In this guide
Use this material to examine your own work. Confirm current requirements, forms and dates with IStructE before applying.
Finding an evidence gap three years before application allows time for development. Finding it three months before may affect whether you are ready to apply.
Identifying the kind of gap
A writing gap means you have the experience but the form does not explain it. Review the account with your mentor.
An evidence gap means you did the work but kept no supporting records. Check whether drawings, calculations or correspondence can be recovered, and begin keeping evidence as you work.
A level gap occurs when the objective requires Ability but your experience is supervised. Seek opportunities to take decisions, check work or advise others with your employer's support. This can take months.
An experience gap means you have not done the work. A different project, role or secondment may be needed; allow for development over years. Check sustainability, construction, and commercial and legal experience carefully.
Planning work to close a gap
Discuss the gap with your mentor and record a specific action that explains how you will gain the experience. "get more sustainability experience" is too broad to plan against. For example: "carry out the option comparison including embodied carbon on the next scheme, and write the note myself".
If the gap remains at your intended deadline, consider changing the date. Applying with a weak objective carries a risk you should discuss with your mentor. You remain responsible for demonstrating all ten objectives.
Checking areas outside your main technical work
Review your involvement in sustainability decisions, safety duties, management of resources or programmes, and commercial or legal matters. Receiving a specialist's output or observing someone else's decisions may leave you with experience still to gain.
How long each kind of gap takes
| Situation | What closes it | Realistic time |
|---|---|---|
| Writing | Rewriting the form so it states what you did, at what level | An afternoon, with a mentor review |
| Evidence | Retrieving or reconstructing records, annotating them | Days to weeks, if the records still exist |
| Level | Working unsupervised on it, checking others, advising | Several months, and it needs your employer |
| Experience | A different project, role or secondment | A year or more: plan it deliberately |
the Forum’s characterisation, from the shape of the requirements rather than from any IStructE statement about timescales.
Questions to ask yourself
- Can I name a specific piece of work that evidences this?
If the honest answer is a category rather than an instance, there is no evidence yet.
- Did I do it, or was I present while it was done?
Reviewers are interested only in what you personally undertook. Proximity to good work is not evidence.
- Was I supervised, and does that matter for this objective?
It matters entirely where the minimum standard is Ability, and hardly at all where it is Knowledge.
- Do I still hold something that shows it?
An objective you can describe but not evidence will not survive a portfolio that must cross-reference to the forms.
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.