THE GATEWELL PROTOCOL  — the open standard for origin evidence · v1.0 comment draft  Read it →
Gatewell Group
The Process

Conditional Approval, without the mystique.

Conditional Approval is the pathway by which a foreign-produced Covered-List device regains access to US equipment authorization. Applications are reviewed with the national-security agencies, and the review examines three things: who owns you, who supplies you, and whether your US manufacturing plan is real.

Three facts shape strategy. Only grants are published — denials never are, but they follow you inside the agencies. Family grants are now standing practice — one strong evidentiary core can carry a product line. And recent grants attach onshoring conditions — the manufacturing plan is no longer decoration. It is the deal.

Filing to Grant
Weeks 1–2

Exposure Diagnostic

Covered status by product, grandfathering position, pathway selection, and a documented risk-factor assessment against published grant patterns. Ends in a written recommendation. We decline the cases we would not bet on.

Weeks 3–8

The Evidentiary Build

Corporate structure and beneficial ownership, tier-two supply-chain mapping, and the manufacturing plan — site, partner, capital phasing, hiring — built to the standard recent grants have set.

Weeks 9–12

Filing & Agency Review

Submission by email to the category's intake address — [email protected] for inverters and robotics — as a machine-readable PDF. We manage supplemental requests and all agency correspondence. Your engineers speak to us, not to Washington.

Post-filing

Grant & Conditions

Publication, a condition-compliance calendar, then standard equipment authorization through accredited laboratories. Filing-to-grant intervals are not published; what is observable is the register's batch cadence — grants publish every week or two — and the application window for the new categories, which runs through January 1, 2028.

Annual

Standing Compliance

Attestation and re-certification against the rising content floor — 65 percent today, 75 from 2029 — responsible-party coverage, condition reporting. The grant is the beginning of the relationship.

The first filing is the one that matters.

The queue after July 28 rewards early, complete applications. Late, thin ones wait behind them.

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