Toolkit and reference
Guidance for employers
What operating the ICE Training Scheme commits an organisation to, and what makes it work in practice.
Who this is for:Employers and training administrators
Becoming an ICE Approved Employer commits an organisation to providing opportunities and a training structure — not just to nominating a Supervising Civil Engineer.
What approval involves
Institution of Civil Engineers
- Employers wishing to operate the scheme contact their Membership Recruitment Team, nominate a lead SCE, and identify one Training Scheme Administrator (TSA) if different.
- The application consists of: an application to be placed on the list of Approved Employers, including the TAGSO section where relevant; an application for the nominated person to become an SCE; the proposed SCE's CV and CPD records; and the TSA's details including an ICE membership or non-member number.
- It is preferable that the SCE is an ICE member, although not essential. The SCE should want to support trainees, have a position that allows them to help trainees get the workplace experience they need, and be able to influence senior people in the organisation.
- The Membership Recruitment Team recommends the employer to the Initial Professional Development Panel. Approval normally lasts five years, after which reapproval is sought.
- Approved Employers can have as many SCEs and TSAs as they need, provided the SCEs have been approved by the Membership Recruitment Team.
- Employer-specific training requirements can be added over and above ICE's, in Appendix B of the Training Scheme document.
- ICE Membership Recruitment Teams make regular contact to check everyone is keeping to the commitments made in the Training Agreement — and, if commitment is lacking, may after due warning recommend removal from the list of Approved Employers. There is an appeal route via the Director of Membership Recruitment and then the Chair of the IPD Panel.
- Approved Employer status
- 5years, normally, then reapproval
- Trainees per Supervising Civil Engineer
- six, or up to ten with one or more Delegated Engineers
From ICE Training Scheme & Guidance, Institution of Civil Engineers.
What the commitment actually is
Read past the administration and the employer commits to two substantive things, through the SCE:
Opportunities. To provide the trainee with the opportunities to complete their agreement — within the organisation, or by secondment to other organisations. That second clause is the one that gets overlooked, and it is often the only way a trainee in a specialised team will ever meet the construction or commercial attributes.
A structure. An initial assessment meeting, regular development reviews, a formal annual review of progress and plans, and confirmation of completion. Not "we support chartership" as a value, but named meetings that happen.
What makes it work
Protect the SCE's time. An SCE with ten trainees, no DEs and a full delivery workload will do the appraisals and nothing else. The quarterly conversations are where the value is.
Treat secondment as normal. The organisations whose trainees qualify quickly are the ones where moving someone for six months to get site or commercial experience is an ordinary request rather than a favour.
Do not let good trainees get stuck. The most common cause of a slow qualification is being good at one thing.
Pay the fee, and mean it. ICE expects the company to pay the Training Agreement registration fee or reimburse the trainee.
Watch the membership lapse. A trainee whose ICE membership is cancelled — for example through non-payment — has their agreement cancelled too, and it is not automatically reinstated when they pay.
Administrators
The TSA runs day-to-day administration: keeping the trainee list accurate, adding and removing TSAs, creating groups and downloading reports, and viewing trainees' records — though they cannot edit evidence or sign anything off. Where a company uses TAGSO, one nominated TSA approves and rejects Training Agreement applications and initiates payment, and only that person receives TAGSO emails. TAGSO is not linked to IPD Online.
Changes to SCEs, read-only TSA access and adding a Training Provider Administrator for apprenticeships all go through ICE rather than being self-served.
If a trainee leaves or moves to a different route, ask their SCE to complete the partial completion form in IPD Online. That is what records their progress and removes them from the scheme properly.
Employer self-check
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Questions to ask yourself
Could our SCE actually stop a delivery manager keeping a trainee on the same work?
ICE says the SCE must be able to manage conflicts between the employer's needs and the trainee's. If the answer is no in practice, the scheme is not operating as intended.
How many of our trainees have completed in the last three years?
The most honest measure of whether the scheme is working here, and one that is rarely looked at.
Do we know which attribute our trainees consistently struggle to evidence?
It is almost always commercial or construction. Knowing it lets you build the opportunity into the business rather than improvising per person.
Related pages and tools
- Training SchemeThe whole scheme in one place: the roles, the systems, the appeal routes and the definitions.
- SCEs and DEsThe two roles in the ICE Training Scheme: what each is accountable for, and how to do them well.
- Training AgreementHow a Training Agreement works from registration to completion: responsibilities, reviews, appraisals and the Training Review.
- IPD OnlineThe two ICE systems behind the Training Scheme, who can see what in each, and how to use them without creating work later.