Terms and Conditions

This page contains terms and conditions and the privacy policy:

Welcome to BRANZ!

Thanks for using our products and services.

Terms and conditions

The terms and conditions set out below (“Terms”) govern your use of the BRANZ Find, MyBRANZ Knowledge and the BRANZ Chatbot, including any associated: (a) software or website components; (b) media, printed materials, online or electronic documentation; and (c) data, information or content (collectively, the “Services”). The Services are owned, operated and provided by, or licensed to, Building Research Association of New Zealand Incorporated/BRANZ Limited (“BRANZ”) of 1222 Moonshine Road, Wellington, New Zealand, and our related companies (“we” or “us”).

By accessing or using the Services, you are deemed to have agreed to these Terms. In these Terms, any person who accesses the Services is referred to as "you" or "your". If you do not accept these Terms, you must not use the Services.

If you have any questions regarding the Services or the Terms, please contact us here.

We reserve the right to make changes to these Terms by updating them and notifying you by email or through notifications provided through the Services. The revised Terms will be effective once they are updated or notified to you and your continued use of the Services means you agree to the revised Terms.

Using the Services

By using the Services you acknowledge and agree:

to follow any policies made available to you within the Services;
we do not have any control or responsibility for any search you conduct nor material you may upload to the Services;
that we are not liable to you if any building consent application or supporting evidence submitted by you is not, for any reason (including lateness caused by any delay in the Services), approved or accepted by a building consent authority; and
if you are using the Services on behalf of a business, that business accepts these Terms.

The Services may include some content that is not ours. This content is the sole responsibility of the entity that makes it available. We may review content to determine whether it is illegal or violates our policies, and we may remove or refuse to display content that we reasonably believe violates our policies or the law. This does not necessarily mean that we review content, so please do not assume that we do.

In connection with your use of the Services, we may send you service announcements, administrative messages, and other information. You may opt out of some of those communications by using the unsubscribe functionality on such communications.

These Terms represent the entire agreement between the parties and supersede any prior proposal, representation, or understanding you may have with us.

Your BRANZ Account

You will need a user account in order to use some of the Services (“BRANZ Account”). You may create your own BRANZ Account, or your BRANZ Account may be assigned to you by an administrator, such as your employer or building consent authority. If you are using a BRANZ Account assigned to you by an administrator, different or additional terms may apply and your administrator may be able to access or disable your account.

To protect your BRANZ Account, keep your username and password confidential. You are responsible for the activity that happens on or through your BRANZ Account. Try not to reuse your BRANZ Account password on third-party applications. If you learn of any unauthorised use of your username, password or BRANZ Account, contact us immediately.

Your Data and other Content

Our policies explain how we collect, use, protect and disclose your data and other content (together “Your Data”) for the purposes of using the Services.

The Services may allow you to upload, submit, store, send Your Data, or to receive content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in Your Data.

When you upload, submit, store, or send Your Data to or through the Services, you give us (and those we work with) a perpetual, worldwide, royalty free, irrevocable licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute Your Data.

If you have a BRANZ Account, we may display your profile name, profile photo, and actions you take on the Services, or on third-party applications connected to your BRANZ Account, including displaying ads and other commercial contexts. We will respect the choices you make to limit sharing or visibility settings in your BRANZ Account.

You can find more information about how we use Your Data that is personal information in the Privacy Policy.

You acknowledge and agree that you will have sole responsibility for the legality, reliability, integrity, accuracy and quality of Your Data.

Each party will take appropriate technical, physical and organisational measures and safeguards against unauthorised or unlawful processing of Your Data or its accidental loss, destruction or damage and we will, as part of these measures, use reasonable endeavours to back-up Your Data. You acknowledge that if there is any loss or damage to Your Data, your sole and exclusive remedy will be for us to use reasonable commercial endeavours to restore such lost or damaged data from the latest back-up of Your Data maintained by us. We will not be responsible for any loss, destruction, alteration or disclosure of Your Data caused by any third party.

