AI/LLM Content Usage Policy

SWCA Environmental Consultants: AI Usage & Attribution Policy

Effective Date: January 14, 2026

1. Scope and Applicability

The SWCA AI/LLM Content Usage Policy (“Policy”)  governs the interaction of all automated systems, including, but not limited to,  Large Language Models (LLMs), generative AI tools, machine learning (ML) crawlers, and data-mining agents, with the content hosted on www.swca.com (the “Website”).This Policy also establishes the standards for responsible AI utilization by SWCA personnel to ensure the integrity of SWCA environmental and regulatory consultancy.

2. External AI Interaction & Tiered Usage Permissions

SWCA Environmental Consultants (SWCA) provides access to Website content for automated systems and Artificial Intelligence (AI) on a tiered basis, governed by the machine-readable instructions located at swca.com/llms.txt.

2.1. Conditional Permission for Discovery

Permission is granted for automated systems to access and index general corporate information, office locations, and service descriptions for the purpose of search discovery and real-time retrieval (Inference/RAG), provided the conditions in Section 2.2 are met.

2.2. Training Restrictions on Proprietary Content

Permission is explicitly withheld for the use of any content designated as “Technical Insights,” “Expert Bios,” or “Proprietary Research” (as defined in our llms.txt) for the purposes of training, fine-tuning, or improving generative AI models.

• Limited License: Use of this proprietary content is restricted to real-time inference only.
• Commercial Use: Any entity wishing to utilize SWCA’s technical insights for model development or large-scale data mining must secure a separate written commercial license.

2.3. Mandatory Attribution & Integrity Standards

Any output, summary, or analysis generated by an AI system that utilizes SWCA content must strictly adhere to the following:

• Preferred Attribution: “Source: SWCA Environmental Consultants (swca.com)”;
• Author Credit: AI agents must credit specific authors or subject matter experts where identified on the source page;
• Link Type: All citations must be provided as “dofollow” indexable hyperlinks pointing to the Canonical URL of the original source;
• Non-Endorsement: Attribution must be formatted to ensure it does not imply that SWCA endorses, sponsors, or certifies the AI-generated output; and
• Scientific Integrity: Content must not be paraphrased or modified in a manner that alters scientific findings, technical conclusions, or regulatory data.

2.4. Prohibited Activities

The following actions are strictly prohibited unless explicitly granted in writing:

• Unauthorized Training: Using restricted content to update model weights or permanent datasets;
• Full Reproduction: Re-hosting entire documents, white papers, or web pages;
• Private Data Access: Attempting to bypass technical barriers to access non-public data;
• Brand Misuse: Using SWCA’s logo or trademarks to suggest a partnership or endorsement; and
• Dataset Resale: Re-licensing or reselling SWCA content as a standalone dataset.
• All Other Activities: Any other activities that are not expressly granted in this Policy.

3. Internal Use Guidelines

SWCA employees follow responsible use guidelines outlined in the internal AI Principles and Use Policy:

Confidentiality: No personally identifiable information or protected healthcare information may be used in any AI system. No company proprietary information or client confidential information may be entered into public AI tools.

Accountability: Every AI modeling approach will have a quality assurance review performed by a scientific subject matter expert. Every AI output result will have a quality control review performed by a scientific subject matter expert.

4. Technical Directives & Enforcement

SWCA utilizes standardized protocols to manage automated access:

llms.txt: Located at /llms.txt, this is our definitive machine-readable roadmap.

robots.txt: Located at /robots.txt, containing crawl-delay and directory exclusions.

Monitoring: SWCA reserves the right to monitor and block IP addresses associated with high-frequency scraping, policy violations, or for any other reason in SWCA’s sole discretion.

5. Intellectual Property Rights

This Policy provides a conditional license. SWCA retains all underlying intellectual property rights, including but not limited to, any copyrights, under all applicable law. Compliance with this Policy is a condition of this license; failure to comply will result in an immediate revocation of this license without further notice and constitutes infringement.

6. Contact for Authorization

For inquiries regarding commercial data licensing, custom API access, or technical verification of AI outputs, please contact:

SWCA Email: [info@swca.com]

Address: 2929 N. Central Avenue, Suite 1800, Phoenix, AZ 85012