Phase 4 · Build your evidence

What makes evidence strong

The difference between being present, contributing and being responsible — and how to make your own competence visible.

Who this is for:Candidates at any stage ·Mentors

Reviewers are assessing you, not your projects. Almost every weak submission fails on the same thing: the candidate is not visible in it.

The ladder

The same piece of work can be described at any rung. Which one you can honestly claim depends on what you actually did — and being clear-eyed about it early is far more useful than discovering it in an interview.

I was there. No evidence at all. Presence is not competence.

I contributed. True of everyone on the project. A reviewer cannot separate you from the team.

I was responsible. The work was yours to get right. This is where usable evidence starts.

I decided. You chose between real options, and can say what you rejected and why.

I led. Others followed a direction you set — with or without authority over them.

I was accountable. You owned the outcome, including when it went wrong.

I reflected. You know what you would do differently, and why.

A report built from the top four rungs reads completely differently from one built from the bottom two, even when it describes the same projects.

What ICE asks the report to do

Institution of Civil Engineers

It is essential that you emphasise your responsibilities and relevant experience for each attribute.
Expand on decisions you made, problems you met, and occasions when you gained unusual or extensive experience and learned valuable lessons.
Clearly indicate your role in the projects you include, by giving the background to the important decisions you were responsible for or made a significant contribution to.
Show where you have exercised independent judgement as an engineer and a practising professional.

From Incorporated and Chartered Professional Review Guidance, Institution of Civil Engineers.

A structure for a piece of evidence

Not an acronym to impose on every paragraph — ICE asks for a narrative, and prose that visibly marches through a formula reads badly. But when you are working out whether a piece of evidence is complete, these are the parts that tend to be missing:

01Situation — enough context to understand the problem, and no more.
02Personal responsibility — what was yours, and what the limit of your authority was.
03Challenge — what made it difficult. Without this there is no evidence of competence, only of activity.
04Options — what else could have been done.
05Decision — what you chose, and the basis.
06Action — what you actually did about it.
07Result — what happened, including if it was not what you expected.
08Reflection — what you would do differently.
09Attribute relevance — which areas this speaks to.

Most candidates have 1, 6 and 7 and are missing 2, 4 and 8. Those three are where the marks are.

Evidence is not a separate task. It is a record of work you have already done.

Fictional example

The same fortnight, at three rungs of the ladder

Fictional example — contractor's engineer, retaining wall

Weaker

I was involved in the construction of the reinforced concrete retaining wall, working with the site team to deliver the works safely and on programme.

Stronger

I was responsible for the retaining wall. When the reinforcement arrived it was 1.4 m short on the starter bars for the second lift — the bending schedule had been cut to the wrong lap length. I could have accepted a lapped splice, which the designer would probably have approved, or waited four days for a new schedule. I checked the lap requirement myself, found that a lapped splice needed 62 diameters and we had 41, and rejected it. I asked for couplers instead, which we had on site for another element, and got the designer's agreement in writing before we placed anything. It cost half a day rather than four.

Why — Between these two versions is the whole distance between 'I contributed' and 'I decided'. Nothing about the project changed — only the account of what the writer did within it. Note also that the stronger version contains a check the candidate ran themselves, which is what makes the decision defensible under questioning.

Writing habits that make evidence visible

Worth doing

Use I where you mean I. It is the only way a reviewer can see you.
Name the option you rejected. A decision with only one option in it is not a decision.
Include the number, the date, the dimension. Specifics are what make an account believable.
Say what went wrong. A report in which nothing ever went wrong is not credible.
Say where your authority ended. Reviewers respect boundaries that are clearly stated.
Keep it consistent with your CV and with what your sponsors will say.

Avoid

Write 'we' throughout. This is the most common single fault in reports.
Describe the project's achievements as though they were yours.
Use the passive voice to avoid saying who did something — 'it was decided that'.
Pad with background. Context is not evidence and it eats your word count.
Claim more than you did. Fifteen minutes of questioning will find it.
Use one project for everything. Reviewers look for breadth as well as depth.

A test for any paragraph

Could this sentence have been written by anyone else on the project?
If yes, it is not evidence about you. This one question fixes more reports than any other single edit.
What is the decision in this paragraph?
If there is not one, ask whether the paragraph is earning its words.
Would I be comfortable being asked about this for ten minutes?
Everything in the report and appendices is open to questioning. Anything you would rather they skipped is exactly where they will go.
Does this match my CV?
Inconsistency between report, CV and sponsor statements is noticed, and it makes everything else look less reliable.