THE PROFESSIONAL REVIEW
What to expect on the Professional Review day
So you've made it to the big day. What does it consist of?
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Presentation
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Interview
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Communication Task
1. Presentation
The review will start with a 15 minute presentation which you will need to have prepared before the review day. The presentation needs to be based on one aspect of your Professional Review report but should not repeat what you have already included in the report, nor be a summary of your CV or report. It is also not advisable to attempt to cover all the attributes within this presentation - you will not have enough time to do this.
For face-to-face reviews, you may use visual aids less than A3 in size or use a laptop computer. For online reviews, I would recommend using a powerpoint presentation - however, if your presentation contains lots of photos creating a large file size, it may be worth converting to pdf instead. Please refer to the ICE guidance for remote reviews.
2. Interview
The next stage of the review is the interview with your two reviewers. Their role is to confirm that you have achieved the required level of competence as shown in your report. If they believe that your report has not demonstrated sufficient evidence for a particular attribute, they will ask specific questions to draw out your knowledge and experience. You may be required to sketch out diagrams to answer certain questions.
For CEng candidates, the interview will last approximately 60 minutes. For IEng, this will be approximately 45 minutes.
3. Communication Task
After a short break, you will be required to undertake a Communication Task. This will be based on current issues within the industry and you will need to respond as a civil engineer, not a technical expert.
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For CEng, the ICE will be testing your ability to take a piece of information, digest it, organise your thoughts and present them logically and clearly. You will be set two scenarios, and you will have to choose one to respond to, you will also be given a style in which to provide your response, e.g. a blog post, a letter to a government office/local residents group, a news article etc. You will have 90 minutes to complete the task.
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For IEng, the objective is to ascertain that you can produce straightforward documents without assistance from others, and you have the ability to report factual information clearly. You will be set two questions and you will have to answer one, you will have to produce your response as a technical memo or technical note. You will have 60 minutes to complete the task.
More details on the Communication Task can be found here.
Results
You will be informed of your result within 6 weeks of your professional review.
If you are unsuccessful, your email will include commentary on each attribute with an explanation on why you have not passed. For those candidates that did not pass the Professional Review, do not give up! I would be happy to discuss where you went wrong and to give you advice on how to make sure you pass the next time.
