What “independently verified” means on a Sage Co. build

Who decides that something on a Sage Co. build is verified, and what stops the builder from marking their own work?

Independently verified is a state that only an independent verifier can set. Sage Co. tracks three distinct states for anything that matters — specified, installed, and independently verified — and the first two are internal claims made by the people doing the work. The third is not available to them. The independent verifier is a third party engaged for the project who holds no ownership interest in Sage Co. and is not paid on project outcome. Sage Co. does not grade its own homework.

The three states

Specified means the item exists in the design, sourced from a fixed version of the Approved Materials Catalog. It is a commitment, not an achievement.

Installed means someone at Sage Co. states the item is in the building as specified, with photographic evidence attached and dated. It is an internal claim and the record labels it as one.

Independently verified means a third party examined or tested the item and signed the finding. Only that role can set this state.

• Third-party verification reduces the rate of undetected defects relative to self-certification by the party performing the work.[EMERGING]Emerging

How the restriction is enforced

Hiding a button is not a control. Every permission in this platform is enforced on the server: database row-level security policies decide who may write which state, and a database trigger independently rejects any attempt to set independently verified from a role that is not the independent verifier.

That means the rule survives a modified browser, a direct API call, and any future interface we build on top of the same data. Two enforcement layers, both server-side, is deliberate redundancy on the one rule the company's credibility rests on.

Internal roles are not restricted from disagreeing with a verifier — they are restricted from recording the verifier's conclusion for them. Escalation is a separate path and it is also recorded.

Failures are part of the record

A failed test is never overwritten. It remains in the project record alongside what was done about it and the result of the retest. The Sage Co. Record handed over at completion therefore shows the failures as well as the passes.

This is not a disclosure we make reluctantly. A record with no failures in it is either a very short project or an incomplete record, and a buyer or lender reading the file five years later can tell the difference.

The limit of verification

Verification is a floor, not a ceiling. Clearing every gate does not mean the house is right. If something looks wrong, the instruction to every person on a Sage Co. site is to stop and escalate regardless of what the checklist says.

We also grade the confidence behind what we verify. A measure graded Emerging stays Emerging after installation is verified: verification records that the work was done to specification, and it says nothing about the state of the evidence behind the measure. The EMF domain is graded Emerging everywhere it appears, verified or not.

• Confirming that a measure was installed as specified does not by itself establish the strength of evidence behind the measure.[ESTABLISHED]Established