.

We will only process your personal data if we have a lawful basis for doing so. Lawful bases for processing include consent, contractual necessity and our “legitimate interests” or the legitimate interest of others, as further described below.

• Contractual Necessity:  We process the following categories of personal data as a matter of “contractual necessity”, meaning that we need to process the data to perform under our Terms of Use with you, which enables us to provide you with the Services. When we process data due to contractual necessity, failure to provide such personal data will result in your inability to use some or all portions of the Services that require such data.
  • Certain Profile or Contact Data
  • Certain Device/IP Data
• Legitimate Interest:  We process the following categories of personal data when we believe it furthers the legitimate interest of us or third parties:
  • Certain Profile or Contact Data
  • Web Analytics
  • Social Network Data
  • Professional or Employment-Related Data
  • Geolocation Data
  • Sensory Data
  • Other Identifying Information that You Voluntarily Choose to Provide

Examples of these legitimate interests include (as described in more detail above):

• Providing, customizing and improving the Services.
• Marketing the Services.
• Corresponding with you.
• Meeting legal requirements and enforcing legal terms.
• Completing corporate transactions.
• Consent:  In some cases, we process personal data based on the consent you expressly grant to us at the time we collect such data. When we process personal data based on your consent, it will be expressly indicated to you at the point and time of collection. 
• Other Processing Grounds:  From time to time we may also need to process personal data to comply with a legal obligation, if it is necessary to protect the vital interests of you or other data subjects, or if it is necessary for a task carried out in the public interest.

Tracking Tools, Advertising, and Opt-Out

As mentioned above, the Services use cookies and similar technologies such as pixel tags, web beacons, clear GIFs and JavaScript (collectively, “Cookies”) to enable our servers to recognize your web browser, tell us how and when you visit and use our Services, analyze trends, count users who have opened an email, learn about our user base and operate and improve our Services. Cookies are small pieces of data– usually text files – placed on your computer, tablet, phone or similar device when you use that device to access our Services. You can decide whether or not to accept Cookies through your internet browser’s settings. Most browsers have an option for turning off the Cookie feature, which will prevent your browser from accepting new Cookies, as well as (depending on the sophistication of your browser software) allow you to decide on acceptance of each new Cookie in a variety of ways. You can also delete all Cookies that are already on your device. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit our website and some of the Services and functionalities may not work.

To modify your preferences with respect to Cookies, go to Cookie Settings to accept or decline. To find out more information about Cookies generally, including information about how to manage and delete Cookies, please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/ or https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies/ if you are located in the European Union (“EU”). 

We may also supplement the information we collect from you with information received from third parties, including third parties that have placed their own Cookies on your device(s). To opt out of cookies, go to Cookie Settings and click “Decline”. Please note that “Your browser may offer you a “Do Not Track” option, which allows you to signal to operators of websites and web applications and services that you do not wish such operators to track certain of your online activities over time and across different websites. Our Services do not support Do Not Track requests at this time. To find out more about “Do Not Track,” you can visit www.allaboutdnt.com.“

Information about Interest-Based Advertisements

You may see advertisements for our Services on third party websites. These advertisements may be targeted to users who fit certain general profile categories or display certain preferences or behaviors (“Interest-Based Ads”). Information for Interest-Based Ads (including personal data) may be provided to us or third-parties by you, or derived from the usage patterns of particular users on the Services and/or services of third parties. Such information may be gathered through tracking users’ activities across time and unaffiliated properties, including when you leave the Services. To accomplish this, we or our service providers may deliver Cookies, including a file (known as a “web beacon”) from an ad network to you through the Services. Web beacons allow ad networks to provide anonymized, aggregated auditing, research and reporting for us and for advertisers. Web beacons also enable ad networks to serve targeted advertisements to you when you visit other websites. Web beacons allow ad networks to view, edit or set their own Cookies on your browser, just as if you had requested a web page from their site.

Data Security

We seek to protect your personal data from unauthorized access, use and disclosure using appropriate physical, technical, organizational and administrative security measures based on the type of personal data and how we are processing that data. You should also help protect your data by appropriately selecting and protecting your password and/or other sign-on mechanism; limiting access to your computer or device and browser; and signing off after you have finished accessing your account. Although we work to protect the security of your account and other data that we hold in our records, please be aware that no method of transmitting data over the internet or storing data is completely secure. If you have reason to believe that your data or someone else’s data is no longer secure, please contact privacy@aecinspire.com.

