In this guide
Use this material to examine your own work. Confirm current requirements, forms and dates with IStructE before applying.
Each brief gives you a site, a function, a constraint and ground conditions from which to develop your response.
What a brief gives you, and what it withholds
Each brief here carries four things: what the client wants, the constraint that should decide between your schemes, the ground, and (where the brief offers one) a reuse opportunity.
That is deliberately all. The examination gives you more words but not much more information, and the skill being practised is extracting the governing constraint from what you are given and building a scheme around it.
Every brief also carries a note on what makes it hard, hidden until you open it. Read that after your attempt, not before. If your two schemes did not engage with the difficulty it names, that is the lesson.
Working through them
- Twenty minutes gets you two outline schemes and a stability sketch for each. Do this often; it is the cheapest and highest-value practice available.
- Ninety minutes gets you schemes, an appraisal and a recommendation: the whole of section 1a.
- The full paper should be sat under real conditions, with the mock examination tool.
Rotate the building type. Candidates who only practise on the structure they design at work are practising the thing they are already good at.
They are original
None of these is taken from, adapted from, or derived from the Institution's examination archive (its question papers, its examiners' reports, its published worked answers) or from a commercial course. No examination drawing has been traced. That material is the Institution's, and it is the Institution you should obtain it from, under its own terms.
What is in the bank
| Paper | Briefs | What they cover |
|---|---|---|
| Chartered Membership | 35 | Buildings, bridges, industrial, civic, transport, marine and refurbishment |
| Incorporated-Membership | 20 | Single-scheme problems at a scale suited to the paper |
| IM–CM supplementary | 12 | Two-scheme problems where the constraint drives the difference |
| Energy question | 10 | Wind, storage, solar, biomass, hydrogen, substation, hydro and nuclear-site work |
Each original brief includes constraints that allow two distinct viable schemes, for practice in section 1a.
Three ways to use one brief
- 01
Twenty minutes: schemes only
Two outline schemes and a stability sketch for each. Do this often. It is the cheapest practice available and it drills the part of the paper carrying the most marks.
- 02
Ninety minutes: through to a recommendation
Schemes, appraisal against criteria drawn from the brief, and a recommendation in one unambiguous sentence. That is the whole of section 1a.
- 03
A full day: the complete paper
Use the mock examination tool, which draws a brief you have not seen and runs the correct clock for your paper.
Getting value from the bank
Look for
- Rotate the building type: practise what you do not design at work
- Read the constraint twice before choosing a scheme
- Write down the six difference categories and change three or four of them
- Open the difficulty note only after your attempt
- Keep your attempts, so you can see whether the same weakness recurs
Watch for
- Read the difficulty note first
- Only practise briefs in your own sector
- Skip the stability sketch because it is obvious
- Treat a brief as a reading exercise
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.