VALID-8
Close the Skills Gap
Raise the Standard
Prove What People Can Do
Welcome to the evolution of assessment. Whether you’re training surgeons, tradespeople, teachers, or soldiers, VALID-8 makes skills visible, verifiable, and transferable.
Solving the Skills Deficit
By aligning learning with real-world competency, VALID-8 bridges the gap between education and employment. It’s the solution to the global competency crisis.
The Problem: Credentials vs. Competence
Across nearly every industry, the same pattern is unfolding:
- Workforce shortages are rising
- Training investments aren’t translating into results
- Traditional qualifications fail to capture real-world ability
- Skills are invisible, fragmented, or unverified
Sectors such as apprenticeships, healthcare, education, compliance, and Indigenous Knowledge, are all facing the same urgent question: How do we prove someone has the actual skills to do the job, not just talk about it?
The Solution: VALID-8
VALID-8 is a patented, Canadian-built e-portfolio platform that replaces outdated assessment models with modern, transparent, and defensible skills validation.
It allows learners and professionals to:
- Capture evidence of their real work — video, photos, audio, documents
- Map it to competencies or standards across any occupation
- Get assessed by experts who verify what’s been demonstrated
- Earn recognition for skills — regardless of how or where they were learned
- Create showcase Resumes to send to possible employers
This isn’t theoretical. VALID-8 has been used by over 1.5 million users in 27+ countries — achieving 90%+ success rates where systems were once failing.
We Serve Every Industry Where Skill Matters
VALID-8 is used in every domain where practical ability needs to be proven:
Apprenticeships & Skilled Trades
Boost achievement rates, track real progress, and ease supervision pressure with evidence-based competency portfolios. Proven to cut drop-out rates and create more apprenticeship seats without changing regulations.
Medical & Healthcare (Doctors, Nurses, Surgeons, Veterinarians)
Validate both academic and clinical competencies. Used to fast-track foreign-trained surgeons in Canada — reducing the time taken to obtain a licence from 6 years to 40 hours (2025).
Education (Colleges, Universities, Work Placements)
Enable work-integrated learning, real-time assessment, and industry-aligned portfolios.
Military
Track skills gained through service. Create secure, exportable portfolios for redeployment, cross-training, or transition into civilian work.
Human Resources
Track skills gained through service. Create secure, exportable portfolios for redeployment, cross-training, or transition into civilian work.
Regulatory & Awarding Bodies
Ensure standards are met and documented. VALID-8 enables fair, transparent, and legally defensible validation of qualifications — supporting audits, appeals, and certifications.
Construction & Industry
Manage portfolios across massive, multi-site teams. Reduce training risk, prove safety compliance, and increase journeyperson-to-apprentice ratios by validating skill, not hours.
Audits & Compliance
Capture and track compliance evidence in real time. Avoid costly penalties by proving tasks were done to spec — with embedded media, signatures, and timestamps.
Legacy Skills
Protect traditional trades and cultural knowledge through secure digital portfolios. VALID-8 preserves how something is done — not just that it was done.
Fairness & Opportunity for All
Enable equitable pathways for non-traditional learners by letting them show competency in their own way — visual, verbal, practical, or performance-based.
Indigenous Knowledge
Respect oral, visual, and land-based learning methods. VALID-8 supports video/audio evidence and alternative assessments, affirming Indigenous teaching and validation traditions.
Why it Works
VALID-8 replaces assumptions with proof. Not implied, not theoretical, but real proof.
Rather than relying on hours, tests, or paper certificates, VALID-8 delivers:
Transparent skill verification
Faster achievement & credentialing
Portability across provinces and occupations
Support for multiple languages, cultures, and accessibility needs
Legally defensible evidence of competence
When you can see the skill, everything changes.
Simple. Scalable. Affordable.
- Can cost as little as a cup of coffee a week
- Covers full access, secure storage, and unlimited support
- Fully bilingual, mobile-friendly, and customizable
- Eligible for government training & placement funds
Created by Global Experts. Proven by Results.
VALID-8 is built by Robert Smart, the original architect of online competency-based assessment, with:
- 30+ years of impact
- Implementation in 27+ countries
- Track record of 90%+ achievement rates
- Recognition by the OECD, UK Parliament, U.S. Senate, and multiple awarding and regulatory bodies.
“If VALID-8 can be used to assess surgeons, why not tradespeople, students, or employees?”
Let’s Build a Skilled Future, Together.
VALID-8 is the solution we’ve been waiting for. It doesn’t just track progress — it proves it.
Whether you’re building homes, healing patients, teaching learners, or shaping policy, VALID-8 lets you see competence in action.