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Phase 3 · Complete your IPD

IPD Online and TAGSO

The two ICE systems behind the Training Scheme, who can see what in each, and how to use them without creating work later.

Who this is for:Candidates at any stage ·Supervising Civil Engineers and Delegated Engineers ·Employers and training administrators

IPD Online is where progress through a Training Agreement is recorded, assessed and signed off. TAGSO is the separate system employers use to administer agreements. They are not linked to each other.

Who sees what

Institution of Civil Engineers

  • Trainees record experience against each attribute and upload supporting documents — reports, photographs, drawings and other material created during their work.
  • SCEs and DEs review those records and sign off elements of experience as attribute levels are achieved.
  • TSAs — training scheme administrators — can review trainees' records but cannot edit them or sign anything off.
  • The Membership Recruitment Team has access to help review progress and register completion of Training Agreements.
  • TPAs — apprenticeship training provider administrators — see high-level attribute progress only, not attribute evidence.
  • Your IPD Online attribute record is a working document, and it is not part of the Professional Review or End Point Assessment application.
  • TAGSO is not linked to IPD Online.

From ICE Training Scheme & Guidance, Institution of Civil Engineers.

Use it as a source record, not a compliance exercise

The single most valuable thing about IPD Online has nothing to do with ICE. It is that, years later, when you sit down to write 5,000 words, you have a contemporaneous record of what you actually did — with dates, with the detail you have since forgotten, and with your SCE's comments on it.

Candidates who filled it in properly can write a report. Candidates who filled it in retrospectively, in blocks, before each appraisal, generally cannot, and end up reconstructing a career from memory and old emails.

So the practical advice is: write entries when the work is fresh, write what you decided rather than what the project did, and attach the evidence at the time — while you still have permission to look at it and while you still know which drawing revision mattered.

Worth doing

  • Record an entry within a few weeks of the work, while the reasoning is still recoverable.
  • Write what you decided, and why, not what the project delivered.
  • Attach real evidence — a calculation extract, a marked-up drawing, a risk assessment you changed.
  • Upload your CPD plans and records to the Document Library, as the Training Review requires.
  • Record experience from before the agreement started; it counts, once your SCE validates it.
  • Keep your own copy. Access to an employer's systems ends when your employment does.

Avoid

  • Fill it in the week before an appraisal from memory.
  • Paste the same paragraph under several attributes.
  • Upload confidential or security-sensitive material without checking it is cleared.
  • Assume the record is your report. Reviewers never see it.
  • Leave a partial completion unrecorded when you change employer.

A test for an IPD Online entry

  1. Does this entry contain a decision I made?

    An entry describing what the project did is a project record. An entry describing what you decided is evidence.

  2. Will this make sense to me in four years?

    That is roughly when you will be writing your report from it, and the detail you leave out now will be gone.

  3. Have I attached anything, and am I still allowed to?

    Access to an employer's systems ends when your employment does — and confidential material needs checking before it goes anywhere.

  4. Did my SCE or DE actually comment on it?

    Their comments are part of the record, and an entry nobody has responded to has not been validated.

Keeping the record useful

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Related pages and tools

Read the official guidance