Am I ready?

It is not always easy for a junior level structural engineer to know whether you are at the required
standard to become a Chartered Structural Engineer. There are a few key indicators of likely
success though, for instance you might be:

designing and calculating with confidence (i.e. not having to re-do your work from
careless errors), quickly, and a high rate of approval
checking other peoples drawings/calculations/report with your signature being the last
before it gets sent off.
controlling your departments or teams budget, with the authority to request occasional
changes.
publishing, giving seminars or teaching people about new technical knowledge or
methods
participating in several institution events, networking and attending industry conferences

While none of the above will guarantee a successful application, they meet the minimum Core
Objectives requirements set by the IStructE. You should therefore consider how to write your
application to the correct standard.

The most relevant skill you will need to pass the Chartered Member Examination will be to work
quickly and confidently.

Alternatively, you may qualify for the Mutual Recognition Route if you are professionally
qualified in the UK (ICE, CIBSE, RINA, IIE, RAeS, IMechE or IMarEST), Ireland, Australia
(Structural College) or New Zealand. This route allows you to skip the Professional Review
Interview and enter for the exam directly.

IStructE vs ICE
Introduction
One of situations you will face in path to Chartership is deciding on going through IStructE vs
ICE or one of many other notable Institutions (IMarEST, RINA, IMechE and the list goes on).
The former two do however make up the bulk of all civil engineering related CEng/IEng
registrations. Both institutions are enormously prestigious and there are certainly strong
arguments for following either. For as long as these institutions remain separate, you will hear
strong opinions for one or the other.

Here at the Structural Exam, we have a lot of experience in both institutions, and will try to paint
a balanced picture for you.
Which should you apply for?
Your employer may favour one institution over another, or perhaps be indifferent, but for most
people the following factors will almost certainly influence your decision:

Assessment methods do you prefer collecting a detailed portfolio over several years and
letting that be the final assessment, or would you prefer to sit a 7-hour exam?
The tasks you do in your job Are you primarily managing other consultants/contractors,
or doing the engineering calculations yourself? Would you feel confident in being tested
in great detail about your conceptual design skills within the exam period?
Your skill set The competence levels at ICE are somewhat broader than IStructEs,
with management, commercial and legal skills substantially higher.
Which institutions your supervisors/mentors are registered you will need to find
members of the institution to back up your application. It will help if they know the
application process very well too.
The average time of the Initial Professional Development stage of each institution
going by experience with our friends and colleagues, people tend to sit the IStructE exam
1-2 years ahead of those going for ICE
Costs and benefits of membership This should only be a minor consideration at the
early stages of your career.

What should not influence your decision is the pass rate. Though many may fear the 35%
average success rate at IStructEs Chartered Member examination, with the appropriate
preparation from resources such as The Structural Exam, you can skew the odds of success in
your favour.

Most of the UK-based institutions follow the UK-SPEC guidelines provided by the Engineering
Council, though ICE and IStructE notably modified/reworded them and put the same
competences under the new headings of Attributes and Core Objectives respectively.

Assessment methods
Both the IStructE and ICE require an extensive portfolio documentation, with a major milestone
being a submission to the institution to verify that you have completed a list of competences to a
minimum standard. The interesting part here is that if your employer has a Company Approved
Training Scheme by the ICE, then this is also recognised by the IStructE through the
Accredited Training Scheme Route.

Our opinion is that the detail and breadth required for ICEs portfolio stage is much more
demanding than IStructEs. This is especially true when you come to doing the so-called
Quarterly Reports where those following ICE typically have more appendices and manuscript
annotations/calculations along the way compared to IStructE.
After you have submitted your portfolio to the relevant institution for review, you will be invited
to an interview with a panel of assessors typically two persons where one is a specialist in your
field and the other is a generalist. You will present a project for 15 minutes and the remaining 60
minutes your assessors will ask in-depth questions to allow you to showcase your competence in
the relevant areas. The onus is on the candidate to demonstrate competence, not the reviewers to
get it out of you! Make sure you use the are there any other questions? period at the end to fill
in anything else that has not been covered.

