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Phase 5 · Write and submit

Security-sensitive and confidential work

How to evidence competence from work you cannot fully describe, without compromising the work or your evidence.

Who this is for:Candidates at any stage

Working on sensitive infrastructure does not stop you qualifying. ICE's position is that there is no reason why security restrictions should detract from the quality of your report.

ICE's guidance on security-mindedness

Institution of Civil Engineers

  • You should consider whether information in your application should be omitted or reduced in its level of detail for security reasons. However, there is no reason why this should detract from the quality of your report.
  • Make your report non-site specific — for example, do not state that a facility was at a particular named site, or that an asset serves a critical function to the site or country, or is or was vulnerable to various threats.
  • Do not state building numbers or names — it is sufficient to say, for example, 'nuclear facility' or 'nuclear store'.
  • Remove site and building names from drawings or snapshots of models.
  • Do not include photographs or other images which reveal the location of buildings and facilities.
  • Avoid stating, or showing, technical details — such as wall thickness — which may reveal security-sensitive information.
  • If you work on a security-sensitive project, ICE recommends that your organisation's information security manager, and the asset owner's or client's, reads your application and approves the content before you submit.
  • Familiarise yourself with the Engineering Council's guidance note on Security, published May 2016.
  • Let ICE know if you believe your reviewers need security clearance.

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

Keeping the evidence while removing the detail

The instinct when work is restricted is to write less. That is the wrong instinct, and it produces reports that fail for lack of evidence rather than for disclosure.

What reviewers need is your reasoning, not the identity of the asset. Almost everything that makes evidence strong survives anonymisation:

What has to go is the identifying detail — where it was, what it protects, what it is vulnerable to, and dimensions or configurations that would let someone reconstruct it.

A useful discipline: write the paragraph in full, then remove the identifiers and read it again. If it still shows what you decided and why, it is fine. If removing the identifiers empties it, the paragraph was describing the asset rather than your work — which was a weakness even before security came into it.

Fictional example

The same evidence, cleared

Fictional example — a restricted site, structural engineer

Weaker

Before clearance: I assessed the 450 mm reinforced concrete blast wall to Building 14 at the [named] site, which protects the primary control room, and found it deficient against the specified threat.

Stronger

After clearance: I assessed an existing reinforced concrete protective wall against a specified dynamic loading and found it did not meet the required performance. I had to decide between a strengthening scheme and a change to the operational arrangement behind it. I recommended strengthening because the operational change transferred the risk rather than reducing it, and I set out the residual performance for the client to accept.

Why — The second version has no site, no building, no dimension and no stated function — and it is better evidence, because it is about a judgement rather than about a wall. Note that the anonymised version also happens to be the version that would be stronger in any report.

Before anything leaves your employer

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Talking about it on the day

Two practical points. First, if there are restrictions on what you can discuss, ICE needs to know at application, as an individual requirement — not at the review. Second, prepare how you will decline. "I can describe the engineering but not the location" is a professional answer, and reviewers deal with it regularly. Being unable to say anything at all about your principal project is a different problem, and one to solve before you apply.

Related pages and tools

Read the official guidance