You acknowledge and agree that we may use Your Data for the purpose of:

performing our obligations under these Terms;
ensuring that you are complying with these Terms;
improving or enhancing the Services;
performing data analysis, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or cross entity analysis, all on an aggregated and/or anonymous basis.

The Services may offer you the ability to benchmark or compare Your Data against the data provided by other users of the Services (“Other User Data”) and to receive the results of such benchmarking or comparison. You agree to us using Your Data to benchmark or compare against Other User Data. We may, from time to time, provide you with such benchmarking or comparison results. We do not systematically and/or independently verify Your Data or Other User Data entered into the Services by you or other users of the Services. Therefore, you acknowledge that any benchmarking, comparison or other report generated by the Services may not be accurate, and under no circumstances do we guarantee the accuracy of any reports generated by the Services, or accept liability for any form of loss or damage arising out of your use of reports generated through the use of the Services.

Intellectual Property

You acknowledge that any patent, trade mark, service mark, copyright, moral right, right in a design, know-how and any other intellectual property rights, whether registered, in the course of being registered or unregistered and any analogous rights worldwide (“Intellectual Property Rights”) in the Services, belong to us or our licensors.

Without limiting the above, and subject to applicable law, you may not without our prior written permission:

archive any part of the Services;
form a database whether electronically or otherwise by systematically downloading or storing any part of the Services;
redistribute or republish any part of the Services;
link to the Services without our prior written consent including (without limitation) linking in any way which: (a) frames the Services; (b) replicates the Services; or (c) misleads any person regarding any association with us (whether implicitly or expressly).

The trade marks used on the Services are our trade marks or the trade marks of a third party. Nothing on the Services should be construed as granting any licence to use any trade mark without the permission of the owner.

You must not use any of our trade marks:

as, or as part of, your trade marks;
in connection with goods or services which are not our goods or services (unless we have expressly given you our prior written consent);
in a manner that may be confusing, misleading or deceptive; or
in a manner that disparages us or the Services.

About Software in the Services

If the Services require or include downloadable software, this software may update automatically on your device once a new version or feature is available. Some services may let you adjust your automatic update settings.

We give you a personal, worldwide, royalty-free, non-assignable, non-exclusive, revocable licence to access and use the software provided to you as part of the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling you to access and use the Services, in the manner permitted by these Terms.

You will not:

copy, modify, duplicate, create derivate works from, republish, display, transmit, distribute, sell, or lease any part of the Services;
decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer or otherwise reduce to human-perceivable form all or any part of the Services (unless you have our written permission); or
attempt to undermine the integrity or security of the Services, or our, or any third party’s, systems, networks or resources used in the provision of the Services.

Open source software is important to us. Some software used in the Services may be offered under an open source licence that we will make available to you. There may be provisions in the open source licence that expressly override some of these Terms.

Code of Conduct

By agreeing to these Terms, you agree that, when using the Services, you will follow these rules:

Do not do anything illegal;
Do not send spam (unwanted or unsolicited bulk email, postings, contact requests, SMS (text messages) or instant messages);
Do not publicly display or use the Services to share inappropriate content or material or your content or material that does not comply with local laws or regulations;
Do not engage in activity that is false or misleading (e.g. asking for money under false pretences, impersonating someone else, manipulating the Services,) or libellous or defamatory;
Do not circumvent any restrictions on access to or availability of the Services;
Do not engage in activity that is harmful to you, the Services or others (e.g. transmitting viruses, stalking, posting terrorist content, communicating hate speech or advocating violence against others);
Do not infringe upon the rights of others (e.g. unauthorised sharing copyrighted material, resale or other distribution of maps or photographs);
Do not engage in activity that violates the privacy or data protection rights of others;
Do not help others break these rules;
Do not provide your access to the Services to anyone else;
Only use the Services in conjunction with the building project or projects in which you have been appropriately invited to register as a legitimate participant and therefore allowed access to the respective building project or projects through the Services;
It is your responsibility to keep your phone and access to the Services secure. We therefore recommend that you do not jailbreak or root your phone, or remove software restrictions and limitations imposed by the official operating system of your mobile device in any way; and
You are responsible for keeping your device(s) free of malware, viruses, and malicious programs that could compromise your device’s security features.