If you applied via the ICE, after your interview and on the same day you will be required to do
the Written Assignment which is a 2 hour essay-based exam to test your ability to form
opinions and write a persuasive piece of English prose. If you pass this, then congratulations
you will have become a Chartered Civil Engineer! (CEng MICE)

If you applied via the IStructE, after you your interview this will be the end of your review day,
and you will need to wait a few weeks to know whether you passed. If you did, then its onto
Part 3.

Part 3 for the IStructE is a 7-hour design exam. The average pass rate is approximately 35% and
it is often described as a full weeks design work packed into one day. If you pass this, then
congratulations you will have become a Chartered Structural Engineer! (CEng MIStructE).

Lastly, if you are already a Chartered Member of one institution and would like to register for the
other, then both have methods to recognise each other. If you became an IStructE member first,
then you can apply directly to become a member of ICE through their Recognition of
Engineering Council Registration route. (You will still be a MICE, but you cannot call yourself a
Chartered Civil Engineer by law unless you have sat the ICEs Professional Interview). But if
you registered with ICE first, the IStructEs Mutual Recognition Agreement means to become a
Member of IStructE you will still need to take the 7-hour Chartered Member exam. There is no
escaping that one sorry!

Key differences between ICE and IStructE

Materials
IStructE explicitly lays out an Ability level competence for materials. They recognise that nearly
all candidates will specialise in one or two of steel/concrete/timber/masonry, but it is still require
a more-than-basic proficiency in the rest.

Competence in materials is not specified by ICE in the same way as IStructE. There is an
implication though a couple of its Attributes that you should be good at using materials, but it is
perfectly possible and reasonable to become a Chartered Civil Engineer having only ever worked
with one or two materials. Here is the wording from the relevant sub-Attributes.

1C Maintain and extend a sound theoretical approach in enabling the introduction and
exploitation of new and advancing technology.
2A. Identify, review and select techniques, procedures and methods to undertake engineering
tasks.

2B. Contribute to the design and development of engineering solutions.

2C. Implement or construct design solutions and contribute to their evaluation.

2D. Conduct appropriate research, relative to design or construction and appreciate its relevance
within own area of responsibility.

2E. Undertake the design and development of engineering solutions and evaluate their
effectiveness.

2F. Implement or construct design solutions and evaluate their effectiveness.

As an example, a plausible scenario for having only ever worked with one material is someone
working in the offshore industry spending his/her entire career to date building steel structures.
The ICE will implicitly expect you to compensate for this by being extremely knowledgeable
about your specialist materials, with evidence shown in your portfolio or your CPD records.

Commercial
The greatest discrepancies between ICE and IStructE lie in the commercial/management type
competences.

Until ICE changed their old-style Development Objectives to the newer Attributes, it was
possible to be only Experience level at some of the Commercial competences, namely:

Developing people to meet changing technical and managerial needs

Comply with relevant codes of conduct
Manage your own continuing professional development and assist others

Under the Attributes scheme, the ICE now requires Abilities across all skill areas. It is
anticipated that your career-to-date may not make you an expert in certain sub-attributes (for
example, law or contractual management), so it will be up to your reviewers to decide their
relative importance in your field of work. Rest assured though if you are allowed to sit the
review, the chances are the ICE probably thinks you are good enough already.

IStructE requires mostly Knowledge and Experience, with only an Appreciation of law and
commercial/financial constraints. This is far below what ICE requires, and if you went into an
ICE review with a full set of Experience level of commercial competences, you would be
unlikely to pass the ICE review.

Conclusion
Broadly speaking, if your career to date has had a prolonged period (at least 2-3 years) of
performing conceptual design, hand calculations, computer models, design code checking and
construction, then you will probably find CEng registration via the IStructE relatively
straightforward.

