Use this material to examine your own work. Confirm current requirements, forms and dates with ICE before applying.
These examples show how a submission can obscure the competence of the engineer who wrote it. Improving the account can make existing competence easier for reviewers to assess.
The one that does real damage
Nineteen of the twenty patterns cost you clarity. One costs you credibility: claiming responsibility you did not hold.
It is worth separating because the repair is different. For the others, you rewrite. For this one, you either find the evidence you have (which is usually better than you think) or you accept that an area is not yet evidenced and treat it as a development action before you apply.
Reviewers are experienced engineers. They know what a person at each stage of a career does, what things cost and how long they take. An inflated claim is not usually caught by suspicion; it is caught by an ordinary follow-up question that the candidate cannot answer, because they were not the one who made the decision.
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.