A bit of hyperbole here. The rubric doesn’t change much from year to year, and from what I’ve seen when evaluating notebooks is that half the teams don’t even know there is a rubric! The design process doesn’t change…document your planning process, review of the game, etc, and you’ll be in good shape.
Every notebook submitted at a competition will be evaluated by the judges. Until the new judges guide comes out, the Judge Advisors are using good judgement and following the basis of last year’s judges guide.
Besides the Design Award, the other judged awards do not depend on the engineering notebook rubric. Every team is at least considered for every judged award regardless of which rubric they look at!