Privacy Statement

This privacy statement applies to SignOff, a New Zealand service for organising and administering building-consent documentation. It explains the kinds of personal information SignOff may collect, why it is used, when it may be shared with service providers or other project participants, and the choices available to you.

1. Information we collect

Depending on how you use SignOff, we may collect or hold:

• Account and identity information, including your name, verified mobile number, verified email address, company name and physical address.
• Professional information, including trade, profession or specialism, geographic operating area, registration, licence, qualification or accreditation information and applicable status or expiry information.
• Project information, including project addresses, Building Consent references, project responsibilities, requirements, assignments, approvals, inspection information and project history.
• Documents and images you upload or photograph, including Building Consents, producer statements, certificates, warranties, inspection records and other project evidence.
• Service communications, such as authentication messages, invitations, support requests and service notifications.
• Operational and security information reasonably required to operate, secure and troubleshoot the service, such as authentication events, material user actions, technical logs and document metadata.

SignOff does not maintain its own facial-recognition, fingerprint or biometric database. Where device biometrics are used for device or passkey authentication, they remain part of the device/platform authentication mechanism.

2. Information collected from other people or documents

A Principal may provide a proposed Contributor's contact information so SignOff can send a project invitation. Personal information may also appear in project documents uploaded by another project participant. Where SignOff receives information indirectly, it is handled for the applicable SignOff project, account, record-keeping or service purpose.

3. How we use information

SignOff may use information to:

• establish, verify and maintain SignOff accounts;
• operate project participation and access controls;
• organise Building Consent requirements, responsibilities, documents and project history;
• support Contributor profiles, applicable Directory information and SignOff Performance where those features apply;
• provide service communications, support and security protections;
• read and administratively check documents and present suggestions for human review;
• improve and develop SignOff and analyse platform or industry activity;
• produce aggregated or de-identified insights and undertake other clearly disclosed lawful commercial uses; and
• meet legal, regulatory, security and record-keeping obligations.

SignOff does not use automated processing to replace the Principal's required decisions or the statutory decisions of a Building Consent Authority.

4. Directory and project sharing

Where a Contributor is eligible to appear in the SignOff Directory, SignOff may display professional information reasonably needed for a Principal to assess potential suitability, such as name, company, specialism, region, supplied credential information and status, relevant recognition information and approved SignOff Performance information. Private authentication information and private contact details are not made public merely because a Contributor appears in the Directory.

When a Contributor accepts a project assignment, SignOff may share additional information reasonably required between the people involved in that specific project. Participation in one project does not give another project participant access to unrelated projects or unrelated private information.

5. Service providers and overseas processing

SignOff may use approved service providers for hosting, storage, authentication, communications, document reading, OCR, artificial intelligence and other functions needed to operate the service. Those providers may process information on SignOff's behalf and some processing or storage may occur outside New Zealand where the arrangement has been reviewed and is lawful.

SignOff requires project and personal information handled by its providers to be used for the approved service purpose and not for the provider's own unrelated advertising, profiling or model-training purposes unless a different use has been specifically reviewed, approved and disclosed.

6. Security

SignOff uses access controls and other technical and organisational safeguards designed to limit information access to the people, services and automated processes that reasonably need it for an authorised purpose. No online service can guarantee absolute security, but SignOff is designed around least-privilege access, project isolation, protected authentication and auditable material actions.

7. Retention

SignOff keeps information for as long as it is reasonably required for the purpose for which it is held, including service operation, security, legal obligations and project record-keeping. The approved SignOff product model includes a minimum ten-year retention objective for completed consent project records. This is not a blanket rule that every piece of data is retained for ten years; temporary or operational information may have a shorter retention period where it is no longer needed.

8. Access and correction

You may request access to or correction of personal information SignOff holds about you, subject to applicable New Zealand law. A correction to information that forms part of an auditable Project History may be recorded as a correction or later event rather than silently rewriting the original historical record.

9. Account and data deletion

You may request deletion of your SignOff account and associated personal information using our account deletion page. Some information may need to be retained for legitimate legal, security, fraud-prevention or project-record reasons. Where that applies, SignOff will explain the retained information and reason as part of the request.

10. Changes to this statement

We may update this privacy statement when SignOff's approved service, providers or legal obligations change. The current version will be published on this page with its latest update date.

11. Contact