If you violate these Terms, we may, in our sole discretion, stop providing the Services to you or we may close your BRANZ Account. We may also block delivery of a communication (like email or instant message) to or from the Services in an effort to enforce these Terms, or we may remove or refuse to publish your content for any reason. When investigating alleged violations of these Terms, we reserve the right to review Your Data in order to resolve the issue, and you hereby authorise such review. However, we cannot monitor the entire services and make no attempt to do so.

Multifactor Authentication

The Services may require the registration of a device for all mobile users. This means when you first create an account for the use of the Services you will record a mobile phone number and receive a verification code confirming that this is you on your mobile device. From then on a password is all that is required for you to login. Mobile devices and browsers can remember your sign in information if you elect to allow them to, effectively making it possible for anyone who has access to your device or desktop to gain access to your BRANZ Account.

For the majority of building participants, unauthorised access to their BRANZ Account could provide irritation but is unlikely to disrupt a project beyond the user profile of that participant and their contribution to a shot list on possibly a small number of projects. However, for a Building Project Principal or a system admin, malicious use could cause more widespread disruption to a project. Therefore we may require some roles to maintain multifactor authentication for login on every occasion.

Modifying and Terminating the Services

We are constantly changing and improving the Services. We may add or remove functionalities or features, and we may suspend or stop a service altogether without notice. You can stop using the Services at any time. We may also stop providing any part of the Services to you, or add or create new limits to the Services at any time.

We reserve the right to charge for the Services in the future should this need arise for the funding and continuation of the Services.

If we discontinue any of the Services, where reasonably possible, we will give you reasonable advance notice and a chance to get Your Data out of the Service.

Warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we do not warrant the availability, accuracy, completeness, currency or reliability of the Services. The Services are provided “as is” and "as available" and without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, and you use and rely on such Services at your own risk.

Without limiting the foregoing, we do not represent or warrant that the Services or any part of them will:

operate on a continuous or fault-free basis or at any particular time or location;
be secure or private;
be free of viruses or other harmful features (including any files displayed or obtained from or through the Services or any website linked to them);
contain data, information, content, text, graphics, links or other items contained within or made available to you through the Services, that is accurate, complete or up-to-date.

Nothing in these Terms is intended to avoid the provisions of the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 except to the extent permitted by that Act, or to exclude liability arising under any other statute, if and to the extent that such liability cannot be lawfully excluded.

Liability

If you have any basis for recovering damages (including breach of these Terms), to the extent permitted by the applicable law, you agree that your exclusive remedy is to recover, from us direct damages up to an amount equal to the Services fee for the month during which the breach occurred (or up to NZ$10 if the Services are free).

To the extent permitted by the applicable law, you cannot recover any: (i) consequential losses or damages; (ii) loss of actual or anticipated profits (whether direct or indirect); (iii) loss of actual or anticipated income (whether direct or indirect); (iv) loss of contract or business or other losses or damages arising from your use of the Services in a non-personal capacity; (v) special, indirect, incidental or punitive losses or damages; and (vi) to the extent permitted by law, direct losses or damages in excess of the caps specified above. These limitations and exclusions apply if this remedy does not fully compensate you for any losses or fails of its essential purpose or if we knew or should have known about the possibility of the damages. To the maximum extent permitted by law, these limitations and exclusions apply to anything or any claims related to these Terms, the Services or the software related to the Services.

You will indemnify us against all costs, losses, damages and expenses that we incur arising out of or in connection with your access to or use of the Services, and any breach by you of these Terms.

We are not responsible or liable for any failure to perform or delay in performing our obligations under these Terms to the extent that the failure or delay is caused by circumstances beyond our reasonable control (such as labour disputes, acts of God, war or terrorist activity, malicious damage, accidents or compliance with any applicable law or government order). We will endeavour to minimise the effects of any of these events and to perform the obligations that are not affected.

