The skills of company staff are its most important asset. It is vital that the company can demonstrate that staff skills are assessed and recorded, and that staff with the right skills are performing and approving technical work. This is done by creating and maintaining a Technical Authority Register.

The Technical Authority Register for the company will be referred to by every project. Therefore it should be set up and maintained separately from individual projects or studies. Then it can simply be used as required, without additional effort or further delay to work in progress.

The Technical Authority Register is a list of staff engaged in technical work, detailing their competence in discipline skills, and their authority to create and review technical outputs. It is set up with the following steps:

• List the technical disciplines that the client company works in.
• Define levels of competence: Awareness, Knowledge, Skill, Mastery.
• For each member of staff, assess their level of competence in each technical discipline.
• Tabulate a skills matrix, which presents a complete overview of which staff have what skill level in each discipline.
• Nominate the most senior Technical Authority person for each discipline. Identify the staff with sufficient experience to review and approve work.

• A list of disciplines for which assurance is required.
• A list of technical staff
• Definitions of levels of competence
• A company skills matrix
• The name of the most senior person in each discipline (the ‘Discipline Head’).
• The names of the staff authorised to review and approve work.
  

A 2 day workshop with the client to set up the discipline list and competences, and set up an assessment program. Once staff have been internally assessed, which may take a month or more, a second 2 day workshop will combine the results into the matrix, and finalise the list of senior TAs.