Accounts & Roles in Shield

Shield has two account types, plus one flag that layers on top of either. Which type you have depends on the primary function you chose at signup — you can check or change it in Settings → Profile.

This page is written for you the day you sign in for the first time. It answers three questions: which type of account do I have, what does someone on the other side see, and what actually decides what I'm allowed to do?

If you selected Licensed Professional (PE / AIA / CCM / LS), Project Manager, Digital / BIM Manager, Pursuits, or Executive, you're a buyer. The Help & Manual is written for you. Buyers do the practitioner work:

• Run a Tool Check to see whether an AI tool is safe for stamped deliverables (manual section 02).
• Compare tools for a specific project decision.
• Register the tools you actually use to specific projects (manual section 05).
• Sign off that a project's AI use is defensible (manual section 05).
• Generate the audit records — Firm Audit Report, Project Audit Report, Governance Certificate (manual sections 06, 09).
• Track action items and monitor the Registry for changes.

Buyers land on the /dashboard surface after login and see the buyer sidebar (Today, Assess a Tool, Project Work, Firm Setup, Evidence & Audit, Governance Docs, Reference).

If you selected Tool Vendor at signup, you see a different surface. Vendors submit their own tool for scoring, see their own assessment history, and respond to editorial feedback. As a buyer you never see what a vendor sees, and vice versa. The vendor surface is deliberately minimal — it exists so tool makers can engage with the compliance process, not so they can browse other firms' data.

Vendors land on /vendor-dashboard after login and see a lean sidebar (Today, Your Tools, Reference).

If you signed up as a vendor by mistake, change your primary function in Settings → Profile and refresh.

Admin is an internal allowlist (an environment-configured list of specific user IDs). It layers on top of either buyer or vendor. Admins run editorial review and Standards Watch — the internal governance surfaces that let AECO curate the methodology and the public registry.

If you don't know whether you're an admin, you're not. Admins are AECO editorial staff plus a small number of licensed practitioners in the beta program.

Three separate settings decide what you see and what you can do. If Shield ever refuses an action you expected to be able to take, one of these three is the reason.

Primary function

Buyer or Vendor — sets your surface (which sidebar you see). Change it in Settings → Profile. The six buyer values (Licensed Professional, Project Manager, Digital / BIM Manager, Pursuits, Executive, Other) all land on the same buyer surface; only Tool Vendor lands on the vendor surface.

Credentials

PE / AIA / CCM / LS (optional metadata) — sets your sign-off authority. A licensed PE can sign off on engineering-stamped deliverables; an AIA on architectural; a CCM on construction-management; an LS on land-survey. Each credential's authority is scoped to its jurisdiction (see your Profile). Sub-credentials (EIT, NCARB, PLA, PMP, PG, AICP, LEED-AP, WELL-AP) inherit their parent track's scope or none.

Firm

Sets your data scope. You only ever see your own firm's assessments, projects, sign-offs, and audit records. Cross-firm data is invisible by design — nothing you do in Shield can expose your firm's compliance posture to another firm, and nothing another firm does is visible to you. The only cross-firm surface is the public Registry, which shows tools admins have explicitly promoted for public visibility.

If any of the three is wrong, fix it in Settings → Profile or contact your firm admin.

• First-time practitioner reading? Start with the Help & Manual section 01 (Getting started).
• Acronym or concept you're not sure about? The Glossary covers ACS, FitScore, HF1–HF5, and every band abbreviation.
• Wondering how the methodology decides what scores what? The Methodology page is the source-of-truth for the scoring model.
• Governance policies and retention rules? Procedures & SOPs.