Phase 4 · Meet the Core Objectives

3. Concept Creation and Design

That 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.

Who this is for:Candidates at any stage ·Mentors

Minimum standard: Experience for Incorporated-Member, Ability for Chartered Member. This is the one objective where the two grades differ.

Core Objective 3 — what IStructE says

Institution of Structural Engineers

This objective is intended to demonstrate a candidate's skills around producing structural solutions in response to a brief.
Minimum standard, Incorporated-Member: E — Experience. The subject should be performed independently or under supervision.
Minimum standard, Chartered Member: B — Ability. Perform the subject without supervision and be competent to advise others.

From IPD Guidance — Chartered Member, Institution of Structural Engineers.

What strong and weak evidence look like

Worth doing

Two genuinely different arrangements you compared, with the reason one was chosen.
A sketch showing the load path, drawn by you at the time rather than reconstructed afterwards.
A stability strategy you set, and what would have happened without it.
A concept that changed because of carbon, cost or buildability, with the before and after.
A decision on a transfer, a movement joint or a grid that had consequences you can describe.

Avoid

Describing the scheme that was built without saying who chose it.
"The project used a reinforced-concrete frame" — a fact about the project, not about you.
Options that differ only in member size or material, which is not a real comparison.
Concept work presented with no sketch of your own anywhere in the portfolio.

Portfolio items that tend to work here

Your own concept sketches, dated, showing arrangement and behaviour.
An options study or scheme comparison you produced.
A general arrangement you set out, annotated to show what was yours.
Evidence of resistance to failure modes — robustness, fire — being designed in rather than checked afterwards.
Something showing interaction with other disciplines.

5 items · saved in this browser only

Suggestions, not a required list. What matters is that the item is yours, that it is annotated, and that it demonstrates the standard rather than the subject.

Questions to ask yourself

Which arrangement did I choose, and what did I reject?
A concept with only one option in it is not a decision.
Can I draw the load path for my own project, from roof to ground, without notes?
Reviewers ask for exactly this, and it is where thin concept evidence shows.
What holds it up sideways?
Stability is the fastest way for a reviewer to find out whether you understood the scheme or inherited it.

The same objective, in different kinds of work

Illustrative. The objectives are written to be met in a range of ways by anyone practising as a structural engineer.
Setting	What the evidence tends to look like
Buildings	Setting a grid around an awkward transfer, and choosing between flat slab and beam-and-slab on more than span alone.
Bridges	Selecting a deck form and articulation, and understanding what the bearings and the abutments are being asked to do.
Existing structures	Deciding what the existing frame can be asked to carry, and where new load must go around it.

Illustrative. The objectives are written to be met in a range of ways by anyone practising as a structural engineer.

How reviewers tend to approach this objective

Asking you to sketch the structure and its load path, live.
Asking what the second scheme was, and why it lost.
Asking what you would change if the grid moved, or a column had to go.
Moving from your project to a fundamentals question about stability or robustness.

There is a bank of original practice questions in the interview question bank, filterable by objective and by grade.