Building the business case for APM Recognised Assessment.
Davy Wilson led bp’s programme to APM Recognised Assessment, secured in December 2024. In this briefing he sets out why bp pursued it, what the work actually involved, the six lessons he took from it, and how Pathway 4 compares with the routes most candidates take.
The briefing, and the written detail behind it, for anyone putting the case to a sponsor.
Personal reflections of the presenter. Not presented on behalf of, or endorsed by, bp.
What bp’s programme actually taught us.
The things worth knowing before you start, in the order they tend to come up.
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Start from the assessment, not the framework
Most organisations have a competency framework and assume recognition is a matter of tidying it. The APM assesses how you decide somebody is competent: the evidence, the assessor judgement and the moderation behind the decision. bp’s framework was sound; the assessment around it was what the work went into.
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Assessor capability is the long pole
Writing the standard takes weeks. Building a bench of assessors who apply it consistently, and who can justify a decision to somebody outside the organisation, takes considerably longer. Start recruiting and training assessors before you think you need them.
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Governance is what is being bought
Recognition is not a certificate against a document set. It is a judgement that the scheme will still hold its standard in three years, with different people running it. Moderation, appeals, records and periodic review are the substance of that, not the paperwork around it.
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The review is constructive, not adversarial
The APM assessment reads more like a professional review than a compliance audit. Assessors ask why a decision was made the way it was. A scheme whose owners can answer that clearly does well, even where parts of it are still maturing.
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Name the population early
A scheme covering a single directorate and one covering an enterprise are different pieces of work, and the boundary drives assessor numbers, moderation load and how long discovery takes. Setting it late means re-scoping everything downstream of it.
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The scheme has to outlive the programme
The measure of success is not the award. It is that bp’s own people still run the scheme, still moderate it and still put candidates through it, with the original programme team no longer involved.
One assessment, doing two jobs.
Recognition is usually argued for on the chartership route alone. That is the headline, but it is not the whole return.
For your people
- A route to chartership that recognises the assessment they have already passed internally, rather than asking them to evidence it again from scratch.
- One professional discussion with the APM of roughly 30 minutes, in place of a full written application and an interview of up to two hours.
- Chartered status on exactly the same standard as every other route. Nothing about the designation is qualified or lesser.
- A visible progression step for experienced practitioners who had stopped seeing one.
For the organisation
- One assessment doing two jobs: internal competence assurance and the external chartership route, instead of two parallel processes.
- A credential your clients, boards and regulators already recognise, attached to people you assessed yourself.
- Assessor capability and moderation that raise the quality of internal decisions whether or not a candidate goes on to charter.
- A distinction held by a small number of organisations, which says something about the standard you hold your people to.
How the four routes differ.
The standard is identical on every route. What changes is how much of it a candidate evidences again in writing, and how long the interview runs.
| Route | What the candidate holds | Written application | Interview |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pathway 1 Full assessment | No recognised assessment | 7 core competences and 16 electives, plus ethics | Up to 2 hours |
| Pathway 2 Assesses professional practice | A recognised assessment for technical knowledge | 7 core competences and 5 electives, plus ethics | Up to 1 hour 30 |
| Pathway 3 Assesses technical knowledge | A recognised assessment for professional practice | 7 core competences and 1 elective, plus ethics | Up to 1 hour |
| Pathway 4 Recognised assessment | An assessment covering both, such as your own recognised scheme | No written application to compile | A single professional discussion, roughly 30 minutes |
Pathway 4 is not a lighter standard. A candidate reaches it because your recognised scheme has already assessed them against the same competences, to the same level, and the APM has accepted that the scheme does so reliably. The saving is in not proving the same thing twice.
Wondering whether your scheme is close?
Discovery starts by measuring what you already have against the recognition criteria. Most organisations are further along than they think, and further from the parts that matter than they expect.