In 2019, emails have been sent to all participants notifying them of their 2.0 auditing month for 2020. A participant’s invoice will include both their annual audit week and this year’s audit date. The audit week will not be issued before the invoice. 

Scheduling 2.0 is not optional, and participants may not elect to forgo participation in Scheduling 2.0 for any reason.

With Scheduling 2.0, each participant’s audit has been packaged together with other audits in the same geographical area during a time of year that makes sense for your location's climate.  Moving one participant’s audit date affects other participants that are within that same package. Such changes would eradicate the cost savings provided to you and could necessitate raising fees for all participants.

As stated in Certification Bulletin 2019-05, up to 70% of participants’ audit date moved to a different month with Scheduling 2.0. If your audit month is moving, your certificate month also moved. Audits are performed between 120 and 90 days prior to the expiration of the certificate. For example, if your previous audit month was April, your certificate expired in July. If your new 2.0 audit month is June, your certificate will now expire in September.

Although we can’t guarantee the exact same audit day, your audit schedule will take place the same week each year. The ISO 8061 date and time standard is used to define the week numbers. Visit epochconverter.com/weeks/2020 for a list of 2020 week durations.

It is possible. There are some exceptions that create scheduling conflicts for a particular week such as NASCC: The Steel Conference, natural disasters and holidays. We will make every effort to keep your audit date consistent and predictable, but your date may move by a week or two to work around these scheduling complications. We will also provide you with advance notice should we need to move your audit date due to a holiday or NASCC: The Steel Conference. Additionally, these changes to your audit week would only be temporary and you would revert back to your assigned week for future audits.

If participant’s auditing month changed with Scheduling 2.0 and their certificate will expire before they are complete with the renewal process, a certificate extension will be issued. The extension will be sent to the participant once they have paid the invoice for their Scheduling 2.0 audit.

The “S” suffix at the end of an audit number indicates that the audit is part of Scheduling 2.0. Participants who will have two audits in 2020 due to the scheduling changes will have two audits with this suffix.

This affects participants whose previous audits took place in the first quarter of the year and we moved your audit to fall in one of the second two quarters of the year. For example, if your audit was taking place in February and you are now moving to a November auditing month under Scheduling 2.0, you will have audits in February 2020 and November 2020. 

This is being done to decrease the extended time between audits. To illustrate: if we were to forgo the February 2020 audit, the participant would not have an audit between February 2019 and November 2020--that's 21 months without an audit. Similarly, if we skipped the November 2020 audit to avoid having two audits in one year, the participant would be audited in February 2020 and again in November 2021--another 21 months without an audit.

With the release of Scheduling 2.0 and Bulletin 2019-05, we also wanted to streamline our certification fee schedules too. We simply averaged the amount you previously paid for the full audit year with the amounts you paid for the two years of renewal audits. So now, you’ll be paying a flat-base fee (for your first certification) every year. For more information, please see Bulletin 2019-05. We’ve also linked to the updated fee schedules below:

• Domestic Fabricator
• Domestic Erector
• International Fabricator

During the Scheduling 2.0 transition period, most participants moved to a different certificate expiration month. While some had a longer period between their last expiration month, and others had a shorter period— regardless of this period, your audit fee was prorated accordingly. So, this prorated amount could be more or less than your annual fee, depending on how much your certificate expiration month shifted. In other words, you paid for the number of months you’ll be certified during the Scheduling 2.0 transition. 

Once the 2.0 transition is complete, the amount shown on the current fee schedules is what you will be charged every year.

As you know, we are certifying your firm’s quality management system for steel fabrication or erection. Absent personnel, vacation conflicts, busy production schedules, hunting season, or other similar circumstances will no longer be considered acceptable reasons for rescheduling and will not be an approved reason for rescheduling--meaning that your audit date will not be moved. Your quality management system (QMS) must be active and functioning regardless of who is present on a given day

Absent personnel, vacation conflicts, busy production schedules, hunting season, or other similar circumstances will no longer be considered acceptable reasons for rescheduling and will not be approved, meaning that your audit date will not be moved. Your quality management system (QMS) must be active and functioning regardless of who is present on a given day.

If you’re a fabricator, your audit duration previously varied between one or two days based on audit scope cycles. We stopped that practice and your audits moving forward will now take the same number of days each year. This is based on the size of your company and the complexity of your certifications along with your endorsements. Audit durations will be either one or two days consistently every year. If you are an erector, your audit duration will remain two days. This is based off the fact that you must have an office audit and active job-site audit.

We list your current principal, certification, A/P, marketing contacts on your annual invoice. If one of these happens to change, you need to update your Company Profile Form, as stated in PR 1.11:

“AISC relies on email to communicate with Applicants and Participants. Any changes to contact information MUST be provided to AISC. See PR4.9 concerning Company Profile. It is the Participant/Applicant’s responsibility to ensure communications are being received.”

Use the Company Profile Form at aisc.org/certprofile to notify us. Please remember you have to contact AISC Certification and Membership separately if any staff profile changes.