Phase 4 · Build your evidence
The seven attribute areas
What ICE assesses, how the Incorporated and Chartered expectations differ, and how to read the standard without drowning in it.
Who this is for:Candidates at any stage ·Mentors ·Supervising Civil Engineers and Delegated Engineers
ICE's standards of professional competence and commitment are set out in seven areas. Every one of them must be met, at the level you are applying for, and both reviewers must agree.
How ICE frames the attributes
Institution of Civil Engineers
- The seven areas contextualise the Engineering Council's UK-SPEC — the UK Standard for Professional Engineering Competence and Commitment.
- A professional engineer will be able to demonstrate competence in all of the areas listed, but the depth and extent of experience and competence will vary with the nature and requirements of their role.
- ICE recognises the Climate Emergency as a central cultural feature in the development and work of civil engineers, and uses the UN Sustainable Development Goals as the framework for addressing it. Members should consider their impact on those goals throughout the entire project life cycle — including where that impact is negative.
- A prospective professional civil or infrastructure engineer must have a sound knowledge and understanding of the construction process, and be able to identify and manage risks to all those affected by design, construction, operation, use, maintenance and demolition. For those whose experience includes the construction process, site experience will ordinarily be required.
From Incorporated and Chartered Professional Review Guidance, Institution of Civil Engineers.
Reading the standard without drowning in it
The seven areas contain twenty-seven statements at Incorporated level, of which fourteen gain an additional clause at Chartered level. Read as a list, it is overwhelming and slightly unreal. Read as a description of a competent engineer at work, it is much more ordinary than it looks — most of it is what you already do, described formally.
Two habits make it manageable.
Do not write to the list. ICE explicitly asks you not to address the attributes in sequence in your report, but to give a narrative from your role activities that lets reviewers see them emerging. A report structured as seven chapters is both harder to read and worse evidence, because real work does not separate into competences.
Do audit against the list. The list is exactly right for checking coverage once the narrative exists. That is what the evidence matrix and the gap analysis are for.
The seven areas
| Area | What it is really asking | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Understanding and Practical Application of Engineering | That you know your engineering, that you use it to solve real problems, and that you make judgements of your own rather than passing every decision upwards. |
| 2 | Management and Leadership | That you can plan and run work, use people and resources well, and help others get better at what they do. |
| 3 | Commercial Ability | That you understand money and contracts well enough to make sound engineering decisions inside them, and that you have handled a budget yourself. |
| 4 | Health, Safety and Welfare | That you know the law and the hazards, that you manage risk in your own work rather than delegating it to a form, and that people are safer because of decisions you made. |
| 5 | Sustainable Development | That sustainability changed what you actually did, and that you can talk about the whole life of what you built, not just its construction. |
| 6 | Interpersonal Skills and Communication | That you can explain engineering clearly to whoever needs to understand it, in writing and out loud, and that you work well with people. |
| 7 | Professional Commitment | That you behave ethically, know where your competence ends, keep learning, and give something back to the profession. |
What these pages contain
Each of the seven pages sets out the official statements for that area, cited and dated; what the area is actually asking for in plain words; where the Chartered expectation differs; what strong evidence tends to look like and what weak evidence tends to look like; questions to ask yourself; examples from different parts of the industry; two fictional worked examples showing the difference between weak and strong writing; and the directions interviewers commonly take.
The examples are illustrations of reasoning. They are not model answers and they are not there to be adapted into a submission — a reviewer who has read a hundred reports can tell, and the ethics page explains why it matters.
Related pages and tools
- EngineeringThat you know your engineering, that you use it to solve real problems, and that you make judgements of your own rather than passing every decision upwards.
- Management and leadershipThat you can plan and run work, use people and resources well, and help others get better at what they do.
- CommercialThat you understand money and contracts well enough to make sound engineering decisions inside them, and that you have handled a budget yourself.
- Health, safety and welfareThat you know the law and the hazards, that you manage risk in your own work rather than delegating it to a form, and that people are safer because of decisions you made.
- Sustainable developmentThat sustainability changed what you actually did, and that you can talk about the whole life of what you built, not just its construction.
- CommunicationThat you can explain engineering clearly to whoever needs to understand it, in writing and out loud, and that you work well with people.
- Professional commitmentThat you behave ethically, know where your competence ends, keep learning, and give something back to the profession.
Tools that use the attributes
- Evidence qualityThe difference between being present, contributing and being responsible — and how to make your own competence visible.
- Evidence matrixA private record of your projects, your responsibilities and your decisions, mapped against the seven attribute areas.
- Gap analysisFind the areas where your evidence is thin, and turn each one into a development action you can actually ask for.
- Question bankOriginal practice questions across all seven areas and both levels, each with what it is testing and what a strong answer contains.