HCDI Foundation Certificate

Unit 1.9 - The certification scheme and its documents

Learning outcome - Walk the candidate's path to award, and read a certificate, a Statement of Results and the register correctly.

HCDI governance ruleHCDI governance rule (Unit 1.9; Level 1 section 2).

Why it matters. Credentials are only useful if people can read them correctly and verify them. A misread certificate is how a credential gets misused. The candidate's path. The scheme is a separate system from the HCDI platform, with its own accounts, and a platform login does not work there. The stages: register and open an application; declare eligibility and submit; pay, with scheme staff confirming the payment before the candidate can book; book a sitting; sit the examination, where the proctor checks the candidate's identity; results are recorded by scheme staff, and a candidate who does not pass may retake; award of the credential.

Where the scheme stands today. See the status section at the start of this manual. The elements of a certificate. The number and its form. The issuer, with its registration number. The title, subtitle and holder. The scope. The limitation block. The methodology version and dates. The live-status instruction. A statement about the scheme's operator and accreditation position, held at CC-L1-001. The signatures, QR code and microtext. The live-status instruction. A certificate never prints whether a credential is current. Status is checked live. A certificate dated two years ago proves only that it was once issued. The Statement of Results. It is marked "NOT A CREDENTIAL". It carries no examination item content. The register. Once the register is open, a credential is looked up by its number only. There is no search by name. The statuses are ACTIVE, SUSPENDED, EXPIRED and REVOKED. A revoked credential is final and is never deleted, and always shows as revoked.

Governance Boundary. A Level 1 holder may state that they hold the Foundation Certificate, while the Foundation verification page shows it as current. The verification page adds a fixed line: "HCDI Foundation Certificate - no engagement role." Common Error. Accepting a photograph of a certificate as proof. A picture proves nothing about status.