Payment Terms

If you purchase a Service, then these payment terms apply to your purchase and you agree to them:

The price stated for the Services excludes all applicable taxes.
We may suspend or cancel the Services if we do not receive an on time, full payment from you.
To pay the charges for a Service, you may be asked to provide a payment method at the time you sign up for that Service.
You can access and change your billing information and payment method through the Services.
You accept responsibility for all charges incurred to access the Services, including mobile provider charges (including roaming data charges).
By providing us with a payment method, you: (a) represent that you are authorised to use the payment method that you provided and that any payment information you provide is true and accurate; and (b) authorise us to charge you for the Services.
When you purchase the Services on a subscription basis (e.g. monthly, every 3 months or annually (as applicable)), you acknowledge and agree that you are authorising recurring payment, and payments shall be made to us by the method you have chosen at the recurring intervals you have agreed to, until the subscription for that Service is terminated by you or by us.
Unless otherwise provided by law or by a particular Service offer, all purchases are final and non-refundable.
If you believe that we have charged you in error, you must contact us within 90 days of such charge.
No refunds will be given for any charges more than 90 days old, unless otherwise required by law.
We reserve the right to issue refunds or credits at our sole discretion. This refund policy does not affect any statutory rights that may apply.
We may change the price of the Services at any time and if you have a recurring purchase, we will notify you by email at least 15 days before the price change. If you do not agree to the price change, you must cancel and stop using the Services before the price change takes effect. If there is a fixed term and price for your Service offer, that price will remain in force for the fixed term.

Cancelling the Services

Either party may cancel a Service at any time, with or without cause. To cancel a Service and request a refund, if you are entitled to one, please request cancellation via the Services. You should refer back to the offer describing the Services as: (a) you may not receive a refund at the time of cancellation; (b) you may be obligated to pay cancellation charges; (c) you may be obligated to pay all charges made to your billing account for the Services before the date of cancellation; or (d) you may lose access to and use of your account when you cancel the Services;
If you cancel, your access to the Services ends at the end of your current Service period or, if we bill your account on a periodic basis, at the end of the period in which you cancelled.

General

These Terms control the relationship between us and you. They do not create any third party beneficiary rights.

If you do not comply with these Terms, and we do not take action right away, this does not mean that we are giving up any rights that we may have (such as taking action in the future).

If at any time any provision of these Terms is or becomes illegal, invalid or unenforceable in any respect, that provision shall be read down to become legal, invalid or unenforceable or, if this is not possible, deleted. The other provisions of these Terms shall continue to apply with full force and effect.

The illegality, invalidity or unenforceability of any part of the Terms will not affect the legality, validity or enforceability of the remainder.

The laws of New Zealand will apply to any disputes arising out of or relating to these Terms and the parties submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the New Zealand courts.

Apple Device Terms (where applicable)

This provision applies to you only if you use an Apple device (e.g.: iPhone, iPad) to access the Services. It does not apply to you if you do not use the Services on an Apple Device.

You and us both acknowledge and agree that:

this Agreement is concluded solely between you and us, and not with Apple, and Apple is not responsible for the Services and the content thereof;
any maintenance or support that may be offered by us in connection with the Services is solely our responsibility and Apple has no obligation whatsoever to furnish any maintenance and support services with respect to the Services;
in the event of any failure of the Services to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and request a refund the purchase price (if any) you paid for the Services through Apple’s App Store. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Apple will have no other warranty obligation whatsoever with respect to the Services;
Apple is not responsible for addressing any claims by you or any third party relating to the Services or your possession and/or use of the Services. In the event of any third party claim that the Services or your possession and use of it infringes that third party’s intellectual property rights you should contact us as Apple will have no responsibility for the investigation, defence, settlement and discharge of any such intellectual property infringement claim;
Apple, and Apple’s subsidiaries, are third party beneficiaries of this Agreement, and that, upon your acceptance of this Agreement, Apple will have the right (and will be deemed to have accepted the right) to enforce this Agreement against you as a third party beneficiary;
Except for requesting a refund of the purchase price for any failure of the Services, any questions, complaints or claims with respect to the Services should be directed to us at the following address: mybranzknowledge@branz.co.nz.

