In this guide
Use this material to examine your own work. Confirm current requirements, forms and dates with IStructE before applying.
The appraisal carries roughly eight marks, about the same as the client letter. Explain your comparison clearly; a table of ticks provides little reasoning.
Explaining the relative merits
The question asks you to review and critically appraise the schemes, recommend one and give reasons. For each relevant criterion, explain why it matters to the brief, how each scheme performs and how strongly that difference affects the choice. Seven marginal differences may matter less than one decisive constraint.
Choosing criteria for the brief
The examiners state that generic answers do not earn marks. Consider the circumstances:
- A remote site raises questions of material supply, transport and skilled labour.
- A live building requires attention to sequence, programme and outages.
- Heavy servicing affects floor zones and routing.
- Height affects storey depth, cladding and construction speed.
- An opportunity for reuse should inform the choice, including its benefits.
Including sustainability
Sustainability has been a key feature of all questions since January 2024. Consider material efficiency, reuse, foundation choices, adaptability and end-of-life in scheme selection. Full carbon comparisons are not required at this stage; those calculations belong later in the paper.
Giving the recommendation
Name the preferred scheme and the two or three reasons that determined the choice. The remaining design work follows from that decision.
Two appraisals of the same pair of schemes
Fictional example: a four-storey teaching building on a constrained city site, one scheme in in-situ RC flat slab, one in composite steel with precast planks
A table with rows for cost, speed, sustainability and buildability, and a tick against steel in three of them, followed by: "I recommend the steel scheme as it scores best overall."
"The site's only access is a single 3.5 m gate onto a live street, which makes deliveries and craneage the dominant constraint. The composite scheme needs fewer, lighter lifts and no concrete pours above ground, cutting street occupation from an estimated fourteen weeks to six — decisive here in a way it would not be on an open site. Against that, the RC flat slab gives a 250 mm shallower floor zone, worth about a metre over four storeys of cladding, and reuses the existing raft without piling. On material efficiency the RC scheme is the lighter structure, but the existing raft can carry either. I recommend the composite scheme: the access constraint is binding and the programme saving is large, while the floor-zone penalty is absorbed within the planning height already granted."
The second version chooses criteria from the brief, quantifies where it can, concedes where the other scheme is better, and explains which criterion is decisive and why. It also carries sustainability as a real factor (reuse of the raft, material efficiency) rather than as a closing sentence.
Writing the appraisal
- 01
Pick criteria from this brief
Read the question for what is unusual (a constrained site, a live building, a heavy servicing load, a reuse opportunity) and let that set what you weigh. Marks are not awarded for generic answers.
- 02
Take each criterion in turn
Say why it matters here, how each scheme performs, and which wins. Concede where your preferred scheme loses; an appraisal that finds one scheme better at everything is not credible.
- 03
Weigh sustainability as a criterion, not a coda
Material efficiency and reuse should visibly influence the choice. Full carbon comparisons belong in the calculations, not here.
- 04
Say which criterion is decisive
This is the engineering judgement being marked. Eight marginal differences and one binding constraint is a common and perfectly good answer, if you say so.
- 05
Recommend, in one unambiguous sentence
Name the scheme and the two or three reasons that decided it, then move on. Everything downstream depends on the decision being made.
The appraisal
Look for
- Quantify a difference wherever you reasonably can
- Concede the points where the scheme you reject is better
- Say which criterion is decisive, and why
- Keep sustainability among the criteria that decide
- End with a clear recommendation
Watch for
- Produce a table of ticks and crosses
- Weigh criteria that this brief gives you no reason to care about
- Find your preferred scheme better at everything
- Leave the recommendation implied
- Run full carbon calculations here
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.