Privacy Policy

Ground Up Services, Trading and Development OPC (“Ground Up”, “we”, “us”) is a design-and-build contractor registered in the Philippines, with its office at 26F The Podium West Tower, Doña Julia Vargas Ave, Ortigas Center, Mandaluyong, Metro Manila.

This policy explains what personal information we collect through groundup.com.ph, why we collect it, and the rights you have over it under the Data Privacy Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 10173) and its implementing rules.

Information you give us through our forms. Our contact form, Referral Partners’ Corner form, and careers form are hosted by Airtable and embedded in our pages. They ask for details such as your name, email address, contact number, company, your relationship to a referred lead, the nature of a project requirement, timelines, any files you attach to an application, and any free-text notes you choose to add. When you look up a referral’s status, we process the referral number and email address you enter to match it against our records.

Information you give us through chat. Our site carries an OpenWidget chat and contact widget. If you start a conversation, we receive whatever you type into it, along with any name or email address you provide there.

Information collected automatically. When you visit the site we use Google Analytics, which sets cookies and collects usage data such as pages viewed, approximate location (derived from your IP address, which Google truncates), device and browser type, and referring links. Our embedded forms, chat widget, and video players are loaded from Airtable, OpenWidget, and Vimeo respectively, and those providers receive technical connection data such as your IP address and browser type in order to serve the embed. Our hosting provider, Netlify, processes the same kind of technical data to serve the site and to guard against abuse.

We do not ask for, and ask that you do not send us, sensitive personal information (for example government ID numbers, health information, or financial account details) through these forms.

• To respond to your enquiry and to scope, quote, and deliver projects.
• To process and attribute referral leads, keep you updated on their status, and account for any referral fee.
• To protect the forms from spam and abuse, and to keep the site secure.
• To understand how the site is used so we can improve it.
• To comply with legal, tax, and regulatory obligations.

Section 12 of the Data Privacy Act sets out when we may process personal information. We rely on your consent when you submit a form; on the need to take steps at your request and to perform a contract when we scope, quote, and deliver a project; on our legal obligations when we keep tax and regulatory records; and on our legitimate interests when we protect the forms from abuse and measure how the site is used.

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with:

• Service providers who process data on our behalf. Contact, referral, and careers submissions are handled by Airtable, which stores the submitted details and notifies the relevant Ground Up team. OpenWidget handles chat conversations started through the widget on our site. Netlify hosts and serves the site. Vimeo serves the videos embedded in our pages. Google Analytics measures site usage as described above, and our referral status lookup checks the referral number and email you enter against records held in our Google account. These providers process and store data on servers in the United States and in other countries where they operate. Under Section 21 of the Data Privacy Act we remain responsible for personal information transferred abroad on our behalf, and we rely on these providers’ contractual and technical safeguards to protect it.
• Professional advisers and authorities where we are required to disclose information by law or to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.

Enquiry, referral, careers, and chat records are kept for as long as we need them to handle the matter, and for a further period to meet business, tax, and legal requirements. We review these records periodically and remove those we no longer need. Analytics data is retained according to Google Analytics’ standard retention settings. If you would like your enquiry or referral record removed sooner, you can ask us using the contact details below.

We take reasonable and appropriate measures to protect personal information against loss, misuse, and unauthorised access, as required by the Data Privacy Act.

• The site is served over an encrypted HTTPS connection, so what you submit is protected in transit.
• Our forms are hosted by Airtable, which applies its own spam and abuse screening to submissions.
• Submitted details are held in our Airtable account, and referral status records in our Google account. Both are reachable only through accounts we control, protected by the access controls those accounts provide.

No system can be guaranteed completely secure, but we work to keep these measures current as the site changes.

If a security incident affects sensitive personal information, or information that could be used to enable identity fraud, and we believe it is likely to give rise to a real risk of serious harm, we will notify the National Privacy Commission and the affected individuals within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, as required by the Commission’s rules on personal data breach management.

Under the Data Privacy Act you have the right to be informed about, and to object to, the processing of your personal information; to access it and ask for a copy; to have inaccurate information corrected; to have it erased or blocked where the law allows; to data portability; and to be indemnified for damage caused by unlawful processing.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at Loading email…. We may need to verify your identity before we act on a request.

If you believe your rights have been violated, you may also lodge a complaint with the National Privacy Commission (privacy.gov.ph).

The site uses cookies set by Google Analytics to measure traffic. You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings, or opt out of Google Analytics using Google’s browser add-on. Airtable, OpenWidget, and Vimeo may also set cookies or use similar storage when their embedded form, chat widget, or video player loads on a page. Blocking cookies does not stop you from using the site, though it may affect how these embeds behave.

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will change the “Last updated” date below. Significant changes will be made clear on this page.

For any question about this policy or your personal information, email Loading email… or write to us at 26F The Podium West Tower, Doña Julia Vargas Ave, Ortigas Center, Mandaluyong, Metro Manila.