You represent and warrant that: (a) you are not located in a country that is subject to a U.S. Government embargo, or that has been designated by the U.S. Government as a “terrorist supporting” country; and (b) you are not listed on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy covers BRANZ Limited’s (“we”, “our” or “us”) use of personal information which is collected through BRANZ Find, MyBRANZ Knowledge and the BRANZ Chatbot, including any associated: (a) software or website components; (b) media, printed materials, online or electronic documentation; and (c) data, information or content (collectively, the “Services”). By accessing or using the Services, you (“you” or “your”) are deemed to have agreed to this Privacy Policy. Except as expressly set out in this Privacy Policy, capitalised terms used in this Privacy Policy have the same meaning as set out in the Terms.

There are many different ways you can use the Services – to search for and share information, to communicate with other people or to create new content. As you use the Services, we want you to be clear how we are using information and the ways in which you can protect your privacy. Your privacy matters to us so please do take the time to get to know our practices – and if you have any questions contact us at mybranzknowledge@branz.co.nz.

Our Privacy Policy explains:

What information we collect and why we collect it;
How we use that information; and
The choices we offer, including how to access and update information.

Information we may collect

We may gather certain types of information about you from the Services:

Information you give us. For example, the Services require you to sign up for a BRANZ Account. When you do, we will ask for personal information, like your name, email address, telephone number and possibly a credit card to store with your account. If you want to take full advantage of the sharing features we offer, we might also ask you to create a publicly visible profile, which may include your name and photo (“Profile”).

Information we may get from your use of the Services. We collect information about the Services that you use and how you use them to interact with our data and Your Data. This information includes:

Device information: We may collect device-specific information (such as your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information including phone number). We may associate your device identifiers or phone number with your BRANZ Account;
Log information:We may automatically collect and store certain information in server logs, including:

The details of how you used the Services, such as your search queries;
Telephony log information like your phone number, calling-party number, forwarding numbers and time;
The date of and duration of calls, SMS routing information and types of calls;
Internet protocol address; and
Device event information such as crashes, system activity, hardware settings, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and referral URL;

Location information: We may collect and process information about your actual location. We use various technologies to determine location, including IP address, GPS, and other sensors that may, for example, provide us with information on nearby devices, Wi-Fi access points and cell towers;
Unique application numbers: Certain of the Services may include a unique application number. This number and information about your installation (for example, the operating system type and application version number) may be sent to us when you install or uninstall that Service or when that Service periodically contacts our servers, such as for automatic updates; and
Local storage: We may collect and store information (including personal information) locally on your device using mechanisms such as browser web storage (including HTML 5) and application data caches.

Cookies and similar technologies

We and our partners use various technologies to collect and store information when you use the Services, and this may include using cookies or similar technologies to identify your browser or device. We also use these technologies to collect and store information when you interact with the Service in order to:

track traffic patterns to and from the Services;
ensure any advertising or communications are being shown to the most appropriate person; and
enable you to enter the Services and use certain services and to visit registered user only areas of the Services.

You can choose to refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser and/or deleting them from your device. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use the Services but you will need them to log on to the Services and to access personalised or secure content on the Services. Some pages may not function properly if the cookies are turned off.

How we use information we collect

We may use the information we collect from the Services:

to verify your identity and assist you if you forget your password or registered user login details;
to assist you in using the Services;
to enhance the delivery of the Services;
to protect the Services and our users;
to contact you in relation to the use of the Services;
for future marketing, promotional and publicity purposes, including to carry out direct marketing, market research and surveys;
for ensuring that you are shown the information that is most relevant to you and your interests;
for marketing purposes, using aggregated, non-identifying statistics; and
any other use that you authorise.

