PAWF (CASRAI)

Pre-Award Management Certification — Foundation

LevelFoundationPAWPAWF (CASRAI)

Lessons

13 modules

Domains

Exam blueprint

Exam items

Per attempt

70%

Pass mark

Fixed, uncurved

Retake wait

Days

What you earn

The credential itself

Pass the examination and CASRAI issues this certificate and the post-nominal PAWF (CASRAI), signed by the Programme Director and verifiable by anyone, permanently, from the code on its face.

CASRAI Certification

Certificate of Professional Competence

This is to certify that

Dr. Amelia R. Hartley

has completed the prescribed programme of study and passed the examination in

Pre-Award Management — Foundation

and is admitted to the designationPAWF (CASRAI)

Verify atcasrai.org/verify/CASRAI-PAW-2026-DZ3DOT

Specimen. Issued as a signed PDF and as a machine-readable Open Badge; the holder and code shown are illustrative.

How it appears on your CV

Certifications

PAWF (CASRAI) — Pre-Award Management, Foundation

CASRAI·Issued Mar 2026·Credential ID CASRAI-PAW-2026-DZ3DOT

casrai.org/verify/CASRAI-PAW-2026-DZ3DOT

Every certificate is issued under the signature of Dr. Diana Nieves Castro, MD, Programme Director of CASRAI Certification, who sets the syllabus, blueprint and pass mark for this credential.

It certifies that its holder passed the CASRAI examination for this course on the date shown, scored against the blueprint and pass mark published on this page — and anyone can confirm it from the verification code, without an account and without contacting us.

About this credential

What it covers

Body of knowledge

Exam blueprint

The exam is assembled to these weights on every attempt. They are published before purchase because a blueprint you cannot see is not a blueprint.

Domains and weights8 domains · 7 scored items
Domain	Weight	Items
Funding opportunity intelligence and interpretation1	12%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Eligibility, limited submission and internal competition2	8%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Budget construction and justification3	20%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Cost principles, F&A and cost sharing at proposal stage4	16%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Subrecipients, consortia and multi-party proposals5	10%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Proposal assembly, institutional review and routing6	12%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Submission systems, transmission and error resolution7	8%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Certifications, disclosures, just-in-time and award acceptance8	14%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Total	100%	7

Item counts are approximate. Each attempt draws a fresh form to the weights above, so the exact number of items per domain varies between attempts.

Syllabus

13 modules, 13 lessons

Every lesson and every learning outcome is listed. The lesson bodies open on enrolment; nothing else about the course is withheld.

13 modules · 13 lessons

Lesson material opens once you are enrolled. The full syllabus and every learning outcome are shown here so you can judge the coverage before you pay.

