Candidate handbook

One requirement applies to everything the Council assesses, including theCertified Applied AI Associate, candidates must be 18 or over. It is confirmed at registration. For an examination it is then checked against the date of birth on the identity document at verification — the confirmation is not taken as evidence, and a verification that does not establish the minimum age is refused. For the Certified Applied AI Associate, which needs no identity documents before the assessment, the confirmation stands alone. No date of birth is stored.

Beyond that, Fundamentals credentials carry no formal prerequisites: any candidate may register and sit, whatever their qualifications and however they prepared. Each credential page states the professional experience candidates are expected to have — an expectation, not a gate.

The Professional grade has no formal prerequisite either; its page states the experience it assumes. Membership is never required to sit anything, and buys no advantage in assessment.

Enrolment runs through the candidate portal. A credential marked open on the register can be enrolled for today; one taking registrations of interest cannot yet, and its page says so. Each track’s examination fee and the member rate are published on its credential page, and nothing is payable until you register for an examination. Employer-funded cohorts run on examination licences issued to the organisation; the licence pays the fee and nothing else.

The refund policy governs cancellation, and the candidate support policy governs what happens when illness or emergency intervenes.

Examinations are delivered remotely, in your browser, and are recorded and reviewed by the Council. You need Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge on a desktop or laptop with one display, a camera and microphone, a quiet room with nobody else present, and a connection that will hold for the sitting. The rules themselves are already fixed:

• you sit alone, under your own verified identity;
• only the materials the examination brief permits may be used;
• examination content is confidential — disclosing, soliciting, or reusing it outside the examination is a breach of the Code of Professional Conduct;
• suspected misconduct is investigated before any result is issued, and no adverse finding is made without the candidate being heard.

The sitting is strict. Once begun, the examination is taken in one sitting. Closing, reloading or reopening the examination window ends it, the paper is held at your last saved answers, and you write to support. Where the cause was technical, the Council may allow one resumption, with the time that remained when the sitting stopped. Leaving the examination window or full screen hides the paper with a warning. Leaving it more than twice, or staying away longer than 10 seconds, submits the paper. If the screen share or the camera stops, the paper is hidden until it is restored, and it is submitted if it is not restored within 30 seconds. An interrupted sitting that nobody acts on is closed as submitted after 7 days.They apply to every candidate, and the terms of use state them in section 6.

Examination format varies by track and is fixed when that track’s syllabus is issued. Scenario work is the core of every paper, and may be combined with other applied question types. What does not vary is what is being tested: applying a framework to a deployment, rather than recalling what the framework says.

Every paper is marked by machine against its fixed answer key. A named member of the Council's staff then reviews the recording of the session and the marked script and releases the result, within 3 working days of submission. No result is released until a person has reviewed the recording and the marked script. Any candidate may also ask for a clerical check of the mark by a named member of staff, which is free and separate from an appeal.

A successful candidate receives the credential, its badge, and a public register entry valid for two years — see revalidation. An unsuccessful candidate receives their result with domain-level feedback and may re-sit after 21 days, up tothree attempts in twelve months, each on a different form of the paper. A resit is charged at the standard examination fee, or at 50% of the fee paid for candidates holding a current membership.