We may use the name you provide for your BRANZ Profile across all of the Services we offer that require a BRANZ Account. In addition, we may replace past names associated with your BRANZ Account so that you are represented consistently through the Services. If other users already have your email, or other information that identifies you, we may show them your publicly visible Profile information, such as your name and photo.

If you have a BRANZ Account, we may display your Profile name, Profile photo, and actions you carry out through the Services or on third party applications connected to your BRANZ Account in the Services. We will respect the choices you make to limit sharing or visibility settings in your BRANZ Account.

When you contact us, we keep a record of your communication to help solve any issues you might be facing. We may use your email address to inform you about the Services, such as letting you know about upcoming changes or improvements.

We may use information collected from cookies and other technologies, like pixel tags, to improve your user experience and the overall quality of the Services.

We will ask for your consent before using information for a purpose other than those that are set out in this Privacy Policy.

The Services process personal information on servers in many countries around the world. We may process your personal information on a server located outside the country where you live.

Transparency and choice

People have different privacy concerns. Our goal is to be clear about what information we collect, so that you can make meaningful choices about how it is used. For example, you can:

Review and control certain types of information tied to your BRANZ Account;
View and edit your preferences about the Services and adjust how the Profile associated with your BRANZ Account appears to others;
Control who you share information with through your BRANZ Account; and
Choose whether your Profile name and Profile photo appear in shared endorsements that might appear in ads.

Information you share

Some of the Services let you share information with others. The Services may provide you with different options on sharing and removing your content.

Accessing and updating your personal information

Whenever you use the Services, we aim to provide you with access to your personal information. If that information is wrong, we strive to give you ways to update it quickly or to delete it – unless we have to keep that information for legitimate business or legal purposes.

We aim to maintain the Services in a manner that protects information from accidental or malicious destruction. Because of this, after you delete information from the Services, we may not immediately delete residual copies from our active servers and may not remove information from our backup systems.

Information we share

We may disclose or share your personal information in the following circumstances:

With your consent

We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of us when we have your consent to do so.

With Administrators

Your BRANZ Account is managed by an administrator and the administrator will have partners or agents who provide user support. They may have access to your BRANZ Account information (including your email and other data). The administrator may be able to:

View statistics regarding your account, like statistics regarding applications you install;
Change your account password;
Suspend or terminate your account access;
Access or retain information stored as part of your account;
Receive your account information in order to satisfy applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request; and
Restrict your ability to delete or edit information or privacy settings.

For external processing

We provide personal information to our affiliates or other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

For legal reasons

We will share personal information with third parties if we have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:

Meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request;
Enforce the Terms, including investigation of potential violations;
Detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues; and
Protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of the Services, our users or the public as required or permitted by law.

We may share non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners – like publishers, advertisers or connected sites. For example, we may share information publicly to show trends about the general use of the Services.

If we, or the Services, are involved in a merger, acquisition or asset sale, we will continue to ensure the confidentiality of any personal information and give affected users notice before personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Information security

We work hard to protect the Services and our users from unauthorised access to or unauthorised alteration, disclosure or destruction of information we hold. In particular:

We encrypt many of the Services using relevant technologies and methods;
We offer you two step verification (where roles warrant) when you access your BRANZ Account;
We review our information collection, storage and processing practices, including physical security measures, to guard against unauthorized access to systems; and
We restrict access to personal information to our employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to process it for us, and who are subject to strict contractual confidentiality obligations and may be disciplined or terminated if they fail to meet these obligations.

When this Privacy Policy applies

Our Privacy Policy applies to the Services.

We do not control the practices of content providers, advertisers, partners and other third parties connected with the Services and to whom you provide personal data whilst using the Services. The Services may contain links to other sites, which may not follow the same privacy policies that we adopt. We recommend that you check any relevant privacy policies before providing your personal data to any third party.

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Terms and Conditions