Phase 4 · Meet the Core Objectives
The ten Core Objectives
What IStructE assesses, what Knowledge, Experience and Ability actually mean, and where the two grades differ.
Who this is for:Candidates at any stage ·Mentors
Initial Professional Development is described in ten Core Objectives, each defined to a minimum standard. All ten are assessed at the interview, and it is your job to demonstrate each one.
The three minimum standards
Institution of Structural Engineers
- Knowledge — A knowledge and understanding of the subject and its application is required.
- Experience — The subject should be performed independently or under supervision.
- Ability — Perform the subject without supervision and be competent to advise others.
- The Core Objectives are compulsory. During the interview it is your responsibility to demonstrate that you have achieved the required standard for all ten.
- Core Objectives
- 10Compulsory, and all ten are assessed at the interview.
- Minimum standard levels
- Knowledge, Experience, AbilityKnowledge — understanding of the subject and its application. Experience — performed independently or under supervision. Ability — performed without supervision, and competent to advise others.
From IPD Guidance — Chartered Member, Institution of Structural Engineers.
These are levels of responsibility, not a progress bar
The three standards describe how you hold the work, not how much of it you have seen.
Knowledge is understanding. You can explain the subject and how it applies, and a reviewer can question you on it.
Experience is having done it — independently, or under supervision. Someone may have been checking, but the work went through your hands.
Ability is doing it without supervision, and being competent to advise others. That last clause is the one candidates under-read: at Ability, you are the person someone else brings the problem to.
The practical consequence shows up in how you write your report forms. The guidance is blunt about it: if an objective is set at Ability, do not describe your work in the language of experience or knowledge. Reviewers read the words you chose.
The ten objectives and their minimum standards
| Core Objective | IMIStructE | MIStructE | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Professional Standards and Engineering Responsibility | K — Knowledge | K — Knowledge |
| 2 | Communication | B — Ability | B — Ability |
| 3 | Concept Creation and Design | E — Experience | B — Ability |
| 4 | Analysis and Sizing | B — Ability | B — Ability |
| 5 | Materials | B — Ability | B — Ability |
| 6 | Sustainability | E — Experience | E — Experience |
| 7 | Construction | E — Experience | E — Experience |
| 8 | Health, Safety and Risk Management | E — Experience | E — Experience |
| 9 | Management | E — Experience | E — Experience |
| 10 | Commercial and Legal | K — Knowledge | K — Knowledge |
From the current Incorporated-Member and Chartered Member IPD guidance, read side by side.
The shape of the requirement
At Chartered Member level the standards break down as 4 objectives at Ability, 4 at Experience and 2 at Knowledge. At Incorporated-Member level it is 3, 5 and 2.
That distribution tells you where the weight sits. The objectives set at Ability — communication, concept and design at Chartered level, analysis and sizing, and materials — are the ones where you must be able to work unsupervised and advise. They are also the ones where thin evidence is most obvious under questioning.
How to use these pages
Each objective page sets out the official title, the intent statement, the minimum standard for both grades, and then Queensferry's own account of what strong and weak evidence look like, what tends to work in a portfolio, what to ask yourself, and where reviewers commonly take the questioning.
Work through them with a project in front of you, not in the abstract. The evidence matrix is for recording what you find as you go.
Related pages and tools
- Professional standardsThat you understand what it means to belong to a profession — the Code of Conduct, the limits of your own competence, the habit of keeping up to date, and some genuine involvement in the Institution beyond paying a subscription.
- CommunicationThat you can make yourself understood — in drawings, in writing, and out loud — to engineers and to people who are not engineers. This is the one objective you are assessed on continuously: your portfolio, your report forms, your presentation and the interview itself all feed into it.
- Concept and designThat you can take a brief and produce a structural solution — choosing a form, setting a grid, deciding how load reaches the ground and how the thing stands up — with safety, carbon, durability, reuse, appearance and cost all in the frame.
- Analysis and sizingThat you understand how structures actually behave, that you choose an analysis suited to the question, and that you know whether to believe the answer.
- MaterialsThat you understand the materials you actually build with — how they behave, how they fail, how they are made and placed, how they deteriorate — and that you can specify them properly.
- SustainabilityThat sustainability has changed something you actually did — a quantity, a material, a decision to reuse rather than replace — and that you can talk about the whole life of the structure rather than only its construction.
- ConstructionThat you know how what you draw actually gets built — sequence, temporary conditions, tolerance, access, plant — and that you have contributed to that process rather than watched it.
- Health, safety and riskThat you know the law and the hazards, that you manage risk in your own work rather than delegating it to a form, and that people are safer because of decisions you made.
- ManagementThat you can plan and run work — programme, resources, quality, other people — and that you have made the decisions that come with a constraint you could not wish away.
- Commercial and legalThat you understand the money and the law around your engineering well enough to make sound decisions inside them — the contract you work under, what it allocates to whom, and what your advice costs.