Validate and submit a materiality analysis

Before a double materiality assessment (DMA) goes into approval, preeco | nachhaltigkeit checks it for completeness. A single dialog shows you which checks are still open and lets you submit the assessment for review. The procedure is the same in every DMA module – climate, own workforce, water and marine resources, value chain and business conduct.

Prerequisites

• The assessment is in “Draft” status.
• You have permission to edit and submit the assessment in this team.
• Impacts have been created and – at least partly – assessed.

Step by step

1. Open the page of the assessment concerned, for example “Climate Double Materiality Assessment” or “Own Workforce Double Materiality Assessment”.
2. In the “Assessment status” section at the top right, click the “Actions” drop-down menu and select “Validate completeness”. The side dialog opens on the right with the main heading “Validate assessment”.
3. Read the two figures in the “Summary” section: “Blocking: N of M passed” and “Advisory: N of M passed”. Only the blocking checks decide whether you can submit.
4. Work through the “Blocking Checks (all must pass)” section. A green check mark means passed, a red cross means open; the detail text names the exact cause. The checks are “At least one impact must have a complete materiality determination”, “Override Justifications”, “Enhanced Justification (when fully not material)” and “Not Material Sub-Topic Area Rationales”.
5. Review the “Advisory checks” section. These checks – such as “Stakeholder Engagement”, “Risk Assessment Coverage” or “Sub-Topic Area Breadth” – are not mandatory, but they are flagged with a yellow information symbol and improve audit readiness. If no stakeholder engagement exists, the link “→ Stakeholder engagement” takes you straight to the “Add stakeholder engagement” dialog and closes the validation dialog.
6. If all sub-topic areas are classified as “Not Material”, the “Enhanced Justification” section appears as well. Enter a justification of at least 100 characters in the mandatory “Enhanced Justification” field.
7. At the bottom of the dialog, click “Submit for review”. The button stays disabled until all blocking checks have passed. “Close” ends the dialog without submitting.

What happens next

• The status changes from “Draft” to “In Review”.
• The blue information banner “This assessment is currently under review - editing is disabled.” appears in the “Assessment status” section.
• Impacts, risks and opportunities, and engagements can no longer be edited.
• In the “Actions” drop-down menu, the “Approve” and “Reject” actions become available to approvers.
• The process is logged in the activity history.

A tip from practice: do not run the completeness check only at the very end – use it while you are still assessing, because it is the fastest overview of what is missing. Clear the blocking checks first, then close as many advisory checks as you can: those are the points an auditor asks about later – recorded stakeholder engagements, covered sub-topic areas and documented geographic scopes.