However, if you have been in a mostly managerial role or if you have not been doing
calculations day-in day-out, then you are likely to fare better with the ICE.

There are of course exceptions to these generalisations, but given the focus of the competence
requirements of each institution, it is not an unfair remark!

StructE Core Objective 2.1 Conceptual

Design
The next two core objectives are two of the most important, so you really want to focus your
effort here. You are now going to be getting into some specifics about the projects you have
worked on, so the examples given may be less relevant to you. You want to think about the work
that you have done throughout your career so far, and select some that you think best
demonstrate how meet the objectives.

For this objective you also need to get creative in your description, to really drive home to the
panel how youve met the requirements. Your portfolio alone will not do all the work, so you
need to make sure your final report form is as descriptive as possible.

Scheme Design
If you have developed a scheme design on a project, then you can describe how you took the
initial information you were given, from the client or the architect, and developed it into a viable
structural scheme. Perhaps you had to change certain things about it, like introduce additional
columns or stability systems. Perhaps there was a particular challenge in the scheme that you
needed to achieve, such as a large cantilever, or how to cope with poor ground conditions, and
you were able to develop a structural solution to the problem.

If you have ever produced some scheme design sketches, either hand drawn or marking up an
architects drawings, then you have undertaken conceptual design. You needed to resolve the
stability system, determine the appropriate foundation solution, approximate beam depths so that
the architect could work out how much headroom they have left. You can describe this process,
and how it led to a viable scheme going through to detailed design and eventually construction.

Materials
Another element of conceptual design is choosing the most appropriate materials for the job.
You might have developed two alternative schemes for a project, one in steel and one in
concrete, then discussed the pros and cons with the design team.
What to put in your portfolio:
Scheme sketches that you have produced on the projects you are discussing. Any drawings or
images that show the progression of the scheme from concept through to detailed design these
might not be your drawings so be sure to clearly state that if this applies.

IStructE Core Objective 2.2 Analysis and

Design
This objective is for you to prove that you can carry out and solve detailed, complex engineering
problems using mathematical engineering principles, in accordance with the relevant design
codes.

During the exam your ability to carry out engineering calculations will be tested, but because the
time is limited, theres a limit to how complicated those calculations can be. This is your chance
to demonstrate your ability to carry out a full and detailed analysis of a project.

Structural Calculations

You want to demonstrate as broad a range of different structural strategies and calculation
approaches as possible. Some of the different sorts of calculations that you might have
undertaken include:

Hand calculations; designing an element with pen, paper and calculator

Spreadsheet calculations you have written
Computer analysis package where loads are applied to determine stresses, deflections etc.
Computer calculation package where the element is designed according to standards. (this
is of less relevance, although it does demonstrate your ability to use the software).

There are many different types of calculation that structural engineers carry out, and you want to
show a selection of these that you consider to be your best which show the best use of
engineering judgement, application of the design codes, etc.
You may have one or two projects that you have worked on where you did a huge amount of
design work, and you can talk through the project in some detail, describing the different types of
calculations you carried out. Other projects you may refer to just to reference a specific
calculation.
Some calculations you have carried out may include:

Determining applied loads

o Load takedowns
o Application of design codes to determine imposed loads
 o Determining load combinations for different load cases, e.g. ultimate limit state,
serviceability limit state
Design of a structural element such as beam, column, wall, etc.
Continuous beam design

IStructE Core Objective 2.3 Materials

Where the previous objective (2.2 Analysis and Design) is focused more on the theoretical side
of engineering design, this objective is concerned with the practical aspects. Structural
engineering is a practical career, and the bending moment diagram can only get you so far. This
objective is asking you to demonstrate; why did you choose steel for this structure rather than
concrete, given that both materials can resist the forces applied.

The four main materials in the structural engineers arsenal are steel, concrete, masonry and
timber, and the examiner will ideally see evidence of your working with all four materials.
However they state that whilst you need to demonstrate ABILITY in at least two of the
materials, for the others you can get away with KNOWLEDGE of the properties and the
practical considerations involved in working with them.

