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Phase 5 · Write and submit

The Professional Review report

5,000 words in which two strangers have to see your competence: what ICE asks for, how to structure it, and how to edit it.

Who this is for:Candidates at any stage

The report is the main evidence in your application, the basis of your presentation, and the source of most interview questions. It is also pre-assessed before you get to the review.

What goes in the application, and what counts against the limitsThe application is one PDF. Only the report body text counts against the 5,000-word limit. The cover page, contents, figures, abbreviations, CV, appendices and CPD records do not, though the appendices and the file size have their own limits.ONE PDF — 15 MB MAXIMUMApplication formComplete every sectionEvidence of qualificationsCertified copies, if ICE does not hold themEvidence of IPD completionTraining Agreement, mentor route or Career AppraisalTwo-page CVOutside the word countReport — body textCounts towards the 5,000 wordsCover page, contents, figures, abbreviationsOutside the word countAppendices3 sides of A3 and 12 sides of A4CPD records — plan and recordOutside the appendix limitsHOW THE REPORT IS ORGANISEDA narrative, not a list of attributesYour role, and where you sat in the organisationOne or two projects you played a major part inThe decisions you made, and the options you rejectedWhat went wrong, and what you did about itWhere you led, and where you asked for helpWhat you would do differently nowICE asks you not to address the attributes in sequence. Reviewers shouldsee all seven areas emerging from the story of what you did. A CareerAppraisal report is different: there you reference the attributes by numberat the end of each section.

What ICE requires of the report

Institution of Civil Engineers

  • A cover page with: a title (for example, Incorporated Professional Review, March 2021); a recent photo of you; your name, signature and membership number; and your lead sponsor's name, signature and membership number.
  • Up to 5,000 words of body text. It should be your own work and presented in an ordered manner.
  • A professional layout with a table of contents and of appendices. Items like tables of figures and lists of abbreviations are not included in the word count.
  • Hyperlinks should be used to link between report sections — but not to items outside the application itself.
  • It is a vehicle to demonstrate how you have met the attributes. It is important not to address them in sequence, but to give reviewers a narrative, from your role activities, that allows them to see how you have met all the attributes at the required level.
  • Emphasise your responsibilities and relevant experience for each attribute; expand on decisions made, problems met, and occasions when you gained unusual or extensive experience and learned valuable lessons.
  • Put particular emphasis on one or two projects in which you played a major part. At CEng level, also describe how you took a lead in some or all of the elements.
  • Clearly indicate your role by giving the background to important decisions you were responsible for or contributed significantly to, and show where you exercised independent judgement.
  • Your reviewers pre-assess the report. If they agree it is not of a satisfactory standard, the review is deferred until you address their comments.
Professional Review report length
5000words of body textBody text only. Contents pages, tables of figures, lists of abbreviations, appendices, the CV and CPD records are outside the count.
Appendices — A3 sides
3sides of A3
Appendices — A4 sides
12sides of A4CPD records sit outside this limit.
Application file size
15MB, one PDFA single PDF. Convert documents to PDF electronically rather than scanning where you can, and check it reads in black and white.

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

One way of spending five thousand wordsAn illustrative division of the report word budget: 400 words of introduction and role, 1,800 on the first principal project, 1,400 on the second, 600 on other experience, 600 on professional commitment and reflection, and 200 to conclude.ILLUSTRATIVE ONLY — 5,000 WORDS OF BODY TEXT140021800314004600560062001 Introduction and your role (400)2 Principal project one (1800)3 Principal project two (1400)4 Other experience, briefly (600)5 Professional commitment and reflection (600)6 Conclusion (200)ICE asks for particular emphasis on one or two projects in which you played a major part. This is one way of doing that — not a template.What does not count against the 5,000The cover page, contents page, table of appendices, table of figures and list of abbreviations.The two-page CV, the appendices, and the CPD records.That does not make them free — the appendices have their own limit, and the file must stay under 15 MB.

Narrative, not attribute-by-attribute

This is the instruction candidates most often ignore, usually because a chapter per attribute feels safer. It is not, for two reasons.

The first is that it reads badly. Seven chapters, each opening with a project introduction because the reader has been moved somewhere new, wastes hundreds of words on context.

The second is that it evidences less. Real engineering decisions carry several attributes at once — a decision about a temporary works sequence is technical, commercial, safety-related and often a leadership act as well. Split across seven chapters, each appears once, thinly. Told as one account, it does all four jobs in the same three hundred words.

The way to satisfy yourself that coverage is complete is to audit against the attributes after writing, not to structure around them. That is what the evidence matrix is for.

A workable order

  1. 01

    Choose your one or two principal projects

    Choose for the decisions you made, not for the size of the scheme. A project you led a small part of, badly documented, is worse evidence than a modest job you owned.

  2. 02

    List the decisions before you write prose

    Twelve to twenty of them, each one sentence. This is the skeleton, and it is much easier to see gaps here than in a draft.

  3. 03

    Map them against the seven areas

    Now you can see which areas are carried by your principal projects and which need something from elsewhere in your career.

  4. 04

    Write the account, not the project

    Context in one paragraph, then decisions. If a paragraph has no decision in it, ask what it is for.

  5. 05

    Cut to the limit, ruthlessly

    First drafts are routinely 7,000 words. What goes is almost always background — reviewers do not need the scheme's history, the client's objectives, or the site's geology in detail.

  6. 06

    Add the appendices and the hyperlinks

    Link from the text to the appendix and back again. Then check every link works in the combined PDF, which is not the same as in your word processor.

  7. 07

    Give it to your lead sponsor early

    They have a duty to give constructive criticism. Two days before the deadline is not constructive criticism, it is proofreading.

Editing for a reviewer

Worth doing

  • Replace 'we' with 'I' wherever you mean I — then check the remaining 'we' really is a team action.
  • Put the decision in the first sentence of the paragraph, and the reasoning after it.
  • Keep one tense and one voice. Drifting between them is the commonest readability problem.
  • Make every appendix reference specific: which appendix, and what to look at in it.
  • Read it aloud. Sentences you cannot say are sentences a reviewer will not follow.
  • Check consistency with your CV, and with what your sponsors are likely to write.

Avoid

  • Spend a page on the scheme's background. It is not evidence and it is a fifth of a project section.
  • Use acronyms without a list, or use a list as an excuse for forty of them.
  • Quote your job description.
  • Write anything you would not want to be asked about for ten minutes.
  • Include confidential or security-sensitive material without clearance. See security-sensitive work.
  • Copy anything. Samples of reports are put through plagiarism detection software.

Related pages and tools

Read the official guidance