1. Introduction
2. Other useful information
3. Want to know more?
4. Making a complaint
5. Accessibility
6. Changes to this Notice
7. Where do we collect your personal information from?
8. Why we process personal information?
9. Who do we share your personal information with?
10. How do we use your personal information for marketing purposes?
11. Profiling
12. Retention periods
13. Your choices about our use of your personal information
14. Where will my information be stored?
15. Does this Policy still apply if I live outside the UK?
Appendix 1 : BCIS Affiliated brands
1. Introduction
BCIS Limited operates the Building Cost Information Service (BCIS) which provides cost and price information for the UK construction industry through online applications, data licensing and publications (including Griffiths and Hutchins Publications) ; consultancy and research support to clients from both the public and private sector.
It also compiles, monitors, interprets and models Domestic Rebuild Cost Data and using the information, has created a House Rebuilding Cost Calculator which can be accessed on the BCIS website. An equivalent version can be accessed on the ABI website.
We will only process your personal information where we have a lawful basis to do so. The basis for processing your personal information will vary depending on your relationship with us and the activity we need to process your information for. Each section in this Policy indicates who the explanations are likely to be relevant for.
2. Other useful information
We have a separate Privacy Policy for our employees and those wishing to become our employees, which can be accessed at the time of applying to us.
The BCIS Cookies policy explains about our use of cookies which are small files placed on your electronic devices and track how individuals use our websites, helping us to understand user behaviours, identify improvements and target our marketing activities to be of more relevance to you.
3. Want to know more?
If you have any queries about this Privacy Policy or your personal information, you can get in touch with [email protected] and they can help you. Alternatively, you can write to BCIS Customer Service, Atlas House, 1 King Street, London, EC2V 8AU.
4. Making a complaint
If you have a complaint about how we process your personal information, please let our Customer Service Team know by contacting the BCIS Customer Service using the details in section 3.
If you are resident in the UK, you can raise your complaint with the Information Commissioner, contact details for which are on their website: Contact us | ICO
If you are resident in the European Economic Area, you can complain to your local data protection supervisory authority. You can find their contact details here.
If you based elsewhere in the world, you may have the right to make a complaint to your local protection supervisory authority depending on the legislation in your country. You can contact contact [email protected] for further information.
5. Accessibility
If you need this privacy notice in a more accessible format, for example in Braille, please contact [email protected]
6. Changes to this Notice
This privacy notice is regularly reviewed and will be updated when necessary. If we make any changes which impact the way in which your information is processed, we will let you know.
7. Where do we collect your personal information from?
We will collect most of your personal information directly from you to administer or manage your relationship with BCIS. We will try to make it clear when we collect your information, what is mandatory and what is optional. If you do not provide us with the information, you may not be able to retain your chosen relationship with BCIS; or we may be unable to deliver the product or service you have requested.
In addition to the personal information that we collect directly from you, we also receive information about you from:
| Examples | Subscribers | Public | |
| Employers/Representatives | Where your employer, or a representative of your employer sets up and/or pays for your subscriptions, they will provide us with relevant information about you, to help us manage and validate your/your organisation’s subscription to our online services. | Yes | |
| Subscribers | When our subscribers upload documents and files into the system, limited information about you may be provided to BCIS and viewable by other subscribers e.g. the name of an architect showing on a copy of a plan. | Yes | |
| Your use of our online services | Computer, device and connection information, such as IP address, browser type and version, operating system and other software installed on your device, mobile platform and unique device identifier and other technical identifiers, error reports and performance data; See our Cookies policy for more information. | Yes | Yes |
| Usage data, such as the features you used, the settings you selected. | Yes | Yes |
8. Why we process personal information
We rely upon different legal bases for processing personal information according to the relationship and purpose for which it is collected.
