Phase 5 · Write and submit

Plagiarism, collusion and the ethical use of AI

What help is legitimate, what is not, and where ICE draws the line — in the submission and in the review itself.

Who this is for:Candidates at any stage ·Mentors ·Sponsors

The report must be your own work, and the Communication Task is a closed-book assessment. Both are checked, and the consequences of getting this wrong are severe.

What ICE says about plagiarism and collusion

Institution of Civil Engineers

Plagiarism is presenting the work of others as your own — using words or ideas without permission and without acknowledgement of the original author.
It should be avoided in all elements of your Professional Review, including your report, drawings, presentation, and the written Communication Task.
Samples of both the report and the Communication Task response are selected from each review and put through plagiarism detection software.
If the invigilator has concerns about your behaviour during the Communication Task, or your reviewers raise concerns about the content, your response is automatically put through the software. Significant similarity with unattributed sources leads to ICE contacting you for an explanation, and your reviewers being given a copy of the report and your response — which they may use in assessing your Communication Task or other attributes.
Collusion is any agreement to conceal someone else's contribution to your piece of work.
Plagiarism and collusion may lead to a ban on applying for membership or, for existing members, permanent expulsion. An allegation may delay your result while it is investigated.
ICE's own guidance on avoiding it: do not cut and paste material from others; where you quote others or the work of others, attribute the source fully and use quotation marks where appropriate. As a rule of thumb, treat material derived from others as a quote unless it is common knowledge — for example, standard equations in the public domain.

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

AI and outside sources during the review

Institution of Civil Engineers

The use of the internet, artificial intelligence (AI) software tools, search engines, contacting another person, or accessing other devices, is not permitted during the Professional Review and Communication Task.
The only exceptions are accessing the MS Teams meeting, the login email from ICE, and the Communication Task page itself.
If your reviewers have concerns that AI or other software tools were used, ICE staff will contact you, and you will be asked to provide an explanation and to provide the reference material you used.
If your reviewers have concerns that you are obtaining answers by other means during the interview, or that you are recording the review, they will make their concerns known to you and report them to ICE.

Closed book: no internet, no AI tools, no search engines, no contacting anyone, no other devicesThe only permitted online access is the Teams meeting, the login email from ICE and the Communication Task page itself.
Reference material allowed: 2sides of A4, optionalPrinted hard copy or an MS Word document. Copying and pasting from it is not permitted — it is for reference only. No other notes are allowed.

From Professional Review Communication Task Guidance (candidate), Institution of Civil Engineers.

Where the line falls in practice

The rules above are clear about the assessment itself. What causes more genuine uncertainty is the months of preparation beforehand, where help is not only allowed but expected — your lead sponsor is required to give constructive criticism of your report.

The distinction that holds up is between help with your work and someone else doing the work.

Preparing your submission

Worth doing

Have your report read, criticised and marked up by your lead sponsor, colleagues and friends. ICE's own checklist suggests exactly this.
Be told that a paragraph is unclear, that a section says 'we' throughout, or that an attribute is not evidenced.
Use a spelling and grammar checker.
Practise with a mentor, and be told your answers are vague.
Quote a source properly, with attribution and quotation marks, where you genuinely need to.
Use tools to check readability, consistency and structure in text you wrote.

Avoid

Have anyone — person or software — write substantial passages of your report.
Generate a first-person account of experience and then edit it into your own voice.
Adapt someone else's report, or an example from a guidance pack, into your submission.
Reuse a colleague's project description as though it were your account.
Agree with anyone to conceal their contribution. That is collusion, and it is named specifically.
Use any AI tool, search engine, other person or other device during the review or the Communication Task.

How Queensferry's tools behave

This matters enough to state plainly, because a site offering preparation tools has an obligation to say what its tools will not do.

They will not write your submission. No tool here drafts report text, generates experience, produces examples in your voice, or fills in an application from invented facts. The report planner plans structure; it does not write prose.

Feedback identifies, it does not replace. Where writing is reviewed — by a person or by software — the useful output is "this paragraph does not say who decided" rather than a rewritten paragraph. Anything that silently replaces whole sections has taken authorship away from you, which is exactly what ICE prohibits.

The fictional examples are illustrations. Every example in this domain is labelled fictional, and they exist to show the difference between weak and strong reasoning. They are not model answers, and adapting one into a submission would be presenting someone else's words as your own.

The closed-book simulation is genuinely closed. The Communication Task practice tool has two modes. In learning mode you get planning help, structure guidance and feedback afterwards. In closed-book simulation there are no hints once you start, because practising with help available is not practising the thing you will actually sit.

Queensferry may never be used during a real review. That is not a policy choice; it is ICE's rule, and breaking it risks a ban on applying for membership.

You remain responsible. Whatever help you have had, the submission is yours, and you sign it.