Module 1
W1
1 lesson
1. Locked.Funding opportunity intelligence and interpretationLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - By the end, the learner can:
  - W1.1 [An] Read a funding opportunity announcement from any of the five covered systems and extract every requirement that creates an institutional obligation.
  - W1.2 [E] Distinguish binding from advisory language and judge the consequence of non-compliance with each requirement identified.
  - W1.3 [An] Resolve a conflict between an opportunity announcement, a sponsor's general application guide, the sponsor's terms and conditions, and the government-wide or programme-wide framework beneath them, stating the order of precedence and its basis.
  - W1.4 [A] Classify a US federal announcement by type and, for NIH, distinguish PA, PAR, RFA and NOSI and state the administrative consequence of each.
  - W1.5 [A] Interpret an EU work programme, call and topic, and a UKRI, tri-agency or ARC/NHMRC call document, extracting the same fields as from a US NOFO.
  - W1.6 [A] Determine the deadline type and set a defensible internal deadline from it.
  - W1.7 [E] Identify opportunity features requiring early escalation and judge which require escalation before development begins rather than at review.
  - W1.8 [A] Use awarded-project databases as competitive intelligence during opportunity assessment.
Module 2
W2
1 lesson
1. Locked.Eligibility, limited submission and internal competitionLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - W2.1 [A] Verify institutional eligibility, including registrations, identifiers, assurances and exclusion/debarment status.
  - W2.2 [A] Verify investigator eligibility against an announcement's criteria.
  - W2.3 [An] Identify a limited-submission opportunity from announcement language that does not use the phrase.
  - W2.4 [E] Evaluate an internal competition process for fairness, defensibility and conflict-of-interest management.
  - W2.5 [An] Analyse an investigator's committed effort across pending and active awards and identify over-commitment before submission.
  - W2.6 [E] Judge the correct response when a limited-submission process has been bypassed.
Module 3
W3
1 lesson
1. Locked.Budget construction I: personnelLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - W3.1 [A] Construct a multi-year personnel budget from an institution's rate parameters and a described project team.
  - W3.2 [A] Apply the correct salary basis for a described appointment, including academic-year, calendar-year and summer appointments.
  - W3.3 [A] Convert between effort expressed as a percentage, as person-months and as the sponsor's required unit.
  - W3.4 [A] Apply a sponsor salary limitation and calculate the institutional cost of the capped portion.
  - W3.5 [An] Identify errors in a personnel budget by class — basis, effort, on-costs, escalation, arithmetic.
  - W3.6 [E] Judge whether a proposed effort commitment is credible against the described scope of work.
Module 4
W4
1 lesson
1. Locked.Budget construction II: non-personnel, multi-year and multi-currencyLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - W4.1 [A] Budget equipment correctly against an institution's capitalisation threshold, and determine its treatment in the indirect cost base.
  - W4.2 [A] Budget travel, materials, consumables and other direct costs with a documented basis of estimate.
  - W4.3 [A] Budget special categories — participant support, patient care, publication, tuition — and apply their distinct base and prior-approval treatments.
  - W4.4 [A] Construct a budget in the sponsor's required form, including modular and flat-rate forms, and identify what must still be documented internally.
  - W4.5 [An] Identify inconsistencies between a budget, its justification and the scientific narrative.
  - W4.6 [E] Evaluate whether a budget can be administered as proposed.
  - W4.7 [A] Handle multi-currency costing and exchange-rate assumptions.
Module 5
W5
1 lesson
1. Locked.Cost principles and allowability at proposal stageLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - W5.1 [A] Apply the allowability tests to a proposed cost and state which criterion is in doubt.
  - W5.2 [An] Identify expressly unallowable costs in a draft budget.
  - W5.3 [E] Evaluate whether a cost normally treated as indirect can be directly charged in a described circumstance, and construct the justification if so.
  - W5.4 [An] Compare the treatment of the same cost across two funding systems and identify where it diverges.
  - W5.5 [E] Judge when a proposed cost arrangement risks a cost accounting inconsistency and must be escalated rather than resolved in pre-award.
Module 6
W6
1 lesson
1. Locked.Indirect costs: rates, bases, caps and jurisdictional modelsLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - W6.1 [A] Apply an indirect cost rate to the correct base, executing every required exclusion.
  - W6.2 [An] Read a negotiated rate agreement and determine which rate applies to a described project.
  - W6.3 [A] Apply a sponsor rate cap and calculate the unrecovered indirect cost.
  - W6.4 [An] Compare the US, UK and EU indirect cost models and identify what each does with costs the others treat differently.
  - W6.5 [E] Evaluate a request for a rate waiver and route it correctly.
  - W6.6 [A] Apply the de minimis provision where an entity has no negotiated rate.
Module 7
W7
1 lesson
1. Locked.Cost sharing and institutional commitmentsLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - W7.1 [A] Distinguish mandatory, voluntary committed and voluntary uncommitted cost sharing in described proposal language.
  - W7.2 [An] Identify sentences in a draft narrative that create an unintended binding commitment.
  - W7.3 [A] Quantify, source and document a cost-sharing commitment.
  - W7.4 [E] Evaluate whether a proposed commitment should be accepted, and recommend accordingly.
  - W7.5 [A] Obtain and document third-party cost sharing before submission.
Module 8
W8
1 lesson
1. Locked.Subrecipients, consortia and multi-party proposalsLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - W8.1 [E] Make and justify a subrecipient/contractor determination from the substance of a described relationship.
  - W8.2 [A] Assemble a complete subrecipient proposal package and identify what is missing from an incomplete one.
  - W8.3 [A] Verify a partner's institutional standing, including exclusion and audit status.
  - W8.4 [A] Apply the correct indirect cost treatment to subawards in the prime's budget and to the subrecipient's own costs.
  - W8.5 [An] Identify proposal-stage risk indicators in a described partner and route each to the function that must assess it.
  - W8.6 [A] Handle an EU consortium proposal's structural requirements.
  - W8.7 [A] Complete the institution's side of an incoming subaward package.
  - W8.8 [E] Evaluate which prime-award terms must flow down to a partner.
Module 9
W9
1 lesson
1. Locked.Proposal assembly and institutional reviewLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - W9.1 [A] Build an announcement-specific compliance checklist and evidence its execution.
  - W9.2 [An] Review a complete application package and identify every compliance, format and consistency defect.
  - W9.3 [A] Verify non-narrative components for completeness, currency and correct format.
  - W9.4 [A] Verify the data management and sharing plan against the sponsor's required elements and against the budget.
  - W9.5 [A] Operate an internal routing and approval workflow, including specialised approvals.
  - W9.6 [E] Judge when an internal deadline exception is defensible and articulate the rationale for the deadline to an investigator.
  - W9.7 [An] Distinguish what a research administrator must review from what they must not.
Module 10
W10
1 lesson
1. Locked.Submission systems, transmission and failure triageLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - W10.1 [A] Operate a submission through preparation, validation, authorisation, transmission, receipt confirmation and any post-submission window.
  - W10.2 [An] Interpret validation output and distinguish blocking errors from meaningful warnings.
  - W10.3 [E] Triage a submission failure under deadline pressure and determine whether relief is available.
  - W10.4 [A] Capture the evidence required to support a system-problem claim, at the moment of failure.
  - W10.5 [A] Confirm sponsor-side receipt as distinct from successful transmission.
  - W10.6 [An] Identify the institution's exposure through submission-system credentials, roles and delegations.
Module 11
W11
1 lesson
1. Locked.Certifications, disclosures and just-in-timeLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - W11.1 [A] Identify the certifications and representations made at submission and state what each asserts.
  - W11.2 [An] Determine, from a described set of investigator affiliations, appointments and support, what must be disclosed and to whom.
  - W11.3 [A] Apply financial conflict of interest requirements at proposal stage.
  - W11.4 [A] Apply research security disclosure and certification requirements, and identify where current agency notices must be checked.
  - W11.5 [A] Assemble and submit a just-in-time response within a sponsor's deadline.
  - W11.6 [E] Judge whether a compliance approval is in place at the point the sponsor requires it.
Module 12
W12
1 lesson
1. Locked.Award review, negotiation, acceptance and handoverLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - W12.1 [An] Review an incoming award document and identify every term creating an obligation the institution has not already accepted.
  - W12.2 [E] Judge which terms require negotiation or escalation before acceptance.
  - W12.3 [A] Manage a sponsor-requested budget reduction, including the scope conversation with the investigator.
  - W12.4 [An] Interpret special award conditions as a risk signal.
  - W12.5 [E] Evaluate an at-risk spending request.
  - W12.6 [A] Produce a handover package that a post-award administrator can act on without reconstruction.
Module 13
W13
1 lesson
1. Locked.Deadline simulation and source currencyLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - W13.1 [E] Prioritise competing pre-award tasks under a fixed deadline and justify what is deferred.
  - W13.2 [An] Diagnose which of several simultaneous problems is fatal and which is survivable.
  - W13.3 [A] Determine which version of a governing source applied at a given date.
  - W13.4 [E] Evaluate a secondary source against the primary text.

