Steve Johnson (left) led the Ratings Committee this afternoon as it voted to forward to the board a motion to implement the use of a Certificate of Authorization (CA) to streamline the dissemination of certification data.

Under the existing process, managed within the NFRC 700, inspection agencies (IA) submit a Certification Authorization Reports (CAR) to the manufacturer for every product line following initial approval and for each revision and each addition. The resulting CAR, which is produced from the Certified Products Directory (CPD) is often several hundred pages long and produces unmanageable data files.

Under the proposed motion, the IA would instead provide a CA, which would be a single-page document showing the manufacturer name, CPD number, product model/series name, ratings that are authorized for certification, and other pertinent data. The CAR would still be available upon request.