In this guide
Use this material to examine your own work. Confirm current requirements, forms and dates with ICE before applying.
Explain how you behave ethically and recognise the limits of your competence. Include how you keep learning and contribute to the profession.
What the area requires
That you behave ethically, know where your competence ends, keep learning, and give something back to the profession.
Additional Chartered requirements
The extension is short and heavy: sound holistic independent judgement, and accepting responsibility. Holistic means seeing the whole (technical, commercial, safety, environmental, social) and taking a defensible position across all of it, then owning the consequence.
What strong and weak evidence look like
Look for
- An ethical situation you were in, including the uncomfortable part.
- A time you said you were not competent to do something, and what you did instead.
- A CPD record that shows you responding to your own gaps, not collecting hours.
- Genuine ICE engagement: a talk given, a committee, a mentoring role, STEM outreach, a graduate you supported.
- Responsibility accepted for something that went wrong on your watch.
Watch for
- "I always act ethically."
- A CPD record made entirely of internal lunchtime seminars.
- ICE engagement described as paying the subscription.
- An ethics example where the candidate is the hero and nobody had anything to lose.
- Not having read the current Code of Conduct.
An ethical situation with something at stake
Fictional example: consultant, structural engineer
I always act with integrity and in accordance with the ICE Code of Conduct, putting public safety first at all times.
I was asked to sign a completion certificate for a mezzanine before the connections had been inspected, because the tenant was moving in that weekend. The pressure was not aggressive — everyone assumed the connections were fine, and they probably were. I said I would sign it once I had seen them, and I went out on the Saturday morning to look. Two of the fourteen brackets were missing their second bolt. It delayed handover by a day, and it was not comfortable, but the alternative was signing something I did not know to be true.
The weaker version is a statement of values that cannot be tested. The stronger version is an occasion with a cost, a specific action, and a finding. Reviewers ask for the second kind, and candidates who only have the first kind struggle.
Questions to ask yourself
- When did doing the right thing cost me something?
That is what makes an ethics example real rather than rehearsed.
- What am I not competent to do?
The ability to answer this plainly is assessed, and it reassures reviewers about everything else you have claimed.
- What did my CPD change about how I work?
ICE validates benefit gained, not attendance. Your SCE is told to assess it that way too.
- What have I given back?
Engaging with ICE activities is a stated attribute, not an optional extra.
The same area, in different kinds of work
| Setting | What the evidence tends to look like |
|---|---|
| Any | Reporting a defect you could have quietly detailed around; declining work outside your competence; declaring a conflict of interest nobody would have noticed. |
| Commercially pressured | Refusing to sign a certificate that was not yet true, and managing the fallout. |
| Early career | Asking for a check when you were not sure, on work you were expected to be sure about. |
Illustrative. The area is generic by design: ICE says the attributes can be achieved in a range of ways by anyone working as a civil or infrastructure engineer.
Knowing where your competence ends
Fictional example: early career, design office
I always seek advice when I am unsure and I recognise the limits of my competence.
I was given a masonry arch assessment. I had done concrete and steel, and I had never assessed masonry. I said so, rather than working it out from a textbook over a weekend and hoping. My team leader arranged for me to do it alongside someone who had, and I did the next one on my own. I would say the same thing again — but I would now say it faster, because I spent two days trying to teach myself first.
'Identify the limits of your personal knowledge and skills' is an attribute statement in its own right. Candidates worry that admitting a limit weakens the application; in practice it makes everything else they claim more believable.
An evidence-planning exercise
Written for a notebook rather than a submission. Anything you cannot answer is a development action, not a writing problem.
How interviewers tend to approach this area
- An ethical scenario invented on the spot, to see how you reason rather than what you have memorised.
- Asking what the Code of Conduct requires of you.
- Asking what you would do if your employer asked you to do something you thought was wrong.
- Asking what you have contributed to the profession beyond your job.
There is a large bank of original practice questions in the question bank, filterable by area and by level.
Official sources
Selected publisher pages were rechecked in September 2026. Other source records were last checked in July 2026. Open the latest official document before relying on a requirement.