This is the assessment standard your reviewer uses to review your Applied Practice submission. It is published in full, rather than kept as an internal marking key, so you know exactly how your work will be judged before you submit it. It sits alongside the Certification Guide, which explains the two certificate pathways at a glance.
What this document is
It sets out the review process step by step, the rubric itself, and what a pass means once it is awarded.
Students preparing an Applied Practice submission, who want to see the standard in advance. Anyone checking what “successfully passed human validation” actually requires before they rely on the credential.
How the Human Audit works
The Human Audit is a personal review of your work by an experienced, certified project management reviewer, not an automated check. Here is exactly what happens, from eligibility to outcome.
Who reviews your work. Every submission is read and scored by an experienced, certified project manager. As the programme grows, other certified project managers may share the first reading, but the lead reviewer, who wrote the course, checks every review and signs off every result and every certificate. People read your submission. We do not use an AI tool to read it.
- Complete the modules your sections draw on. You can submit any time within 12 months of enrolment, once you have completed the modules your three sections draw on. You do not need the Certificate of Completion first.
- Build and sanitise your submission. You produce your own project plan using the programme’s frameworks, then prepare one document for review: a one-page Plan Summary, three sections, a short AI Use Note and a one-page Evidence Map that shows where the evidence for each dimension sits. Use a fictional organisation name, approximate financial ranges and role titles rather than personal names (see Part 3). If a cell in the Evidence Map is empty, or points to evidence that is not on the page, that dimension cannot score above 2. The Certification Guide lists the minimum contents of each part and the word limits. Your reviewer checks that each item is present before scoring.
- Submit through the secure form. Your submission goes, as one document, through the secure submission form linked in your dashboard. This requires a free Google account. The form accepts only complete submissions.
- Your reviewer reads it personally. Your reviewer reads your submission and scores each section against the rubric in Part 4: the same rubric published here, not a hidden standard. The scores are your reviewer’s working tool. Your report gives one result per section: Meets the standard or Not yet.
- You receive a decision within 21 business days. Written feedback on each section arrives within twenty-one business days of a complete submission. If a file cannot be opened, we tell you within seven to ten business days, and the clock restarts when a readable file arrives.
- If every section meets the standard. Your submission passes, and the Certificate of Applied Practice is prepared and issued to you. See Part 7 for what that certificate states and what it means. Each section that meets the standard gets one strength in your report.
- If a section does not yet meet the standard. You receive the change needed for each section marked Not yet, with the place in your submission it refers to. You have one opportunity to resubmit the flagged section(s), provided you do so within twenty-one business days of receiving that feedback.
- If your resubmission still does not meet the standard. We tell you in writing. You may then buy one further review for $100, once only, within 60 days of that email. It covers a third attempt, due within 90 days of payment, and, if needed, a fourth, due within twenty-one business days of feedback on the third. In total, you have up to four attempts to meet the standard: your initial submission, the one included resubmission, and up to two further attempts covered by the $100 fee. If your fourth attempt still does not meet the standard, you will not receive the Certificate of Applied Practice, though your Certificate of Completion is unaffected, provided you have finished all 48 lessons.
A resubmission only needs to include the section(s) your reviewer flagged. You do not need to resend sections that already met the standard. Because the three sections are interconnected, your reviewer keeps your original submission on file and may refer back to your other sections for context when reviewing what you resubmit.
Results are final. Your reviewer does not re-review a result: if you disagree with the feedback, your resubmission is the route. A section is checked again only if your reviewer missed something that is in your submission. Reply within ten business days, quote the page, and it will be checked.
Time limits. The 12-month access window covers your initial submission only. The other clocks above run on their own, even after your access ends, and a missed deadline loses that attempt. All rights under the programme, including the Human Audit, end 24 months after your purchase date.
Privacy and confidentiality
You are not required to disclose your organisation’s name, real financial figures or identifiable stakeholder details. Sanitise your submission: use a fictional organisation name, approximate financial ranges and role titles rather than personal names. The Caldera Freight plan in this programme models exactly this approach.
Your submitted work is seen only by your reviewer and the lead reviewer. No AI tool reads it. Your work is never shared or published without your explicit consent. We delete plan documents and feedback 24 months after your purchase.
The rubric
Each of your three submitted sections is scored independently against the same five dimensions below. A section is scored on its own merits: strength in one dimension does not offset weakness in another (see Part 6).