Assessment

How the exam works

The exam is closed-book and multiple choice. Each attempt draws a fresh form to the domain weights above, so no two attempts are the same paper and no answer key circulates. The pass mark is 70% and is fixed — there is no curve, no quota and no adjustment by cohort.

Scoring is immediate. You are shown your overall result and, for every item, the option you chose, the correct option and the reasoning behind it — whether you passed or not. A failed attempt may be retaken after 90 days. The wait exists so a retake is a second attempt at the material rather than a second attempt at remembering the paper.

Forms are assembled to the blueprint above or not at all: where a domain cannot yet be sampled to that standard, the exam declines to start rather than issue an unbalanced paper. Your material and progress are never affected, and there is no time limit on when you sit.

Passing candidates are issued a certificate with a verification code. Anyone can check that code on our public verification page without an account and without contacting us.

Certifying authority

Signed by Dr. Diana Nieves Castro, MD

CASRAI’s certification programme is academically and medically directed by Dr. Diana Nieves Castro, MD, Programme Director, who sets the syllabus and blueprint for this credential and signs every certificate issued under it.

CASRAI has maintained the terminology and reporting standards of research administration for over a decade. It assumed leadership of the CRediT contributor-roles taxonomy in 2014 and carried it through to adoption as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, now in use by publishers, funders and institutions worldwide. This examination is drawn from that body of work.

What the credential certifies: that its holder passed the CASRAI examination for this course on the date shown, scored against the blueprint and pass mark published above — verifiable by anyone, permanently, from the code on its face.