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Privacy Policy for the IMCA Dynamic Positioning CPD System

Updated 14 March 2024

This is the privacy policy for the IMCA Dynamic Positioning (DP) CPD System, operated by IMCA in conjunction with The Nautical Institute (NI). The latest version of this policy is available at www.imca-int.com/privacy-policy/dpcpd.

This privacy policy aims to give you information on how IMCA and The Nautical Institute collect and process your personal data, including any data you may provide to us through this website or otherwise.

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

The individual privacy policies of each organisation are also available for review as follows:

1 Introduction

IMCA and The Nautical Institute (also collectively referred to as “we”, “us” and “our” in this privacy policy) are joint data controllers and are both responsible for your personal data. If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, please contact us as follows:

IMCA Trading Ltd
Email: [email protected]
Mail: IMCA, Fifth Floor, 66 Buckingham Gate, London, SW1E 6AU, United Kingdom
Data protection contact: Adam Hugo
Registered with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office – registration number ZA273285.
IMCA is a trade association representing and providing services to member companies, with the goal of improving performance in the marine contracting industry.

The Nautical Institute
Email: [email protected]
Mail: 200B Lambeth Road, London, SE1 7JY, United Kingdom
The Nautical Institute is a not-for-profit professional maritime membership body (charity number: 1002462).

2 Our responsibilities

IMCA abides by the six GDPR principles relating to the processing of personal data, i.e. that it should be:

  • processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner
  • collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes
  • adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary
  • accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date
  • retained only for as long as necessary
  • processed in an appropriate manner to maintain security.

3 The data we collect about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

  • Identity Data including; your name, username or similar identifier, title, date of birth and gender.
  • Contact Data including; address, email address and telephone numbers.
  • Financial Data including bank details provided to us for supplier payment and customer refunds
  • Transaction Data including details about products and services you have purchased from us.
  • Technical Data including; internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access our online services.
  • Profile Data including; your username, interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
  • Usage Data including; information about how you use our online services, products and services.
  • Marketing and Communications Data including; your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

We also collect, use and share aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic information for any purpose. Aggregated Data could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy policy.

4 How your personal data is collected

Where it is not clear from a data collection form what data we are collecting, an additional notice will be provided, such as the website privacy notice on our website that sets details on our use of cookies and additional data collection via Google Analytics.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of data we collect and how we collect it. Where other methods are used, an additional data protection/privacy statement will normally be provided at the collection point.

  • The IMCA DP CPD scheme, available for all key DP personnel, uses only that data necessary to enable login and tracking of user progress. This is required to ensure a robust system that ensures the competence of those working in highly safety critical positions in the offshore industry.
  • IMCA uses the data to provide the DP CPD service and to provide users with additional information on dynamic positioning based on its DP event reporting scheme, codes of practice, good practice guidance and other related industry initiatives.
  • The Nautical Institute uses the IMCA DP CPD scheme data as evidence for the revalidation of DP professionals’ certification. This data is, therefore, generally retained permanently.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

5 How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

  • Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
  • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party). Your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
  • Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

Note: We may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground(s) we are relying on to process your personal data.

6 Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to receive more information on how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Note: We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

7 How we protect your data

IMCA and The Nautical Institute uses industry leading online services and a variety of security software and hardware to ensure personal and other data is suitably protected by appropriate security measures. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. A comprehensive cybersecurity review is undertaken regularly. Awareness programmes on data protection and security matters are operated for IMCA staff.

8 Provision of data to/processing by third parties

IMCA and The Nautical Institute will comply with any legal requirements to provide data to national and regulatory authorities.

IMCA and The Nautical Institute may also use online services for storage and other processing, including communicating with its members and other business contacts, in line with this privacy policy.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Our websites may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

9 International transfers

We may share your personal data within the IMCA group and The Nautical Institute, which may involve transferring your data outside the UK.

A number of our external third parties are based outside the UK so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the UK.
It is sometimes necessary for IMCA and the NI to process data outside the UK, including outside the EU:

IMCA and the NI staff may access data while travelling on IMCA business. Such access is controlled by appropriate cybersecurity controls.

While IMCA and NI data is generally stored within the UK and service providers provide UK-based support, advanced support may, from time to time, be provided from outside the UK and from countries not already verified by the UK as providing an adequate level of protection.

For selected activities, IMCA and the NI may opt to use service providers which process data outside the UK.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it.

10 Data retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal data are available in our respective retention policies, which you can request from us by contacting us.

11 Your legal rights

You have the following rights:

  • The right to be informed – when we collect your data, we will tell you what data, why we are collecting it, how we will use it and how long we will store it for
  • The right to access – you have the right to access any personal data we hold about you and relevant supplementary information, so that you can verify the lawfulness of our processing (commonly known as a “data subject access request”)
  • The right to rectification/correction – making sure that the data we hold about you is accurate and as complete as necessary for the purposes we hold it
  • The right to erasure – you can ask us to erase any personal data that we hold about you. This is not an absolute right, applying only in certain circumstances, but we will review any such requests and communicate with you openly about your rights and our actions
  • The right to restrict processing – you can permit us to store your data but ask us not to use it further (although again this applies only certain circumstances)
  • The right to data portability – you can request from us any data that you have provided directly that you then wish to use for your own purposes across different services
  • The right to object – you can object to processing of your personal data and we must comply unless there are compelling legitimate grounds to the contrary.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may contact you for further information in relation to your request.

We aim to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

12 Further information and contacts

For further details on any aspect of our privacy policy and data processing, to exercise any of the rights set out in section 11 or to make a complaint, please use the contact details shown in section 1.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint directly with a supervisory authority, such as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK (or any other supervisory authority you prefer). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

The ICO has extensive guidance to your rights and our responsibilities on its website (ico.org.uk).

13 Amendments

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated on 14 March 2024.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.