This document, which is designed to assist managers, trainers, or assessors in work-based provision across the United Kingdom, shares the experiences of five work-based learning providers that sought to improve their initial assessment processes. Section 1 explains the purpose of initial assessment and presents guidelines for evaluating intake assessment processes to determine how learner-centered they are, how consistently they are managed across the organization, and how comprehensive they are. Section 2 describes the process improvement activities undertaken at the case study organizations and explains how the following activities can be used to improve existing intake assessment processes: reviewing the sequencing of activities; flowcharting; critically evaluating strengths and weaknesses; conducting development planning; and selecting among a range of practical process improvement strategies. Two case studies focus on learner-centered improvements, two focus on management issues arising during the program improvement process, and one focuses on comprehensive issues. Each case study presents background information on the provider, discusses key issues raised by evaluation of the work-based provision process, summarizes the improvements made, and recaps their benefits to learners. A checklist is presented to help work-based learning providers assess their organization's strengths and areas for improvement. Information on assessing basic skills at entry to post-16 provision is appended. (MN)