In this guide
Use this material to examine your own work. Confirm current requirements, forms and dates with IStructE before applying.
Candidates who have passed repeatedly recommend full mock papers under realistic conditions, using questions you have not seen before.
Rehearsing examination conditions
Use the full timetable for the paper: seven hours with a thirty-minute lunch for Chartered and Incorporated papers, or three and a half hours without a break for the supplementary.
Choose a question you have not read. Keep your phone and internet closed, use the folder you intend to bring, and write by hand with your usual pens. Bring lunch and turn the script over during the break.
Planning enough practice
Several candidates quoted in the Institution's guidance describe taking around four mocks. Use early attempts to identify timing problems and later ones to practise the revised plan. If four full papers are impractical, combine section mocks with at least two full attempts.
Reviewing each attempt
Check the work against the mark allocation:
- Compare actual time with your planned timetable.
- Identify unfinished sections for focused practice.
- Check that you attempted every part and stopped each section on time.
- Check whether another person could follow the calculations. Legibility is a marking criterion.
- Check that stability was stated explicitly. Inadequate stability is an automatic-fail condition.
Revise the timetable after each mock, as the Institution's guidance advises.
Writing original practice briefs
The Forum reproduces no questions, examiners' reports, worked answers or candidate scripts from the Institution's examination archive, and its exercises are not derived from them.
To write an original brief, choose a building or bridge you know and specify a site constraint, ground condition and functional requirement. Ask a colleague to attempt it. Preparing a brief that allows two distinct viable schemes helps you examine what section 1a requires.
Mock conditions
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Reviewing an attempt, step by step
- 01
Mark it against the mark allocation
Section by section, against the published marks for your paper: not against how the day felt.
- 02
Compare where the time went
Against the timetable you planned. The gap between the two is your real problem, and it is usually the same gap every time until you fix it deliberately.
- 03
Identify the section you left unfinished
That is the one to practise in isolation before the next full mock.
- 04
Check that you attempted every part
If not, the lesson is about stopping on time, not about knowing more.
- 05
Read your own calculations as a stranger
Legibility is a marking criterion in a section worth over a fifth of the paper.
- 06
Rewrite the timetable
The Institution's advice is that timetables be personalised and reviewed after mocks, which only helps if you revise it each time.
Making mocks worth the day
Look for
- Sit the full duration, to the correct timetable for your paper
- Use questions you have deliberately not read beforehand
- Bring only the folder you intend to bring on the day
- Handwrite everything, on the paper sizes you will be given
- Write your own original practice briefs, or swap them with a colleague
Watch for
- Stop early because you can see how the rest would go
- Keep your phone on the desk
- Look at the question the night before
- Mock a 3½-hour supplementary paper over seven hours
- Judge the attempt by feel rather than by the mark allocation
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.