| Legal basis | Examples | Subscribers | Public |
| CONTRACTUAL We need to process personal information to deliver and administer the services that we provide. Where we need to contact you about this, you will not be able to opt-out of receiving these essential service communications. | Providing, activating, and managing your access to and use of our subscription services such as the Building Cost Information Service (BCIS) House Rebuilding Cost Calculator. | Yes | Yes |
| Processing and fulfilling requests, orders, downloads, or subscriptions. | Yes | Yes | |
| Managing complaints and investigations. | Yes | Yes | |
| Managing payment, fees and charges due to and from individuals, including the collection and recovery of money owed to us. | Yes | ||
| Providing technical, product and other support to anticipate and resolve problems with the House Rebuilding Cost Calculator and other online services to help keep our service working, safe and secure. | Yes | Yes | |
| CONSENT Where appropriate, we seek your consent to process your personal information. Where we rely on your consent to process personal information you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. See section 10 for more information on how we use your information for marketing purposes. | To respond to questions and queries. | Yes | Yes |
| Gathering and analysing diversity information, such as your gender, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation and disabilities to provide us with aggregated and anonymous information which we can publish to help demonstrate the diversity of our subscribers. | Yes | ||
| Publishing your name, contact details and market views in survey reports, where you have provided this information (survey responses remain anonymous). | Yes | Yes | |
| LEGITIMATE INTEREST We will process your personal information if we have a good faith belief that it will help us manage our business more effectively but will not have any significant impact on your right to privacy; and where such processing is a legitimate part of what anyone with a relationship with a professional body might reasonably expect to happen. You can object to our processing of your personal information for these purposes, based on your situation but we can continue to process the information if we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds which override your interests. See section 10 for more information on how we use your information for marketing purposes. | Making you aware of the BCIS activities, initiatives and products from which you can benefit. | YES | |
| Analysing personal information to: > help maintain service quality > administer our business e.g., manage and monitor subscriptions > improve your experience and our products, services and systems > collate, aggregate and anonymise information for internal and external use, to help communicate generic information about the makeup of our subscribers and usage of the service. | YES | YES | |
| Gathering statistics around email opening to help us monitor and improve our e-newsletter and campaigns to ensure they remain relevant. | YES | ||
| To defend any legal claims made against us. | YES | YES | |
| As part of a corporate transaction, such as a transfer of assets to or an acquisition by or merger with another company. | YES | YES | |
| Analysing patterns of behaviour to detect possible fraud or breaches the online services terms of use. | YES | YES | |
| Gathering archive and research materials for historical reference. | YES | YES | |
| Sharing information with your employer or representative where it supports administration of your subscription. | YES | YES | |
| If you are an administrator of an organisation with a subscription to our services (e.g. our Building Cost Information Service), we will use your details to communicate with you about your organisation’s subscription and related services. | YES | ||
| We maintain a record of telephone calls made to us for training and monitoring purposes. | YES | YES | |
| Where our investigations into complaints lead us to suspect a crime has been committed or that you have failed to comply with regulations, we will share your personal information with RICS (if you are a RICS member), law enforcement and local Government Authorities for their further investigation and action. | YES | ||
| LEGAL REASONS We also will disclose your personal information if we have a good faith belief that such disclosure is necessary to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or other legal obligation. | In response to a request from the police, Trading Standards, HMRC or other law enforcement agencies undertaking investigations. For example, if they request your subscription details. | YES | YES |
| Where necessary we will use your information for the purpose of performing Anti-Money Laundering and Sanction checks on nationals of sanctioned countries (where applicable). This is required to satisfy the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 UK | YES | ||
| Complying with our legal obligations, resolving disputes, and enforcing agreements. | YES | YES |
