GASQ Certified™

What the mark means, what it covers, and just as importantly — what it does not.

The estimate is certified, not the vendor

This is the distinction that matters most. GASQ Certified applies to a pricing analysis — the appraisal document produced for a specific scope of work. It does not rate, rank, endorse, or accredit any security company.

A vendor cannot be “GASQ Certified.” A vendor can be qualified to respond to an opportunity, which is a separate and independently documented standard. See the Vendor Qualification Standard for that.

What is being certified

That the analysis was produced using the GASQ methodology and that its inputs are internally consistent and complete. In practice that means the appraisal accounts for:

• The Cost to Protect™ — the full cost of performing the function correctly
• Workforce-to-Post™ staffing: the officers genuinely required to hold the posts requested
• Relief coverage, turnover, and hours paid but not worked
• Wage realism for the labor market where the work is performed
• Total Cost of Ownership, not just an hourly rate
• Capital recovery opportunity measured against in-house delivery

How independence is maintained

The Cost to Protect is calculated from the buyer’s scope, coverage requirements, and prevailing labor costs. No vendor’s proposed bill rate is an input to it. GASQ does not need to see a quote to produce the benchmark, and the benchmark does not move because a vendor priced high or low.

The order of operations is deliberate: the buyer-side analysis is completed first. Vendor participation, qualification, and selection happen only afterward, and are measured against a number that was already fixed. That is what Validate Before You Estimate™ means in practice.

GASQ earns revenue from vendor participation on the platform. That relationship is disclosed deliberately, because independence is a claim about method, not a claim about having no commercial interests: no vendor can pay to change a Cost to Protect figure, to alter an appraisal, or to be presented to a buyer as better priced than the analysis shows.

What is not being certified

A GASQ Certified appraisal is a financial analysis. It is explicitly not:

• A guarantee that any vendor will perform to the standard modeled
• A guarantee that a contract can be awarded at the figure shown
• A verification of any particular vendor’s licensing, insurance, or financial condition
• A legal, tax, insurance, or accounting opinion
• A prediction of what vendors in a given market will actually quote

Assumptions can change — and are shown

An appraisal is a point-in-time calculation. It is only as current as the inputs behind it: wage rates, coverage hours, post count, scope, and location. Change any of those and the analysis must be re-run. For that reason every appraisal shows its inputs alongside its outputs, so a buyer, a CFO, or a vendor can see exactly what was assumed and challenge any assumption directly rather than argue with a total.