TL;DR: Auktoriserat Golvföretag, authorised flooring company, is Golvbranschen’s quality mark. A digital certificate lets an authorised company show customers and colleagues that it works actively on quality, environment, sustainability and the working environment. The certificate can be shared on Facebook and Instagram and downloaded as a PDF, and its authenticity can always be checked with the verification button or the QR code at the foot of the document. The decisive part is in Golvbranschen’s own words: the certificate is revocable and disappears if a company is no longer authorised or a member.
Golvbranschen, GBR, is the Swedish trade association for flooring contractors and flooring suppliers. Auktoriserat Golvföretag is its authorisation, and on the contractor side it is the mark a customer meets when choosing a flooring company.
That the company works actively, not that it once did. Golvbranschen writes: “Authorised flooring companies on the contractor side can use a digital certificate to show customers and colleagues that the company is an authorised flooring company and therefore works actively on quality, environment, sustainability and the working environment.”
Four areas in a single sentence, and the word actively is what ties them together. A certificate that makes a claim in the present tense has to be able to stop applying. Otherwise it is a claim about the past dressed as a claim about today.
The certificate is taken back. Golvbranschen’s own wording is short: “The digital certificate is revocable and disappears if a company is no longer authorised or a member.” Anyone who then tries to verify it is told that it has been removed.
Revocable is the word carrying the whole design. An authorisation that starts and never ends is not an authorisation, it is a memory. Golvbranschen gave its mark an ending that works as quickly as the beginning.
Everything, because those are four claims about the present. A company can meet the requirements this year and not the next. This is not something a document can capture once and for all, because it is work that goes on. A certificate that could not be taken back would keep asserting four things nobody is checking any more.
A revocable certificate asserts only what holds today, and that is the only version of the claim worth anything to the person reading it.
Two routes, both a matter of seconds. “The authenticity of the documents can always be verified by clicking the verification button, or scanning the QR code at the foot of the documents,” Golvbranschen writes. The button is used on screen and the QR code on the downloaded document, so the check travels with the document when it leaves the browser.
The customer needs neither a phone call to Golvbranschen nor a search through a register. The answer comes from the issuer at the moment the question is asked.
Because a PDF knows nothing about the present. It looks the same on the day it is issued and five years later, whatever has happened to the company in between. Golvbranschen still offers PDFs, the documents can be downloaded, but the PDF is a copy of the proof rather than the proof.
The proof stays with the issuer, and the QR code on the copy points back to it. That is how a downloaded PDF can stop being valid without anyone having to collect it in.
Where the customers already are. “It is easy to share the documents on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. The documents can also be downloaded as PDFs,” Golvbranschen writes.
A certificate that only sits with the trade association convinces nobody. One that can go into a post, into a quote and onto the company’s own page does its work where the choice of flooring company is made.
Customers and colleagues, in Golvbranschen’s own words. The customer uses it to pick the right company instead of trusting a logo on a website. The colleagues, meaning the other companies in the trade, benefit from the authorisation meaning something, because it is a shared mark and it loses value the moment someone who should not carry it does so anyway.
Golvbranschen describes the TRUE documents for authorised flooring companies on its own site, and the quotes on this page are translated from it: Golvbranschen on TRUE documents for authorised flooring companies. Another Swedish authorisation body solved the same problem the same way: GVK. More on what happens when proof stops being valid: certificate expiry and renewal.
It is Golvbranschen’s authorisation for flooring companies. An authorised flooring company on the contractor side can use a digital certificate to show customers and colleagues that it works actively on quality, environment, sustainability and the working environment.
It disappears. Golvbranschen writes that the certificate is revocable and disappears if a company is no longer authorised or a member, and anyone who then tries to verify it is told that it has been removed.
By clicking the verification button on the document or scanning the QR code at the foot of the downloaded document.
Yes. Golvbranschen writes that it is easy to share the documents on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. The documents can also be downloaded as PDFs.
No. The PDF is a downloaded copy carrying a QR code that points back to the original. The proof stays with the issuer, which is why the certificate can be withdrawn when the authorisation ends.
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