A completion is the one write in this system that carries any weight, and the design question is not how to record it but who is allowed to and what that record has to contain to still be worth something in three years.
Key takeaways
Nobody confirms their own completion. It is the one permission rule in the system.
The record says who confirmed, when, and how the training was delivered.
An external qualification is recorded as a completion with its own expiry, not as an exception.
Evidence is optional and, when supplied, is a link rather than a stored document.
A completion is never edited. A correction is a new record superseding the old one.
Who confirms
Fig 1. How a completion is recorded. The self-confirmation refusal is the only permission rule here, and the refresher scheduling is what makes the record self-maintaining.
Database
App integration
Security & identity
Management
Analytics
Front-end & mobile
People
Why no self-confirmation
Not because people are dishonest — overwhelmingly they are not — but because a training record where anybody can mark their own training complete is worth nothing to an insurer, an auditor or a client asking for evidence. The whole value of the record is that somebody other than the beneficiary attested to it.
The rule is enforced by comparing the confirming address with the subject’s, which is crude and sufficient. In practice a supervisor confirms for their team, a trainer confirms for a session, and both are recorded by name.
External qualifications
Somebody arrives already holding a first-aid certificate. That should satisfy the requirement, and the wrong way to do it is a person-level exception saying they do not need it. The right way is a completion of type external with the certificate’s own expiry date rather than the requirement’s default validity.
That distinction matters in three years: an exception says nothing about when it stops being true, whereas an external completion carrying the certificate’s real expiry will generate a refresher assignment on the right date, exactly like an internal one.
Evidence
Fig 2. What each kind of completion carries. The system records enough to be evidence and deliberately does not become a document store.
Machine learning
Networking
Front-end & mobile
People
Outside AWS
Keeping a link rather than a copy is a deliberate limitation. Certificates already live somewhere — the certification tracker from Day 85, a shared drive, the provider’s own portal — and a second copy here would need its own retention policy for no additional assurance.
Corrections
A completion recorded against the wrong person, or with the wrong date, is corrected by a new record that supersedes it, and both stay. Editing in place would produce a training record that cannot be relied on, which is the only thing this system produces.
Next: the gap report, and why it is about roles rather than people.