The Credential Coverage Review SOP

Purpose

To confirm, every quarter, that the shop still holds enough live credentials to legally perform every service line it is currently selling, and to convert any shortfall into a dated action with a named owner before it becomes an outage.

This review answers a different question than a renewal process does. Renewal asks "is this credential current?" one credential at a time. Coverage asks "if the next two quarters play out exactly as scheduled, will every line we sell still be covered by someone who is here and current?" A shop can pass every renewal and still lose a service line, because coverage fails on holder count and renewal fails on dates. See related: The Credential Renewal SOP.

Scope

Applies to every credential the shop relies on to sell or perform work: company-held licences and firm certifications, person-held trade credentials and technician certifications, and any credential a customer contract or a general contractor requires you to maintain. It covers all locations and all municipalities the shop works in.

Out of scope: per-job permits and inspections, which are a job-level workflow, and training or competency records that do not gate the legal right to perform work. Cross-reference those rather than duplicating them here.

Roles and responsibilities

Definitions

• Credential line. One credential requirement tied to one service line in one jurisdiction. A business licence held in two municipalities is two lines, not one.
• Holder. A person or entity currently holding that credential, verified against the issuing authority's record rather than against a copy in a folder.
• Horizon. The next two full quarters from the review date. Two quarters is the working default because it is long enough to complete a course, an exam sitting or a municipal renewal, and short enough that people can still name what they will be doing.
• N. The minimum holder count for that line. Set by how often the line is sold and whether losing it stops other lines. See related: How to Decide Who in the Shop Should Hold What.
• Effective holders. Holders today, minus any whose credential expires inside the horizon and has no completed renewal.

Procedure

1. Freeze the register as of the review date. Work from a fixed snapshot. A register that changes while you are reviewing it produces a record nobody can reconstruct later.

2. Pull the sold-days count for each line from the last twelve months of invoiced work: the number of days on which the line was sold at least once. Days, not revenue. This is the input to N and it is the step people skip, which leaves N set by opinion.

3. Confirm N for each line. Carry forward last quarter's N unless the sold-days count moved across a cadence boundary, or a line has become a dependency for another line. Record any change and why.

4. Compute effective holders at the end of the horizon. For each line, subtract holders whose credential expires inside the horizon without a completed renewal. Two facts change the arithmetic and are worth knowing rather than looking up each quarter: Section 608 technician certification under 40 CFR Part 82 Subpart F does not expire, so those holders never leave the count on a date basis, while a driver's medical examiner's certificate under 49 CFR 391.45 runs at most 24 months and often shorter, so those rows move every review and tend to cluster because drivers get examined together.

5. Assign a verdict per line. Unit of analysis is one credential line, evaluated once per quarter against the horizon:

• GREEN: effective holders at horizon end are at or above N, and no holder expires inside the horizon.
• AMBER: effective holders at horizon end are at or above N, but at least one holder expires inside it.
• RED: effective holders at horizon end fall below N at any point in the horizon.

RED does not mean the shop is currently out of compliance. It means the line is scheduled to become uncovered unless a dated action closes it, and most REDs close with a routine renewal rather than with training anyone.

6. Convert every AMBER and RED into a dated action with one named owner. One owner per action, a person not a department. AMBER actions get a booked date. RED actions get a booked date and a completion check at the halfway point of the horizon.

7. Set the catalog stop condition on each RED. If a RED line reaches 30 days before its coverage loss date with no completed action, that service line is suspended from the quote catalog and from the booking form until it clears. The suspension is per line, never shop-wide, and the operations lead applies it. Without a stated stop condition, a RED line keeps being sold right through the loss date, because the sales side never sees the register.

8. Sign, date and file the record. Unresolved items carry forward as opening items on the next review, with their original open date intact so a line that has been RED for three quarters reads as three quarters, not as new.

The completed coverage review record

This is the artifact the procedure produces. Filled in for a six-person field shop at its first quarterly review, horizon covering the next two quarters:

Review date: Q3 close. Horizon: Q4 and Q1. Chair: owner. Register frozen by: office admin.

Verdicts: 2 GREEN, 1 AMBER, 3 RED, out of 6 lines.

Read the three REDs before reading anything else, because they are not the same kind of problem. One of the three is a single-holder company row where the holder count cannot be raised by any amount of training: the municipality A business licence has exactly one possible holder, the company, and the renewal is a filing. The renovator and driver medical rows are the other case, because effective holders fall below N on a person-held credential, and closing either one means renewing the expiring holder or adding another qualified person.

The AMBER row is worth naming as well: four holders against an N of 3, one expiring, leaving 3. It is at N, not above it, which means a single unplanned departure inside the horizon converts it to RED without any expiry occurring. AMBER lines sitting exactly at N deserve the same halfway check REDs get.

Actions recorded:

Catalog stop conditions set: pre-1978 renovation work and any work requiring the municipality A licence are flagged for suspension at 30 days before their respective loss dates if the action is not complete.

Carried forward: none, first review. Chair signature and date at the foot of the record.

Exceptions and escalation

A holder disputes an expiry date. The issuing authority's record governs, not the card in the truck and not the holder's recollection. Verify against the authority's own lookup before changing a row. See related: How to Verify a Credential Someone Claims to Hold.

A line has no identifiable authority. If nobody in the review can name who administers a requirement, that is a finding, not a blank cell. Record it as an open question with an owner and a due date, and treat the line as RED until answered.

The qualifying individual's own credential is inside the horizon. Escalate to the owner the same day, outside the review cycle. Every company line that rests on that person moves with it, and the horizon on that one row is effectively the horizon on the whole licence.

A RED line hits its stop condition anyway. Suspend the line and record who authorized continuing to sell it if anyone did. A stop condition that is overridden without a name attached is not a control.

References

• 40 CFR Part 82 Subpart F, EPA Section 608 technician certification, which carries no expiration date
• 49 CFR 391.45, FMCSA periodic physical examination interval for drivers of commercial motor vehicles, capped at 24 months
• 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E, EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, for firm and individual renovator certification on pre-1978 target housing
• Your state licensing board and each municipality's licensing office, for renewal windows, continuing education requirements and lapse consequences
• See related: The Credential Renewal SOP, How to Build a Credential Register for a Small Shop, How to Decide Who in the Shop Should Hold What