In this guide
Use this material to examine your own work. Confirm current requirements, forms and dates with ICE before applying.
An ICE Approved Employer commits to providing development opportunities and a training structure, alongside nominating a Supervising Civil Engineer.
Employer commitments
Through the SCE, the employer commits to providing opportunities to complete the Training Agreement, within the organisation or by secondment elsewhere. Secondment may be needed to gain construction or commercial experience unavailable in a specialist team.
The structure includes an initial assessment, regular development reviews, a formal annual review of progress and plans, and confirmation of completion.
Supporting the scheme
Allow SCEs and DEs time for supervision and quarterly discussions as well as appraisals. Consider a six-month secondment where it would provide needed site or commercial experience. Avoid keeping a trainee indefinitely in work they already do well while other areas remain undeveloped.
ICE expects the company to pay the Training Agreement registration fee or reimburse the trainee. Keep membership current: cancellation of a trainee's ICE membership also cancels the agreement, which is not automatically reinstated on payment.
Administrators
The TSA runs day-to-day administration: keeping the trainee list accurate, adding and removing TSAs, creating groups and downloading reports, and viewing trainees' records, though they cannot edit evidence or sign anything off. Where a company uses TAGSO, one nominated TSA approves and rejects Training Agreement applications and initiates payment, and only that person receives TAGSO emails. TAGSO is not linked to IPD Online.
Changes to SCEs, read-only TSA access and adding a Training Provider Administrator for apprenticeships all go through ICE rather than being self-served.
If a trainee leaves or moves to a different route, ask their SCE to complete the partial completion form in IPD Online. That is what records their progress and removes them from the scheme properly.
Employer self-check
Questions to ask yourself
- Could our SCE stop a delivery manager keeping a trainee on the same work?
ICE says the SCE must be able to manage conflicts between the employer's needs and the trainee's. If the answer is no in practice, the scheme is not operating as intended.
- How many of our trainees have completed in the last three years?
The most honest measure of whether the scheme is working here, and one that is rarely looked at.
- Do we know which attribute our trainees consistently struggle to evidence?
It is almost always commercial or construction. Knowing it lets you build the opportunity into the business rather than improvising per person.
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.