When I was building up and developing Nanbudo in Finland, which included my personal development as well, I was requesting technical checks for the whole curriculum of Nanbudo from several Shihans at that time.
These annual checks were somewhat similar to grading events, with the exception that once anyone observing my technical presentation, they could interrupt and offer their correction. Also, the whole point was to keep these sessions simple and very dynamic, thus making them possible whenever an opportunity appeared.
Most often, these annual checks were only done for me, while one-to-many were checking. It was mostly with the help of Jan Moen Renshi from Norway who made these annual checks possible. I am always most grateful for his help, as this laid the foundation for the technical accuracy of Nanbudo in Finland.
The technical content of these sessions was to include the whole curriculum of Nanbudo, but as it is pretty vast, in most cases just the basics were inspected.
It could be the future of preserving and developing technical levels of all practitioners by having an annual check instead of grading. Since cars are checked every year if they are capable of safe transportation, similarly, the technical level could be inspected and possibly grade level shifted. On the other hand, this should be something additional to gradings, as it might turn out sometimes that the practitioner would not pass for their current grade in the annual check.
Like cars, we humans tend to become older, and our technical level might deteriorate. However, what we have in our hearts and in our minds is most likely to develop further.
That said, building and developing is not over.