In this guide
Use this material to examine your own work. Confirm current requirements, forms and dates with ICE before applying.
Read ICE's requirement on the attribute page, then use the examples and self-assessment to examine evidence from your own work.
Questions for checking your evidence
Use these prompts to review communication in your own work. They are preparation advice; the official attribute statements define the requirements.
- Who needed to understand the information, and why?
- How did you adapt the explanation to the audience?
- How did you check understanding?
- How did you handle disagreement?
- What happened as a result of the communication?
Discuss any point you cannot yet explain with your mentor and identify the experience or record needed.
Participation, contribution, responsibility
| Situation | How it reads in this area |
|---|---|
| Participation | “I liaised with stakeholders including the client, the design team and members of the public throughout the project.” |
| Contribution | “I presented the diversion arrangements at a public drop-in session.” |
| Responsibility | “I fronted a hostile drop-in, spent twenty minutes making it worse by explaining the piling, worked out the real objection was the school route, and proposed a barge-piled arrangement at £18k and four days that kept a protected pedestrian route open. That was above my authority, so I put it up with the alternative and came back to a second session with a plan rather than an apology.” |
Illustrative and fictional. The most useful thing you can do with your own draft is read it paragraph by paragraph and decide which of the three each one evidences. Participation is worth very little on its own.
Describing activity, and demonstrating competence
Fictional: communication
I have excellent communication skills and am comfortable presenting to audiences at all levels, ensuring information is communicated clearly and effectively at all times.
I had to tell a client that the scheme they had already announced locally would not fit within the consented land. I did it in person, with the constraint drawn on their own general arrangement rather than described, and with two options already priced. They were angry for about ten minutes and then chose one. What I would do differently is tell them the week I suspected it rather than the week I confirmed it.
The first is a self-assessment and (because this area is partly assessed by how the submission reads) it is evidence against the claim it makes. The second shows a hard message delivered well, a specific technique, an outcome and honest reflection.
What changes with the grade
At Incorporated level. ICE's Communication Task guidance states that at IEng level reviewers look for evidence that you can report factual information clearly.
At Chartered level. At CEng level they look for you to organise your thoughts and deliver them in writing in a clear and logical fashion, bearing in mind the needs of the audience you are writing for. That is the clearest published statement of the grade step anywhere in ICE's guidance, and it is worth reading twice.
How evidence in this area usually fails to land
The generic statement
A claim written at a level of generality that fits thousands of engineers. It is usually true, and it evidences nothing, because nothing in it is attached to this candidate's work.
How it sounds out loud. Fluent, confident, and it fills thirty seconds without saying anything. Reviewers usually respond by asking for an example, and the candidate who has been speaking generally often does not have one ready.
The repair. Take the general claim and attach it to one occasion: a date, a project, a decision.
Could another engineer put their name on this sentence unchanged?
'We' everywhere
An account written entirely as 'we' can leave your contribution unclear, particularly when describing decisions. In spoken practice, listen for whether the answer identifies what you did. Keep 'we' for joint work and explain your own part accurately.
Search the draft for 'we'. At each one, could a reader still tell what you did?
Reflection as a formality
A closing paragraph of learning that is generic, positive and disconnected from anything specific: most often 'I learned the importance of early stakeholder engagement'.
How it sounds out loud. Delivered with a slight change of tone, because it is the bit the candidate wrote last and believes is required rather than useful.
The repair. Replace 'I learned the importance of X' with the concrete thing you now do differently.
Would the reflection be true of any engineer, on any project?
Attendance offered as contribution
Being present at meetings, reviews, workshops or site visits described as though presence were participation, and participation were contribution.
How it sounds out loud. 'I attended the design team meetings': usually offered when a candidate is short of material for an area.
The repair. Find the one meeting where you said something that changed the outcome, and write about that meeting.
Look for verbs of presence: attended, joined, sat on, was part of.
Jargon covering uncertainty
Technical vocabulary, acronyms and process language used at a density that obscures rather than conveys: often heaviest exactly where the candidate is least sure.
How it sounds out loud. Fluent and impenetrable. Reviewers from a different discipline will ask for it in plain terms, and the answer reveals whether the understanding was there.
The repair. Give the plain-terms version first, then the technical one.
Could you explain that sentence to a competent engineer from another discipline?
The rehearsed answer
Answers prepared as text and delivered as text. They are usually well-constructed and they stop dead at the first question that was not anticipated.
How it sounds out loud. Recognisable by rhythm and by tense: the delivery is smoother than the surrounding conversation, and the candidate is visibly returning to a start point when interrupted.
The repair. Prepare evidence, not wording: for each example know the decision, the alternative, the outcome, the reflection and the supporting document.
Are you learning sentences, or knowing your evidence?
Polished prose with nothing underneath
A submission that has been through several drafts of language while the underlying evidence has not changed. It reads professionally and contains no decisions.
How it sounds out loud. The gap between the quality of the document and the quality of the answers is itself a signal, and an uncomfortable one.
The repair. Before editing, audit: mark every paragraph as participation, contribution or decision. If most are not decisions, editing is the wrong task.
Has the writing been improved, or the evidence?
Questions to ask yourself
- You have described the design. What part of it was yours?
Am I reading about this candidate, or about their project?
- Who would have made that decision if you had been on leave that week?
Am I reading about this candidate, or about their project?
- 'Involved in': tell me what you did.
Did they take part, add something, or decide?
- What did you contribute that nobody else did?
Did they take part, add something, or decide?
- You have said 'we' four times in that answer. Which part was yours?
Is 'we' being used naturally, or to hide who did what?
- How many people were in that 'we'?
Is 'we' being used naturally, or to hide who did what?
- What would you do differently?
Have they learned anything, and can they say so without flinching?
- What is the biggest mistake you have made professionally?
Have they learned anything, and can they say so without flinching?
- What was the actual figure?
Could I check any of this?
- Which drawing was that?
Could I check any of this?
- Talk me through that in more detail.
If I pull this thread, does the answer hold?
- You wrote that you led the design. What does 'led' mean here?
If I pull this thread, does the answer hold?
Where honest improvement stops
Honest reflection
Do not manufacture a photogenic mistake, and do not confess to something that was not your responsibility in order to look reflective. Both read as performance. A small, true, specific lesson beats a large invented one every time.
Participation, contribution, or decision
Describe participation accurately. If you did not make the decision, explain your contribution and what you learned, or choose another example to demonstrate responsibility.
Specific, and supported
Do not add specifics you cannot stand behind, and do not put confidential client information into a submission to make it more concrete. Check what your employer permits before you write. Invented detail is both dishonest and unnecessary: real work always contains real particulars.
Does it survive questioning?
Preparation means knowing your evidence thoroughly. It does not mean scripting. If you find yourself learning sentences, you are preparing for the wrong event, and the difference is audible.
The 'we' problem
The fix is to describe your own part accurately, not to rewrite team decisions as solo ones. If you disagreed with a team decision and were overruled, that is legitimate and often strong evidence: say so plainly rather than reassigning the decision to yourself.
Whose competence is this?
Do not promote yourself into someone else's decision to fill a gap. If the call was your team leader's, say so and describe the part you did own: the analysis you produced that informed it, the risk you raised. That is real evidence. An inflated claim is one follow-up question from collapse, and the collapse costs more than the gap would have.
A self-assessment you can fail
These are not things to tick because they sound right. Answer each one out loud. Anything you cannot answer is either a writing problem or a development gap, and those need completely different responses.
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.