In the event of a security breach, we will take necessary measures to ensure the continued safety of data and contact affected parties and relevant regulators within a reasonable amount of time about the scope and scale of the unauthorized disclosure, as required by applicable laws.

Data Retention

We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to perform our business or commercial purposes for collecting your Personal Data or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).  When establishing a retention period for specific categories of data, we consider who we collected the data from, our need for the Personal Data, why we collected the Personal Data, and the sensitivity of the Personal Data.

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

For example, we retain your device IP data for as long as we need it to ensure that our systems are working appropriately, effectively and efficiently.

Personal Data of Children

We do not knowingly collect or solicit personal data about children under 18 years of age; if you are a child under the age of 18, please do not attempt to register for or otherwise use the Services or send us any personal data. If we are informed that we have collected personal data from a child under 16 years of age, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a child under 16 years of age may have provided personal data to us, please contact us at privacy@aecinspire.com.

International Data Transfers

Your personal information may be transferred to, and processed in, countries other than the country in which you are resident.  These countries may have data protection laws that are different to the laws of your country.

Specifically, our Website servers are located in the United States and our third party service providers and partners operate around the world but with our data stored in the United States. The Services are hosted and operated in the United States (“U.S.”) through AECInspire and its service providers, and if you do not reside in the U.S., laws in the U.S. may differ from the laws where you reside. By using the Services, you acknowledge that any Personal Data about you, regardless of whether provided by you or obtained from a third party, is being provided to AECInspire in the U.S. and will be hosted on U.S. servers, and you authorize AECInspire to transfer, store and process your information to and in the U.S., and possibly other countries. In some circumstances, your Personal Data may be transferred to the U.S. pursuant to a data processing agreement incorporating standard data protection clauses. 

California Resident Rights

If you are a California resident, you have the rights set forth in this section. Please see the “Exercising Your Rights” section below for instructions regarding how to exercise these rights. Please note that we may process personal data of our customers’ end users or employees in connection with our provision of certain services to our customers. If we are processing your personal data as a service provider, you should contact the entity that collected your Personal Data in the first instance to address your rights with respect to such data. Additionally, please note that these rights are subject to certain conditions and exceptions under applicable law, which may permit or require us to deny your request.

If there are any conflicts between this section and any other provision of this Privacy Policy and you are a California resident, the portion that is more protective of personal data shall control to the extent of such conflict. If you have any questions about this section or whether any of the following rights apply to you, please contact us at privacy@aecinspire.com.

Access

You have the right to request certain information about our collection and use of your personal data over the past 12 months. In response, we will provide you with the following information:

• The categories of personal data that we have collected about you.
• The categories of sources from which that personal data was collected.
• The business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling your personal data.
• The categories of third parties with whom we have shared your personal data.
• The specific pieces of personal data that we have collected about you.

If we have disclosed your personal data to any third parties for a business purpose over the past 12 months, we will identify the categories of personal data shared with each category of third party recipient. We do not and have not sold your personal data in the last 12 months. 

Deletion

You have the right to request that we delete the Personal Data that we have collected about you. Under the CCPA, this right is subject to certain exceptions: for example, we may need to retain your Personal Data to provide you with the Services or complete a transaction or other action you have requested, or if deletion of your Personal Data involves disproportionate effort. If your deletion request is subject to one of these exceptions, we may deny your deletion request.

Correction

You have the right to request that we correct any inaccurate Personal Data we have collected about you. Under the CCPA, this right is subject to certain exceptions: for example, if we decide, based on the totality of circumstances related to your Personal Data, that such data is correct. If your correction request is subject to one of these exceptions, we may deny your request.

Processing of Sensitive Personal Information Opt-Out

Consumers have certain rights over the processing of their sensitive information. However, we do not collect sensitive categories of personal information.

Personal Data Selling/Sharing Opt-Out and Opt-In

Under the CCPA, California residents have certain rights when a business discloses Personal Data for certain purposes such as cross-contextual behavioral advertising, which may constitute a “sale” or “sharing” of Personal Data. We have sold and/or shared the foregoing categories of Personal Data for the purposes of cross-contextual behavioral advertising.