9. Who do we share your personal information with?
We have already covered some specific examples in the previous sections, but in general we may share your information with:
| Examples | Subscribers | Public | |
| Our Group Companies | We share information with other initiatives within BCIS to help us manage our business effectively and manage your requests for our products, services and support (see appendix 1 for details of the companies in our Group). | YES | YES |
| Service Providers | We share information with our service providers and suppliers, such as IT service providers, specialist security companies, market research companies and scanning and shredding services. In these arrangements, BCIS remains responsible for, and enters into contracts to protect, your personal information; the service providers cannot use your information for their own purposes. | YES | YES |
| Professional advisers, regulatory and legal authorities | We disclose your personal data to our professional advisers, legal authorities, other professional bodies, other regulators or other third parties, in order to investigate complaints, to exercise or defend our legal rights or otherwise, where required by law. | YES | YES |
| Corporate transactions | We will disclose your personal information if we have a good faith belief that such disclosure is necessary as part of a corporate transaction, such as a transfer of assets to or an acquisition by or merger with another company. | YES | YES |
| General public | If you are an administrator of an organisation with a subscription to our services and you supply us contact information for your colleagues, we will contact those individuals with communications about our services and that may include reference to you. | YES | YES |
| We will share information with the public and press to support advertisement of our activities, company and the profession. We aim to aggregate and anonymise information in these scenarios. Where this is not possible, we will ask for you consent unless we can demonstrate a legitimate business interest in sharing your information and it will not have a significant effect on your right to privacy. | YES | YES | |
| Any-one you ask us to share information with | If you ask us to share your information, we will. For example, this might be sharing information with your employer. | YES | YES |
| Law enforcement and government/public bodies | We will share your information with the Police, HMRC, Trading Standards or other similar bodies where we believe we are required to by law, or we have a legitimate interest in sharing your information. | YES | YES |
| Market research partners | We conduct market research to understand subscribers’ and others’ views about the products and services we provide. We will process your personal information if we have a good faith belief that it will help us manage our business more effectively but will not have any significant impact on your right to privacy; and where such processing is a legitimate part of what anyone with a relationship with a professional body might reasonably expect to happen. You can object to our processing of your personal information for these purposes, based on your situation but we can continue to process the information if we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds which override your interests. See section 10 for more information on how we use your information for marketing purposes. | YES | |
| Your organisation | We may obtain personal information about you from the organisation or university with which you are employed or affiliated to activate and manage your access to and use of the organisation’s subscription to our services. If you access our services through a subscription administered by your organisation or university, the administrators authorised by your organisation or university can access, or we can share with them, your personal information and certain usage data gathered through the service for the purposes of usage analysis, subscription management and compliance and departmental budgeting. | YES |
10. How do we use your personal information for marketing purposes?
We believe that individuals who have subscribed to our online services, would like us to make them aware of the activities, initiatives, products and opportunities from which they can benefit. Therefore, we will send you marketing messages by SMS text message, telephone, mail or email, about products, services, events or opportunities that we believe will be of interest to you. Our lawful basis for this is legitimate interest, as such you have a right to object but we do not need your explicit consent, however you can change your marketing preferences at any time by logging into BCIS.co.uk to change your marketing preferences or by emailing us at [email protected] If you have not bought a product or service from us, or if you are in a country where local legislation requires it, we will not send you any marketing messages without your consent. We will not give your information to any third party for their own marketing activities without your consent. We will never sell your personal information to third parties.
11. Profiling
We group and organise the personal information we collect about you to help us understand our subscribers, tailor our marketing communications, develop new products and services as well as make improvements to our systems and websites. This is known as profiling. We do not use profiling to make any decisions about you which have legal or other significant effects.
If you do not want us to profile you in this way, please email [email protected]
12. Retention Periods
We keep your personal information to help us maintain our business and financial records, resolve disputes, detect and prevent fraud and abuse, enforce our agreements and comply with our legal obligations. We also keep your personal information for as long as necessary to provide the service and support you’ve asked for. The specific retention periods will vary depending on your relationship with us and the purposes for which your information is used as outlined below.
