Confidentiality

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Singapore, 31^st October 2014

In our professional consultant’s business we deal most of the time with confidentiality issues. We are part of an early design and project team and get access to sensitive client information as part of the design and construction process. At times we sign project specific non-disclosure agreements (NDA’s) but most of the time it is just a professional undertaking by ourselves in respect of the client. There are times we start working on projects that have yet to be announced to the general public and hence disclosure of any project information at such preliminary stage might be embarrassing or obstructive to the process as often the early design stages are also needed to obtain relevant approvals from local authorities. Divulging project information certainly when it concerns a project in the public domain needs to be treaded carefully and with consent of the project owner.

For instance we may want to feature one of our newly acquired projects on our website to let people know we are working on it out of prestige and general company promotion and marketing reasons. In today’s world not much communication happens through hard copy brochures, most is done through the internet with websites, Facebook and even blogs such as mine. Company profiles and references are sent through email and down loaded by prospective clients at the other end. We do publish our projects also through related industry magazines like lighting, interior or architectural magazines, but there as well we need to assure ourselves that we do not breach confidentiality agreements. We have clauses in our contract that take care of these issues and when signed off by the client allow us to use project materials for promotional and marketing intentions. We do this specifically to protect ourselves against potential confidentiality issues. However there are often projects were the clients get us to sign confidentiality agreements or modify these clauses in our contract to deal with the confidentiality the way they want (or need) it. Confidentiality is a matter of respect and trust and as professionals we need to uphold that to the best of our ability.

Light Watch 5-185: Away from the confidentiality I want to share some city scape pictures from Chongqing in China where I was just a week ago. This massive city of more than 30 Mio people (!!!) is impressive by its size alone. I was not able to ascertain whether the hazy conditions were due to fog or smog but nevertheless I ventured for a walk along the famous Yangtze river in the morning and snapped a few sights. My favourite has to be the tree up lighting with no less the 6 (!) metal halide floodlights for one tree; 2 from the ground and 4 in the tree! The decorative street light with 9 globes, 4 street lights and internal linear LED is also not bad… have a great weekend!