Phase 6 · Sit the interview
The ten-minute presentation
Ten minutes, ten slides maximum, compulsory — and not giving one fails Core Objective 2 outright.
Who this is for:Candidates at any stage ·Mentors
The only part of the interview you control completely — and the only part with an automatic penalty attached for skipping it.
The requirement
Institution of Structural Engineers
- You must give a presentation of your career in structural engineering, lasting approximately 10 minutes.
- You are permitted no more than 10 slides.
- It is expected that you will refer to the content in your portfolio and IPD final report forms.
- If you do not provide a presentation, it will result in you failing Core Objective 2, which is about your ability to communicate.
- In the rare event of a face-to-face interview, you may produce a handout of the 10 slides and must give a paper copy to each reviewer.
- Presentation length
- about 10minutesA presentation of your career in structural engineering.
- Slide limit
- 10slides maximumNot giving a presentation at all results in failing Core Objective 2. In the rare face-to-face case, bring a paper copy of the ten slides for each reviewer.
From IPD Guidance — Chartered Member, Institution of Structural Engineers.
Use it to set the agenda
The reviewers will question you primarily on your portfolio. The presentation is your one chance to tell them which parts of it to ask about — the work you are strongest on, the decisions you most want to discuss, the objectives you are best placed to evidence.
Most candidates waste it on a chronological tour of their employers. That is a CV read aloud, and it invites questions about whatever the reviewers happened to notice on their own.
A shape that works
Ten minutes is roughly 1,200 spoken words. A structure that fits:
- 01Who you are now (1 minute) — the work you do, the responsibility you carry, the level you operate at.
- 02Two or three projects (6 minutes) — chosen not for glamour but for coverage. Between them they should touch most of the ten objectives, and each should include a decision you made and can defend.
- 03The breadth (1½ minutes) — sustainability, safety, management, commercial awareness. These are the objectives that get thin, and naming where they live in your portfolio directs the questions towards evidence you have.
- 04Where you are going (½ minute) — CPD, and what you are developing next.
Then stop. Running long into your own question time helps nobody.
Ten slides is a ceiling, not a target
Fewer, clearer slides usually present better over a video link. Every slide should carry an image — a drawing, a photograph, a sketch — rather than a paragraph you are about to read aloud. Reviewers can read faster than you can speak, so a dense slide means they stop listening.
Put the portfolio page reference in the corner of each slide. It costs nothing and it makes the whole submission feel navigable.
Rehearse against the clock, out loud
Not in your head. Out loud, timed, on the platform you will use, with the screen shared. Ten minutes is shorter than it sounds, and the first rehearsal is almost always fourteen.
Preparing it
Worth doing
- Choose projects for objective coverage, not for scale
- Name a decision you made on each project, and be ready to be challenged on it
- Cross-reference each slide to a portfolio page
- Rehearse out loud, timed, over the actual video platform
- Have a plan for what to cut if you are running long
Avoid
- Walk through your CV employer by employer
- Fill slides with text you intend to read out
- Use all ten slides because ten are allowed
- Present work where your own contribution is hard to isolate
- Skip it — that fails Core Objective 2 on its own
Test your draft against these
Which objectives does my presentation actually touch?
If it only covers design and analysis, it is steering the interview towards half the assessment and away from the half candidates usually fail.
Would a reviewer know what I personally did on each project?
The same trap as the portfolio: a project story is not evidence of your competence.
Can I deliver it in ten minutes without rushing the last slide?
The Institution says approximately ten minutes, and reviewers have a fixed window for the whole interview.
Related pages and tools
- The PRIWhat the interview is for, who conducts it, how long it lasts, and what it is your job to demonstrate.
- The interviewHow the questioning works, how to answer at the level the standard asks for, and what to do when you do not know.
- 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.
- The portfolioWhat the portfolio is for, when it has to be ready, who receives it, and the format rules that decide whether it is read.