Terms.

1. About this service

DCA RouteLab is published under the Civation brand by Darwinian Angel Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 14715407 (“we”, “us” or “our”).

DCA RouteLab is an experimental, deterministic commercial reasoning engine offered to UK public sector officers as a free-to-use prototype while the rule set is developed, tested and refined with the sector.

The service is designed to support earlier thinking, challenge and documentation in relation to route, price, risk, affordability and commercial decision-making. It is not designed to automate procurement decisions, replace professional judgement or determine the correct course of action for any authority.

By accessing or using the service, you agree to these terms.

2. Prototype status

DCA RouteLab is an early-stage prototype provided for evaluation, learning and feedback.

The service may change over time. Rules, defaults, scoring, interface wording, outputs, examples and features may be amended, removed or replaced as the engine develops.

You should not rely on continuity of behaviour between sessions or versions. An output generated at one time may not be reproduced in the same way later if the rule set, scoring logic or interface has changed.

3. Deterministic, rule-based service

DCA RouteLab is designed as a deterministic and rule-based reasoning aid. It does not use a generative AI model or black-box scoring system to produce its core route-lab outputs.

The purpose of the service is to make commercial reasoning more explicit, structured and reviewable. Its rules, prompts, assumptions and outputs are intended to support transparent officer judgement rather than obscure it.

The service may still contain errors, omissions, oversimplifications or assumptions that are not appropriate for a particular project, authority or legal/procurement context. Outputs must therefore always be reviewed by appropriately qualified officers.

4. Not advice. Officer judgement is paramount.

DCA RouteLab is a reasoning aid only. It is not legal, financial, procurement, regulatory, technical or other professional advice.

The service does not replace the judgement, statutory duties or governance responsibilities of Section 151 officers, monitoring officers, procurement leads, commercial officers, project sponsors, legal advisers, finance teams or accountable decision-making bodies.

Every route selection, pricing approach, risk allocation, affordability assessment, direct award, framework call-off, contract modification, award decision or commitment of public money must be reviewed and decided under the relevant authority’s own legal, finance, procurement, governance and professional procedures.

Outputs from the service are inputs to officer judgement. They are never a substitute for that judgement.

5. No warranty

The service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis.

We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, complete, accurate, current or suitable for any particular authority, project, procurement route, contract, decision or purpose.

We also do not warrant that any output will identify every relevant risk, assumption, issue, legal requirement, procurement concern, affordability pressure, governance matter or commercial exposure.

6. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not responsible for losses arising from use of, reliance on, or inability to use the service or its outputs.

This includes losses connected with any decision, award, route selection, pricing approach, contract strategy, procurement process, framework call-off, direct award, contract modification, settlement, dispute, omission, delay, governance process, affordability assessment or commitment of public money informed in any way by the service.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

7. Availability and right to withdraw

Because the service is an experimental prototype, we may modify, suspend, restrict, withdraw or discontinue the service, in whole or in part, at any time.

We may also change or remove any feature, rule, prompt, output, example, access control or interface element.

You should not build operational dependencies on the service or treat it as part of a live procurement, governance or decision-making workflow without appropriate internal controls and independent review.

8. Acceptable use

DCA RouteLab is designed for commercial, procurement, project and governance reasoning.

You may enter project information, route assumptions, affordability assumptions, cost estimates, risk allowances, market considerations, contract values, governance notes and other commercial parameters where you are authorised to use that information for evaluation or internal officer review.

You agree not to use the service:

• for any unlawful purpose;
• to enter resident, service-user, employee, special-category or other personal data unless this has been properly authorised and is strictly necessary;
• to enter passwords, API keys, security credentials or system secrets;
• to enter confidential third-party information that you are not authorised to use;
• to upload viruses, malware or harmful code;
• to attempt to gain unauthorised access to the service or its underlying infrastructure;
• to interfere with or disrupt the integrity, security or performance of the service;
• to scrape, bulk copy, republish or reproduce the service, rule set, interface or content without permission;
• to use the service, rule set, outputs or content to train machine-learning models without our prior written permission; or
• to build or assist in building a competing product using the service, rule set, interface or content without our prior written permission.

You may review, discuss and cite individual outputs and visible rule explanations for internal evaluation, governance, learning and feedback purposes, provided that Civation and Darwinian Angel Ltd are appropriately acknowledged where relevant.

9. Project data and local storage

You retain responsibility for the project information, commercial assumptions, route inputs, condition ratings, canvas notes, officer decisions, reasoning records and other content you enter into the service.

DCA RouteLab is intended to be used with commercial and project information. This may include commercially sensitive project information, such as budget ranges, cost assumptions, risk allowances, affordability pressures, procurement route assumptions, market considerations and governance concerns.

We do not save, host or retain the project data you enter into DCA RouteLab.

Where project data is held locally in your browser, that data remains under your control but may be lost if you clear your browser storage, change device, use a different browser or if local storage is otherwise deleted.

You should only enter information that you are authorised to use. You should avoid entering personal data, resident data, service-user data, employee data, special-category data, passwords, system credentials, security information or unnecessary identifiable third-party information.

Because project information is not saved by us, you are responsible for keeping your own records of any outputs, notes, reasoning summaries or screenshots you wish to retain for your organisation’s internal review, governance or audit purposes.

10. Intellectual property

The service, including its software, rule set, framework, wording, structure, design, visual identity and associated materials, is owned by or licensed to Darwinian Angel Ltd unless otherwise stated.

You may use the service outputs for internal public-sector evaluation, learning, governance discussion and officer review.

Short quotations with attribution are welcome.

You must not copy, reproduce, republish, scrape, sell, licence, train machine-learning models on, or create a competing service from the service, rule set, framework, interface or content without our prior written permission.

11. Feedback

We welcome feedback on the service, including suggested improvements, rule gaps, usability issues, unclear wording and examples of where the reasoning could be made more useful.

If you provide feedback, you allow us to use it to improve the service, rule set, documentation and related Civation materials without obligation to compensate you.

Please do not include personal data, confidential project information or commercially sensitive material in feedback unless you are authorised to do so.

12. Termination

We may suspend or terminate access to the service if you breach these terms, misuse the service, create security or operational risk, or act inconsistently with the prototype nature of the service.

We may also suspend or terminate access as part of our right to modify, restrict, withdraw or discontinue the service.

On termination, your right to use the service ceases immediately.

13. Privacy

We process only what is needed for the service to function.

DCA RouteLab is designed not to save, host or retain the project data you enter into the service.

Please see our Privacy page for further information about how the service handles local-browser storage, technical data and any information you choose to provide to us.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales.

Any dispute arising from or connected with these terms or the service is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

15. Changes to these terms

We may revise these terms from time to time.

The most current version will be posted on this page with an updated date.

Continued use of the service after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.

16. Contact

Questions about these terms or the service can be sent via our contact page.