Use this material to examine your own work. Confirm current requirements, forms and dates with ICE before applying.
After your presentation, the reviewers use the remaining time to confirm your competence across every attribute area. They concentrate on areas where your report provided less evidence.
Practising follow-up questions
A reviewer may move from your role to the reasoning and consequences of a decision. For example:
- "Tell me about your role on the culvert project." Explain your involvement.
- "Why did you choose the overlay?" Explain the reasons for your choice.
- "What would have made you choose replacement?" Describe the circumstances that would change it.
- "What did that mean for the client's maintenance regime?" Discuss the consequences.
- "How would you have approached it if the ground had been made ground?" Apply your reasoning to different conditions.
Practise these follow-ups using decisions you made yourself. Keep your account within the responsibility you held.
Answering well
Look for
- Answer the question asked, then stop. Silence after a complete answer is fine, and reviewers use it.
- Start with the answer, then the reasoning. Reviewers cannot follow three minutes of build-up.
- Use 'I' when it was you and 'we' when it was the team, and be explicit about which.
- Give the number, the date, the dimension when you have it.
- Say 'I don't know' when you do not, then say how you would find out. This is assessed as a strength.
- Ask for clarification if a question is ambiguous. That is what an engineer would do at work.
Watch for
- Guess. A confidently wrong answer is worse than an honest gap, and it invites four more questions.
- Answer a different, easier question. Reviewers notice, and they will come back.
- Bluff about legislation or contract clauses. If you name it, you will be asked about it.
- Talk for five minutes. Long answers reduce the number of areas you get to evidence.
- Be defensive about a mistake. Owning it is evidence; defending it is not.
- Contradict your report. If you have changed your mind since writing it, say so explicitly.
When you do not know
Recognising the limits of your knowledge and skills is an attribute at both levels. Be honest about unfamiliar work and explain how you would seek the information or specialist advice needed. For example:
> "I haven't come across that. My starting point would be BS EN 1997 and I'd want a geotechnical specialist to look at it before I committed to anything, because it's outside what I've done."
The answer identifies a limit, a relevant source and the need for specialist input. Avoid guessing an answer you cannot support when questioned further.
What they may ask beyond your projects
The interview is not limited to your report. Expect some of:
- Technical fundamentals in your discipline: the theory under the work you described.
- Legislation and duties: CDM, your duty holder role, current health and safety requirements.
- Ethics: often a scenario invented on the spot, to see how you reason.
- Current issues: decarbonisation, resilience, skills, the industry's direction. You are expected to respond as an engaged civil engineer, not as a technical expert.
- The profession: the Code of Conduct, what you contribute, why registration matters to you.
The question bank contains a large set of original practice questions across all of these, and the mock review will run a sequence at you.
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.