In this guide
Use this material to examine your own work. Confirm current requirements, forms and dates with ICE before applying.
Your Career Appraisal report explains your experience against the attributes. Much of the approach is shared with a Professional Review report, but one requirement differs and needs particular attention.
Writing it
The report has to do two things at once: read as an account of a career, and let an assessor tick off every attribute. Those pull in opposite directions, and the attribute referencing is what reconciles them: the narrative carries the reader, the references carry the assessor.
For the progressive top-up the shape changes. You have 3,000 words, and ICE suggests concentrating on significant work carried out since your success at the Incorporated Professional Review, used to show how the additional Chartered attributes were achieved. Resist the temptation to summarise your whole career first. The assessors already know you are IEng MICE.
A workable order of writing
- 01
Map before you write
Put your projects against the seven areas and find which one or two carry the most. Use the evidence matrix if it helps. Writing first and mapping afterwards produces a report that has to be rebuilt.
- 02
Choose your one or two principal projects
ICE asks for particular emphasis on projects where you played a major part. Two is usually better than one, because it shows range; four is usually worse than two, because nothing gets any depth.
- 03
Write the decisions, not the projects
The project is context. What is being assessed is what you decided, what you rejected, what went wrong and what you did about it.
- 04
Add the attribute references last
Write the narrative first so it reads properly, then go back and reference the attributes at the end of each paragraph or section. Doing it the other way round produces prose shaped around the list.
- 05
Check coverage with your mentor
ICE asks you to check (with your mentor, if you have one) that you have clearly demonstrated all the attributes at the required level. That check is the last thing to do, not the first.
Attribute referencing that works, and referencing that does not
Fictional example: water industry, framework designer
I managed the design of the inlet works and delivered it successfully, meeting all the requirements of the client. (Attributes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
The original inlet arrangement needed a 4 m deep chamber in running sand, with well-point dewatering and a permanent pumped drain. I proposed raising the invert by 1.1 m and accepting a shallower gradient, which removed the dewatering entirely and cut the excavation by about 240 m³. I checked the hydraulic capacity at the design storm and confirmed the loss of gradient was acceptable with a 6 per cent margin; I set out the residual risk of surcharge in an extreme event for the client to accept. (Attributes 1, 4, 5)
The weaker version references seven attributes and evidences none. The stronger version references three and evidences all three: a design decision with a stated basis, a hazard removed, and a quantified resource reduction. Assessors read a lot of the first kind; a paragraph claiming everything usually demonstrates nothing.
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.