4.1 Rigour
Is the analysis evidence-based and logically structured?
| Level | What this looks like |
|---|---|
| 1 · Does not meet standard | Claims are largely unsupported, or the reasoning does not hold together; conclusions do not follow from the stated evidence. |
| 2 · Approaching standard | Some claims are asserted without support, or the logical structure is inconsistent; conclusions are plausible but not fully earned. |
| 3 · Meets standard | Claims are generally evidence-based and the structure is logical; minor gaps exist but do not undermine the conclusions. |
| 4 · Exceeds standard | Every claim is backed by explicit evidence, data or a stated assumption; the chain from evidence to conclusion is traceable end to end, and limitations are proactively acknowledged. |
4.2 Integration
Do the three sections work as one plan, so that a figure or decision in one is carried through to the others and agrees with your Plan Summary?
| Level | What this looks like |
|---|---|
| 1 · Does not meet standard | The sections read as separate documents. Figures, owners or dates conflict between them, and nothing links one section to another. |
| 2 · Approaching standard | Some links are made, but key figures or decisions are not carried through. A budget, risk score or target appears in one section and is ignored or contradicted in another. |
| 3 · Meets standard | The main links hold. Figures, owners and dates agree across the sections, and a reader can follow how a decision in one section shapes another. |
| 4 · Exceeds standard | Every key decision is traced across the sections: risks to the assumptions behind them, the budget to the scope, and success measures to the business case. The plan also says how a change in one section would flow through to the others. |
4.3 Application
Have the programme’s frameworks been applied correctly, not just referenced?
| Level | What this looks like |
|---|---|
| 1 · Does not meet standard | The framework is missing, misapplied, or reduced to naming it without actually using it. |
| 2 · Approaching standard | The framework is present but applied loosely, incompletely, or with mechanical errors that would mislead a reader. |
| 3 · Meets standard | The framework is applied correctly; minor mechanical or contextual adjustments would strengthen it, but the core method is sound. |
| 4 · Exceeds standard | The relevant framework is applied with full mechanical correctness and adapted sensibly to the specific project context. |
4.4 Professional judgement
Does the work reflect the kind of thinking a senior practitioner would recognise?
| Level | What this looks like |
|---|---|
| 1 · Does not meet standard | Decisions appear arbitrary, generic, or copied from the Caldera Freight case study without adaptation to the learner’s own project. |
| 2 · Approaching standard | Judgement is present but thin: decisions are stated without the reasoning a senior reviewer would expect to see. |
| 3 · Meets standard | Judgement calls are reasonable and mostly explained; a senior practitioner would recognise the thinking, even allowing for a few different calls. |
| 4 · Exceeds standard | Trade-offs are weighed explicitly, priorities are defensible, and the work reads as something a sponsor or board could act on without further translation. |
4.5 AI responsibility
Does the AI Use Note make clear where AI was used, and is there evidence of meaningful human-in-the-loop review?
| Level | What this looks like |
|---|---|
| 1 · Does not meet standard | No credible AI Use Note coverage for this section, or the submitted work shows signs of unreviewed AI output left uncorrected. |
| 2 · Approaching standard | The AI Use Note is generic or vague about this section specifically; human involvement is asserted but not evidenced. |
| 3 · Meets standard | The AI Use Note credibly describes AI use and human review for this section; the link between what AI produced and what the learner changed is clear enough to trust. |
| 4 · Exceeds standard | The AI Use Note is specific about the tools and prompts used for this section, names a concrete AI error or gap the learner caught, and the submitted work shows the correction was actually made. |
What strong evidence looks like, by section
Tell the whole story. Your submission must read as one argument: the problem, the fix and the outcomes it delivers. Your reviewer scores only what is on the page and does not infer anything you leave out. If a figure, a decision or a link between sections matters, write it down.
The rubric above is deliberately generic so it applies to any project. Here is what a Level 3 (Meets standard) or higher typically looks like against each dimension, for each of the three sections you submit.
5.1 Problem Analysis and Business Case
This section tests whether you can build a justified case for your project, not just describe it.
- Rigour: your problem statement is grounded in evidence: data, observed symptoms, or a clearly reasoned root-cause chain, not just an assertion that a problem exists.
- Integration: the cost, savings and payback figures in your business case are the same ones in your Plan Summary’s cost baseline and in your success measures.
- Application: your root-cause analysis uses a fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram, the technique modelled in the Caldera Freight case study, correctly, and your business case follows the programme’s structure rather than a generic pitch.
