Approvals & signatures

Route an inspection for certification, sign it, or return it for correction.

Doing the work and certifying the work are separate acts, and RailCompliant keeps them separate. An inspector fills in the record; a certifying officer signs it. The chain between them is short and every step is recorded.

The chain

draft / complete  →  submitted  →  approved
                        ↓
                     returned  →  draft

• Draft — the record is being filled in.
• Complete — the inspector considers it finished.
• Submitted — the inspector has signed it and routed it to a named certifying officer. Submitting is done from the inspection's own page.
• Approved — the officer has certified it.
• Returned — the officer sent it back for correction, and it becomes a draft again so the inspector can fix it and resubmit.

Who can certify

Certifying authority is deliberately narrow. To be routed an inspection and to approve it, a person must be all three of:

1. on your railroad's crew roster,
2. holding a RailCompliant account at your railroad, and
3. granted certifying authority on that account.

Certifying authority is granted by an organization administrator on the person's account, from the Crew page — see Users and access.

Only the officer the record was routed to may approve or return it. Self-approval is allowed, so a one-person shop where the same individual inspects and certifies is not blocked — the record shows the same name in both places, which is an accurate reflection of what happened.

The Approval Inbox

Approval Inbox in the sidebar has two lists:

• Awaiting your signature — inspections an inspector has signed and routed to you, with the submission date, locomotive, form, type, and inspector. When there is nothing there it says you are caught up.
• Submitted by you — pending — records you signed and sent on, showing who they are routed to, so you can chase a signature without going through the inspection list.

Open a row to read the completed form before you sign it. The inspection's own page is where the approve and return actions live, next to the record you are certifying — you cannot approve from the inbox without seeing the form.

What each step records

Every transition writes to the record permanently:

• who submitted, approved, or returned it, and the exact time;
• the signature blocks shown on the inspection page as a name and timestamp; and
• an entry in the record history, which cannot be edited afterwards.

Everyone involved is notified — the officer when something is routed to them, and the inspector when their record is approved or returned. What arrives by email as well as in the app is controlled by your notification preferences.

Returning something for correction

Returning is not a rejection of the person, and it is better than a verbal correction that leaves no trace. Use it when a field is wrong or missing, when the condition codes do not match the notes, or when the type on the header does not match the work described — the type is what resets the interval clock, so getting it wrong quietly moves a due date.

Say what needs fixing when you return it. The record goes back to draft with its history intact, the inspector corrects it, and resubmits. The returned-and-resubmitted history stays visible, which is exactly what a well-run quality process looks like to an inspector reading the record later.

Related: Recording inspections & tests and Crew and qualifications, which is where you record that someone is qualified to do the work in the first place.