• Device/IP Data
• Web Analytics

As described in the “Tracking Tools, Advertising and Opt-Out” section above, we have incorporated Cookies from certain third parties into our Services. These Cookies allow those third parties to receive information about your activity on our Services that is associated with your browser or device. Those third parties may use that data to serve you relevant ads on our Services or on other websites you visit. Under the CCPA, selling/sharing your data through third party Cookies for online advertising may be considered “selling” or “sharing” of information. You can opt out of data selling/sharing by following the instructions in this section.

We have not knowingly “sold” or “shared” personal information from anyone under 16.

You have the right to opt-out of selling and sharing of your Personal Data using the following methods:

• You can use a Global Privacy Control or similar control that is legally recognized by a government agency or industry standard. Please note this does not include Do Not Track signals.  
• You can opt-out from the application of cookies by going to Cookie Settings and click “Decline”. 

Once you have submitted an opt-out request, we will not ask you to reauthorize the selling/sharing of your Personal Data for at least 12 months.

Exercising Your Rights under the CCPA

To exercise the rights described in this Privacy Policy, you or, if you are a California resident, your

Authorized Agent (defined below) must send us a request that (1) provides sufficient information to allow us to verify that you are the person about whom we have collected Personal Data, and (2) describes your request in sufficient detail to allow us to understand, evaluate and respond to it. Each request that meets both of these criteria will be considered a “Valid Request.” We may not respond to requests that do not meet these criteria. We will only use Personal Data provided in a Valid Request to verify your identity and complete your request. You do not need an account to submit a Valid Request. We will work to respond to your Valid Request within the time period required by applicable law. We will not charge you a fee for making a Valid Request unless your Valid Request(s) is excessive, repetitive or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that your Valid Request warrants a fee, we will notify you of the fee and explain that decision before completing your request.

You may submit a Valid Request using the following method:

• Email us at: privacy@aecinspire.com

If you are a California resident, you may also authorize an agent (an “Authorized Agent”) to exercise your rights on your behalf. To do this, you must provide your Authorized Agent with written permission to exercise your rights on your behalf, and we may request a copy of this written permission from your Authorized Agent when they make a request on your behalf.

We Will Not Discriminate Against You for Exercising Your Rights Under the CCPA

We will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights under the CCPA. We will not deny you our goods or services, charge you different prices or rates, or provide you a lower quality of goods and services if you exercise your rights under the CCPA. However, we may offer different tiers of our Services as allowed by applicable data privacy laws (including the CCPA) with varying prices, rates or levels of quality of the goods or services you receive related to the value of personal data that we receive from you.

Other State Law Privacy Rights

California Resident Rights

Under California Civil Code Sections 1798.83-1798.84, California residents are entitled to contact us to prevent disclosure of personal data to third parties for such third parties’ direct marketing purposes; in order to submit such a request, please contact us at privacy@AECInspire.com. 

Nevada Resident Rights

If you are a resident of Nevada, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of certain personal data to third parties who intend to license or sell that personal data. You can exercise this right by contacting us at privacy@AECInspire.com with the subject line “Nevada Do Not Sell Request” and providing us with your name and the email address associated with your account. Please note that we do not currently sell your personal data as sales are defined in Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 603A.  Please note that we do not and have not sold your personal data.

European Union, United Kingdom, and Swiss Data Subject Rights

You have the following data protection rights:

Access, correct update or request deletion. If you wish to access, correct, update or request deletion of your personal information, you can do so at any time by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.  

Object to processing, restrict processing, or request portability. In addition, if you are a resident of the EU, UK, or Switzerland, you can object to processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information. Again, you can exercise these rights by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

Opt-out. You have the right to opt-out of marketing communications we send you at any time.  You can exercise this right by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link in the marketing emails we send you.  To opt-out of other forms of marketing (such as postal marketing  or telemarketing), then please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

Withdraw consent. Similarly, if we have collected and processed your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time.  Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.

Right to complain. You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information.  For more information, please contact your local data protection authority. (Contact details for data protection authorities in the European Economic Area are available here.) 

We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

Updates to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in response to changing legal, technical or business developments. When we update our Privacy Policy, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make.  We will obtain your consent to any material Privacy Policy changes if and where this is required by applicable data protection laws. 

You can see when this Privacy Policy was last updated by checking the “last updated” date displayed at the top of this Privacy Policy. 

How to contact us

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, your rights, our use of your personal information, please contact privacy@aecinspire.com.