In this guide
Use this material to examine your own work. Confirm current requirements, forms and dates with ICE before applying.
Show how you explain engineering to the people who need to understand it. Use examples of written and spoken communication, alongside your work with others.
What the area requires
That you can explain engineering clearly to whoever needs to understand it, in writing and out loud, and that you work well with people.
Additional Chartered requirements
The CEng extensions move from discussing ideas to communicating new ones to non-technical audiences, and from being aware of diversity and inclusion to managing it actively. This is the one area assessed three times over: by your report, by the interview, and by the written Communication Task.
What strong and weak evidence look like
Look for
- A time you changed a non-technical decision-maker's mind, and the argument that did it.
- A difficult message delivered: bad news to a client, a defect admitted, a design withdrawn.
- A public or resident-facing engagement where you had to answer hostile questions.
- Evidence of listening: a decision changed because of what someone else told you.
- A specific inclusion action with an outcome, not a policy you were subject to.
Watch for
- "I have excellent communication skills."
- Listing documents you have written with nothing about who read them or what changed.
- Diversity and inclusion described only as attending training.
- Using “we” throughout can make it difficult to identify your own contribution.
Explaining to someone who did not want to hear it
Fictional example: flood scheme, public meeting
I attended public consultation events and answered questions from local residents about the scheme.
At the second consultation a resident asked why we were protecting the far bank and not hers. The technical answer — that her property sat above the 1 in 100 plus climate change level — was correct and useless, because what she was actually asking was whether she had been written off. I got the flood outline up on the screen, showed her where her threshold sat relative to it, and was straight that the modelling had uncertainty in it and that her risk was low but not zero. She stayed to the end. I learned that the answer to a technical question is not always a technical answer.
It shows the candidate noticing the gap between the question asked and the question meant. That is the interpersonal part of the attribute, and it is far more convincing than a claim to have excellent communication skills.
Questions to ask yourself
- Who did not understand, and what did I do about it?
Communication evidence needs an audience with a gap in it.
- What is the hardest thing I have had to tell someone at work?
Difficult messages carry more weight than routine reporting.
- Where in my report have I written 'we' when I meant 'I'?
This single edit does more for most reports than any other.
- What have I done about inclusion that had an effect?
The CEng extension says proactively manage. Awareness alone is the IEng statement.
The same area, in different kinds of work
| Setting | What the evidence tends to look like |
|---|---|
| Public engagement | Explaining a flood scheme to residents who did not want it, and answering the objection you had not prepared for. |
| Design office | Writing a technical note that stopped an argument, because it set out the options and the recommendation clearly. |
| Client-side | Translating a technical risk into a board-level decision with a clear recommendation and a stated consequence. |
| Site | Briefing a team on a changed method and checking that it was understood and followed. |
Illustrative. The area is generic by design: ICE says the attributes can be achieved in a range of ways by anyone working as a civil or infrastructure engineer.
The report that says 'we'
Fictional example: the same paragraph, edited
We reviewed the options and we decided that the bored pile solution was the most appropriate. We presented our recommendation to the client and it was accepted.
I reviewed the three foundation options against ground risk, programme and noise, and recommended bored piles because the driven option would have breached the vibration limit at the listed wall 8 m away. I presented that recommendation to the client myself, and had to defend the extra £45,000 against a programme saving they had been promised by someone else.
The edit is almost mechanical ('we' becomes 'I', and the reason and the difficulty are added) and it changes what a reviewer can see. This single change does more for most reports than any other. It is not immodesty; the report is the only evidence reviewers have of what you did.
An evidence-planning exercise
Written for a notebook rather than a submission. Anything you cannot answer is a development action, not a writing problem.
How interviewers tend to approach this area
- The Communication Task itself, which assesses knowledge and relevance, use of English, and clarity and presentation.
- The presentation, and how you handle questions during it.
- Asking you to explain a technical part of your project as if the reviewer were not an engineer.
- Asking about a disagreement and how you resolved it.
There is a large bank of original practice questions in the question bank, filterable by area and by level.
Official sources
Selected publisher pages were rechecked in September 2026. Other source records were last checked in July 2026. Open the latest official document before relying on a requirement.