CPD Framework.
Continuing professional development keeps PCL-AI holders current — and current with AI — across a three-year cycle.
Purpose
The CPD framework ensures certified professionals maintain and grow their competence over time, protecting what a PCI credential signals to employers and the public.
Continuing professional development is how a competence-based credential stays meaningful over time. The framework sets out what counts, how much is expected and how it is recorded — so that staying certified reflects genuine, ongoing engagement with the discipline rather than the passage of time.
It is deliberately broad about what qualifies: structured learning, practical application, contribution to the profession, and keeping current with AI governance all count. The emphasis is on real development that keeps your judgement sharp, with light-touch recording and audit to keep the system honest.
The cycle
CPD runs on a three-year cycle aligned to recertification, with a minimum amount of qualifying activity across the period and a mandatory component that keeps your AI knowledge current.
What counts
- Relevant learning, courses and qualifications
- Practice and on-the-job application
- Contribution — writing, speaking, mentoring, standards work
- Events, webinars and conferences
Recording & audit
Members record CPD through their account; a sample of records may be audited for assurance. Keep evidence of your activities.
Lapse & reinstatement
Credentials that are not maintained lapse at the end of the cycle; reinstatement routes are available. See the Recertification Policy for detail.
How CPD works
Continuing professional development keeps a credential current. The framework sets out what counts, how it is recorded, and how the cycle runs.
The cycle
CPD accrues over a defined period tied to recertification.
What counts
A range of learning and professional activity.
Recording & audit
Activity is logged and may be checked.
Lapse & reinstatement
Clear consequences, and a route back if requirements are missed.
Common questions.
How much CPD is required?
A minimum amount of qualifying activity across the three-year cycle, including the mandatory AI-currency component.
What is the AI-currency component?
A required portion of CPD that keeps your knowledge of AI in project controls current, because the tools and governance evolve quickly.
Explore further.
Keep your credential current
Track CPD and recertify with confidence.
Why this matters
A certification is only worth holding if it is genuinely hard to fake. That is why every PCI certification rests on an independent, competence-based assessment, a clear standard, and a strict separation between training and the certification decision — so a pass means the same thing for everyone who earns it, and an employer can rely on it without re-testing the person themselves.
PCI builds in the open: candid about what is in place today, designed around the ISO/IEC 17024 personnel-certification principles, and careful never to imply recognition it does not yet hold. That honesty is not a caveat — it is the foundation a credible credential is built on.
- Substance over marketing
- Fair, transparent process
- Honesty about our status
- Responsible, governed use of AI
Planning a three-year cycle
The practitioners who find CPD easiest treat it as a by-product of work they were going to do anyway, not a separate chore. The predictable failure mode is the opposite: nothing recorded for two years, then a scramble of webinars in the final months before recertification. A light rhythm set early makes the cycle accumulate on its own.
Anchor it to real work
When you take on an unfamiliar scope — a new sector, a new tool, your first delay analysis — note it at the time. Applied stretch assignments are legitimate development, and they are the easiest activity to evidence honestly.
Spread the categories
Mix structured learning with contribution: mentoring a junior planner, presenting a lessons-learned session, reviewing a draft procedure. A record drawn from a single category reads thinner than one that shows breadth across the discipline.
Log little and often
A two-line entry made the week something happens beats reconstruction from memory a year later. Record what you did, roughly when, and what changed in how you work — then submit through CPD submission as you go.
Questions practitioners ask
Does my day job count as CPD?
The test is development, not activity. Routine repetition of tasks you already master does not count; applying the discipline in a genuinely new context does. Producing your fortieth identical progress update develops nothing — building your first integrated cost-and-schedule risk analysis clearly does. Record the stretch, not the routine.
What happens if my record is selected for audit?
You will be asked to provide the evidence behind a sample of entries — attendance confirmations, certificates, a copy of something you wrote or presented, or a short account of applied work. Requests are acknowledged promptly and handled proportionately. An incomplete record leads to a conversation and an opportunity to remedy it before anything stronger is considered.
What if I take a career break during the cycle?
Tell PCI early rather than letting the record drift. Breaks for parental leave, illness or full-time study are handled under the CPD policy, and adjusted expectations can apply across the affected period. What matters is that the position is declared, not discovered.