| Examples | |
| Managing our online subscription services | The Building Cost Information Service (BCIS) is a reciprocal service and we rely on information from individual subscribers to be able to publish specific or aggregated data to subscribers in general. We aim to anonymise all published data but occasionally this is not possible. For example, where an author’s name has been included on a floor plan. In those circumstances we hold such information indefinitely. |
| If you use our House Rebuilding Cost Calculator, we retain your details for a 12-month period to ensure users are not making multiple registrations to exceed the usage limits. | |
| Managing our business | To help us manage our business now and in the future, we may keep information beyond your relationship with us, for example we keep financial records which include your subscription details, for 7 years to help us prepare our financial accounts. |
13. Your choices about our use of your personal information
You have the following rights in respect of your personal information. If you wish to exercise these rights, please use the contact details provided below or those in section 3. Before we can help you, we may need to confirm your identity. If we are unable to accept your request, we will explain the reasons why.
| Right | Examples | Subscribers | Public |
| Objecting (general) | You have the right to object to our processing of your personal information, where we are processing your information based on: legitimate interests (for example if you do not want to participate in surveys or be profiled); or for the purposes of scientific/historical research and statistics. Your objection should be based on your situation. In some circumstances we can refuse to comply with your objection.If we are processing your information with your consent, you can withdraw your consent at any time. In some cases, we may not be able to reverse the processing of your information, for example if it has been published in documents which are in the public domain, however we will explain if this is the case. Email us at [email protected] if you wish to raise an objection or withdraw your consent. | YES | YES |
| Objecting (direct marketing) | Depending on your relationship with us, we may occasionally need to send you important information for example when we need to send information about a planned outage to our online services, or a reminder about your subscription renewal. We may send these messages by email, mail, SMS text message, or telephone. You will not be able to opt-out of receiving these communications. | YES | YES |
| You have an absolute right to ask us not to send you marketing messages by SMS text message, telephone, mail or email. | YES | YES | |
| Accessing your information | You have the right to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you and this will usually be provided free of charge. We can refuse to comply with an access request if it is manifestly excessive or we are unable to conduct reasonable searches to locate your information. Taking into account the volume of documents we hold, we will need as much information as possible to enable us to make reasonable searches to locate your information. Whilst you are entitled to a copy of the personal information we hold; you are not entitled to copies of the documents in which that information sits. In some circumstances, it is convenient for us to provide copies of the documents, but we will not always do so. To request a copy of your personal information, please contact [email protected] or write to us using the contact details in section 3. | YES | YES |
| Transferring your information | In some circumstances. you can ask us to transfer any personal information we hold about you to a specific company or person, or back to you directly. This will be sent electronically and only applies to information that you have provided to us and that we are processing electronically on the basis of your consent or in the performance of a contract. To request a transfer of your personal information, please contact [email protected] or write to us using the contact details in section 3. | YES | YES |
| Rectifying your information | You have the right to have any incorrect personal information corrected or completed if it is incomplete. Where you have a relationship with us (for example if you are a subscriber), it is your responsibility to inform us of any change to your contact details. To amend your personal information, please contact [email protected] or write to us using the contact details in section 3. | YES | YES |
| Erasing your information | This right, often referred to as the right to be forgotten, allows you to ask us to erase personal information where there is no valid reason for us to keep it. See section 12 for details of our retention periods. To ask us to erase your personal information, please contact [email protected] or write to us using the contact details in section 3. | YES | YES |
14. Where will my information be stored?
BCIS is a UK company. Our main information systems are located within the United Kingdom.
15. Does this Policy still apply if I live outside the UK?
BCIS supports individuals from around the world and this Privacy Policy applies to all those about whom we collect and process personal information. However, whilst this Policy has been written to align to the UK and EU GDPR regulations, we do take into consideration local requirements which exceed the requirements of the GDPR, for example if local legislation gives you the right to access your information within 15 days of your request, rather than the month dictated by GDPR.
Appendix 1 : BCIS Affiliated brands
BCIS Limited includes the following brands/products. Details are:
Built Environment Carbon Database (BECD)
House Rebuilding Cost Calculator
Griffiths and Hutchins Publications