In this guide
Use this material to examine your own work. Confirm current requirements, forms and dates with ICE before applying.
Your evidence is unlikely to be equally strong across all seven attribute areas. A gap analysis helps you identify where you need more experience while there is time to seek it.
Areas to check carefully
Commercial responsibility can be limited in design roles. Check whether you controlled a budget as well as understanding it.
Construction experience may be limited by office-based work. ICE guidance says site experience will ordinarily be required where experience includes the construction process.
Leadership can include influence without line management. The attribute uses the words "lead or influence".
For sustainability, identify a decision you changed and explain why. For the Chartered safety extension, show how you promoted good practice or improvement.
Check communication with non-technical people and engagement with ICE activities under professional commitment. These can receive less attention than technical work.
Review the range and currency of the evidence too. One project may leave important experience unexplained. For work from eight years ago, consider whether you can still explain it fluently and show how you have developed since.
From gap to development action
| Gap | Actions that tend to work | Actions that tend not to |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial | Take the fee or budget for a package. Assess a change or variation. Build a cost forecast and own the variance conversation. | Attending commercial meetings. Reading the contract without applying it. |
| Leadership | Lead a design review or a risk workshop. Take responsibility for a junior colleague's development against a named skill. | Being given a title. Waiting to be made a manager. |
| Construction | A site secondment with a defined role for a defined period. | A series of site visits with a camera. |
| Health and safety | Take a formal duty holder role. Own a designer's risk register through to construction. Renew your formal training. | Another toolbox talk. Another induction. |
| Sustainability | Run an options comparison with carbon or resource use as a criterion, and let it change the answer. | Adding a paragraph about the UN goals to your report. |
| Communication | Present to a non-technical audience. Take part in stakeholder or public engagement. Write the note that settles a dispute. | Claiming excellent communication skills. |
| Professional commitment | Join a committee, give a talk, mentor a graduate, do STEM outreach, review a paper. | Paying your subscription. |
Working through it with a mentor
- 01
Do it separately first
You grade your own evidence; your mentor grades it independently. Comparing the two is where the useful conversation is: mentors routinely rate candidates lower on commercial and higher on leadership than candidates rate themselves.
- 02
Pick two areas, not seven
Trying to fix everything at once produces no evidence anywhere. Two areas over a year is a realistic plan.
- 03
Write the request, not the aspiration
"Give me commercial experience" cannot be actioned. "I want to hold the fee for the next package and run the variance reporting" can.
- 04
Set a review date
Development with no date does not happen. Put it in the annual appraisal if you are on a Training Agreement.
- 05
Record it as it happens
Straight into the evidence matrix, while you can still remember what you were weighing up.
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.