Depending on the type of subscription, you’re only allowed to submit ONE certification per user or per seat at a time.

 

 

 

Having certifications in flight for long periods expose a vulnerability in the review process as there is no way to ‘lock’ the design from getting edited in the interim. As a reviewer, if weeks/months have passed between reviews, there is no way to ensure that the user hasn’t made any undeclared changes to the design without conducting the review all over again which is time consuming.

 

Nonetheless, we understand that things can change with projects which are outside of your control (i.e. projects getting put on hold indefinitely). Therefore if circumstances change with a certification where you are unable to update the LCA due to missing information, you can choose the following two options to proceed:

• RECOMMENDED whenever possible: complete the certification ‘as-is’ so that the design is ‘locked’ which will speed up the future review process if/when the project gets restarted again. This is because the reviewer will only need to compare the difference between the new cloned & updated design versus the previously certified/locked design. This is particularly important especially if the reviewer has already completed the first initial review. Note that you can ALWAYS get your design certified without responding to any of the reviewer’s feedback if you do not wish to do so bearing in mind that the relevant quality checks & comments will be left in question to highlight the reviewer’s concerns for reference.
• Only if the initial round of reviews have not been completed: ‘Un-certify’ the design to take it off the certification queue. This is only recommended if the reviewer has not started the initial review yet. If the certification has not been assigned to a reviewer then it would be safe for you to take it off the queue. However if it has already been assigned, please notify the reviewer of your intention to take the design off the certification queue before you click ‘un-certify’ so that they won’t inadvertently waste time completing the initial review only to find out that you’ve taken it off the certification queue.

Getting your design certified as quickly as possible is important so that a ‘line can be drawn in the sand’ with regards to where the design is at that point in time and lock the design. When a certification is put ‘on-hold’ and left in-flight, it compromises the review process as it would be inefficient to review the whole design again to ensure no undeclared changes have been made to the design when you’re ready to come back to it. By locking (certifying) the design at the point before it is put on hold, the reviewer has a reliable reference point from which to continue the review of the updated design.

 

Even though the certified design has been locked, you can always clone the design to continue updating it immediately afterwards. All paid subscriptions can have up to 6 certifications per project. Exemptions may be negotiated case by case if you exceed this number, however it is very rare that you’ll need more than 6 designs certified for the same project. For users who may have difficult clients that are constantly requesting for design updates, we suggest that you give them a deadline for their update requests so that you can limit the number of times you’ll need to submit your design for certification.

 

So from a reviewer’s perspective, you don’t submit a design for certification unless it is ready or necessary to be reviewed so that the whole review process can be completed quickly and efficiently to minimise the review process getting compromised.