In this guide
Use this material to examine your own work. Confirm current requirements, forms and dates with ICE before applying.
ICE expects a lead sponsor to mentor the candidate through the application. It identifies three specific duties alongside providing the signature.
Before you say yes
Two honest questions.
Are you current? The review has changed. The written element is the Communication Task, with its own current rules on timing, reference material and prohibited tools: a candidate advised about the old Written Exercise, three sponsors, or historic submission windows will prepare for the wrong thing. If you qualified some years ago, read the current Professional Review Guidance before you advise anyone.
Have you got the time? Constructive criticism of a 5,000-word report is two or three hours, properly done. Presentation advice is another hour. Practice interviews are an hour each, and one is not enough. If you cannot find that in the next four months, saying so now is much kinder than agreeing and then being unavailable.
Doing the job
- 01
Read the current guidance yourself
Download it from ICE, not from a shared drive. Check the report and appendix limits, the CPD requirements and the Communication Task rules: several have changed in recent years.
- 02
Look at their evidence before their prose
Ask them to walk you through their attribute coverage. If an area is thin, that is a conversation about experience and timing, not about writing.
- 03
Criticise the report constructively and specifically
Which paragraph has no decision in it. Which attribute you could not find. Which claim is stronger than the work supports. Do not rewrite it: it has to be their own work.
- 04
Advise on the presentation
The commonest fault is summarising the report instead of expanding an aspect of it. Say so early, before they have built the slides.
- 05
Arrange practice interviews
This is explicitly your role. Bring in a second chartered engineer the candidate does not know well: an unfamiliar questioner is far more useful than a friendly one.
- 06
Sign only what you believe
You are confirming their suitability for membership. If you would not defend a claim in their report, say so before signing, not afterwards.
Lead sponsor checklist
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.