- Professional judgement: the business case makes a defensible call on why this project, why now, and what happens if it is not approved.
- AI responsibility: your AI Use Note explains where AI helped draft the business case and names at least one place its framing needed correcting.
5.2 Scope, Governance and Stakeholder Plan
This section tests whether you can define the project’s boundaries and its people-management strategy.
- Rigour: your scope statement’s inclusions and exclusions are traceable back to the business case, not restated from the case study.
- Integration: every stakeholder with a real stake in the outcome appears in your stakeholder engagement approach (and in your RACI and communication plan, if you include them), and your governance decision points match the gates in your Plan Summary.
- Application: your governance structure (or three-tier equivalent) and stakeholder engagement approach both use the programme’s frameworks, correctly adapted to your project’s actual stakeholders.
- Professional judgement: your stakeholder engagement strategy shows real prioritisation: a powerful, low-interest stakeholder is treated differently from an interested, low-power one.
- AI responsibility: your AI Use Note shows you checked an AI-suggested stakeholder list or RACI split against your own knowledge of the project, and corrected any mismatch.
5.3 Risk Register and Monitoring Framework
This section tests whether you can manage uncertainty and track performance professionally.
- Rigour: each of your minimum eight risks is described specifically enough to be actionable, not a generic category copied from a template.
- Integration: each risk names the assumptions behind it, and your monitoring indicators track the objectives set in your business case.
- Application: your P×I scoring is applied consistently across all risks, and your KPI or EVM monitoring approach is mechanically correct; if you use earned value, its planned value follows from the cost baseline in your Plan Summary.
- Professional judgement: your risk responses (avoid, mitigate, transfer, accept) are matched sensibly to each risk’s score, not applied uniformly.
- AI responsibility: your AI Use Note flags where an AI-generated risk or KPI needed adjusting to fit your project’s real context.
Scoring and the pass standard
How a section is decided
Each of the five dimensions is scored from 1 to 4 against the descriptors in Part 4. A section “meets the standard” only when all five dimensions score 3 (Meets standard) or higher. Your reviewer uses the scores to reach this decision. Your feedback report gives the result for each section, not the scores, and there is no grade above a pass.
How the submission is decided
Your submission passes the Human Audit only when all three sections meet the standard. If any single dimension in any section scores 1 or 2, that section does not yet meet the standard, and the submission as a whole moves to the resubmission path described in Part 2.
A Level 4 in one dimension does not offset a Level 1 or 2 in another, and a strong section cannot compensate for a weak one. The certificate has to mean the whole plan holds up under scrutiny, not that parts of it do. A brilliant risk register cannot make up for a business case with no evidence behind it.
What happens after a pass
Once your submission passes the Human Audit, your Certificate of Applied Practice is prepared and issued to you by email. The certificate itself states your name, the date of your reviewer’s sign-off, and a short statement of what the review confirmed, so it stands on its own as evidence. Employers and clients can also check it at verify.krong.academy, using the certificate number and the holder’s full name.
What it signals
The Certificate of Applied Practice tells employers and clients that you did not just pass a programme. You applied its frameworks to a real project, and a certified project manager read, assessed and signed off that work. For project managers building a portfolio, seeking promotion or moving into a new sector, this is the credential that carries weight.
Alongside any certification. The Certificate of Applied Practice is a capability credential, not a replacement for a professional certification. It sits alongside whatever certification you hold or plan to hold, and shows something an exam cannot: that you applied the method to a plan of your own and an experienced practitioner signed it off.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a Google account?
Yes. Applied Practice submissions are handled through a linked Google Form, so you will need a Google account to use it. If you do not already have one, you can create one for free at accounts.google.com in a couple of minutes.
How long does the review take?
We commit to a twenty-one-business-day turnaround from the date of a complete submission. If a file cannot be opened, we tell you within seven to ten business days.
Is my submitted project work kept confidential?
Yes. Your work is seen only by your reviewer and the lead reviewer. No AI tool reads it. It is never published, shared or used in programme materials without your explicit consent, and we delete plan documents and feedback 24 months after your purchase.
What if my project is sensitive or commercially confidential?
Sanitise your submission before you send it. Use a fictional organisation name, approximate financial figures and role titles rather than personal names. The Caldera Freight model in this programme demonstrates exactly how to do this.
Krong Academy is an independent training provider. Caldera Freight is a fictional organisation created for instructional purposes.