Highways Agency

The CAT validation process

Validation teams will visit companies following the return of CAT electronic self-score and next steps templates. Each validation team will typically comprise three client CAT practitioners, including a senior client CAT practitioner, all of whom will be fully briefed and trained in the operation of the CAT.

The client CAT practitioners will carry out their own assessment of the company's capability, normally over a period of three working days.

The aim of the visit is to collect positive, recordable evidence that demonstrates the capability of the company. The process for the validation visits is shown below.

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6.1 approach to validation

During the validation, members of the team may:

• undertake individual and small group sessions with a cross section of the company's people
• observe processes, procedures, communication interfaces and systems
• review documentation

In order to gain a full picture of company capability, the validation team may also make contact with the company's trading partners including:

• current clients and customers
• former clients and customers
• supply chain members
• partnering organisations

Once the validation team have completed their visit, they will meet to review the evidence and agree their scores for each of the capability indicators. The senior client CAT practitioner will then generate a validation report and will meet with senior representatives of the company to present the findings.

It is anticipated that the final capability marks will stand for a prescribed period of 12 months. The Agency will reserve the right to carry out a revalidation exercise of the company at any time. For example, if a company's approach in practice appears to be out of step with its validated CAT score.

6.2 preparing for the validation exercise

The CAT champion may be used as the validation project manager to work closely with the senior client CAT practitioner, to plan and execute the validation exercise. The senior client CAT practitioner will require quite detailed information in order to carry out the validation exercise effectively.

During the scoping and planning discussions, the senior client CAT practitioner will provide an outline timetable so that travel and hotels can be planned and key staff can be booked for interviews. He or she may however, want to leave some flexibility, particularly towards the end of the validation exercise to follow up unforeseen issues that arise during the visit. It is also legitimate to ask whether there are any particular areas of interest that the validation team wishes to cover. The senior client CAT practitioner may only be able to provide a brief outline of this, but nevertheless, this is likely to prove useful.

The company should arrange for the validation team to have a private meeting room that they can use as a base during the visit. This should have a telephone and could be used to store copies of documents supporting the evidence recorded on the company's self-score submission. These may include any customer and employee survey results and any documents or brochures that describe the company's strategies and plans.

Validation teams might want to start the visit by meeting with senior managers. These opening sessions are best kept relatively short and there should be ample opportunity for the client CAT practitioner to ask appropriate questions. It is also legitimate here for the leader of the management team, to ask whether there are any particular areas of interest that he or she can tackle right at the start.

When the team of client CAT practitioners have completed the validation exercise, they may want to carry out a review of what they have seen and heard.

They will not be able at this stage to discuss or make any comment on how well the company has done.

Before they leave they will wish to offer their thanks, so a senior representative of the company might wish to be available.