A good way to demonstrate your ability in a material is to have worked on the design of a project
in that material through all the stages of design, from scheme design through to detailed design
and specification. At the scheme design stage, ideally you will have done a comparison study,
considering two different options for a project, that may have involved different combinations of
materials. You can then talk about the pros and cons of each option, and explain why the
preferred material was chosen. At the detailed design stage you then get a chance to demonstrate
that you understand the practical considerations of designing with that material for example
steel connection design or concrete reinforcement detailing. You also should have a chance to
write the specification for the material, as this will cover a lot of the practical aspects regarding
selecting the correct grade, corrosion and fire protection, durability etc.

It may be relevant to mention training courses that you have attended and record these in your
CPD, but these will not be enough to demonstrate your ability to work independently and
supervise others. An excellent way to demonstrate your level of knowledge is to have given an
internal presentation to your colleagues that may have covered a particular aspect of a material,
for example, The availability of different timber sizes, grades and species in the UK market or
Specifying the correct steel subgrade.

What to say in your final report:

Which materials you have the best ability in (at least two)
How you have shared this knowledge with others
Describe the scope of your experience in each material (which project stages it covers)
Give example projects and describe what impact the project had on the material selection,
and what impact the chosen material had on the project
What to put in your portfolio:

Scheme design comparison study between two materials

Details from a project showing how the material was used to its strengths

IStructE Core Objective 3.1- Management

Skills
In order to become a Chartered Engineer you are expected to have some experience of
management and leadership. The guidance states that this should come in three parts:

Project team management and leadership skills

This means that you have some leadership role within a project, and are involved in delegating
and managing the workflow of one or more junior colleagues. For smaller projects this could
mean that you perform the project engineer role, and supervise the work of more junior engineers
carrying out design on part of the overall project. On larger projects you may be responsible for a
smaller section of the design, and have another junior engineer working with you to help you on
this. Alternatively you might delegate work to CAD technicians in the drafting department, and
be responsible for managing the work that they produce. On a smaller scale, any example you
can give of when you have supported another colleague to carry out a task could count as
management and leadership skills. For example, you may work through design calculations with
a junior colleague to introduce them to a new design code or calculation spreadsheet.

Programming and project control

This is about managing workflow on a project. Whenever you plan your own time over the next
week or more, you are programming your own work. If you can give examples of programming
the work involved on a project, which may be carried out just by you or also by others, that will
be relevant to this objective. Perhaps you have produced a Gantt chart to manage future project
workflow, or you have considered all of the upcoming deadlines and prioritised different
packages of work based on what is the most urgent. If you have had a big drawing issue to get
out by a certain date and have made sure everyone works effectively to meet the deadline, that
could be an example of programming and project control.

Liaison and interface management

This involves interfacing with other members of the project design/construction team. You can
demonstrate this by showing that you have taken part in project meetings (give some examples
of different types of meetings you have attended, if you have written minutes or agenda or been
involved in some other way). Being responsible for communication with a contract on site is
another good example, dealing with site queries and variations.
What to say in your final report:

Describe how you have been responsible for managing other people in your project team
Give examples of when you have shown leadership skills
Give an example of your experience in programming and project control
List the different types of meetings you have attended and how you were involved
Describe some examples of communicating with other members of the project team, for
example the architect or contractor

What to put in your portfolio:

Drawings you have marked up with notes for others to work on (e.g. CAD technician)
A Gantt chart or other forward planning document you have produced
Minutes or agenda from a meeting you were involved in
Examples of some communication between you and other team members, such as site
visit report from you to the contractor, or dealing with site queries or variations.

IStructE Core Objective 2.4 Environment

The IStructE is referring to the environment here in the broadest sense, therefore there is a wide
variety of subjects which may be relevant to meeting this objective, so its unlikely that youll
need to do any extra work to achieve this one it is just a case of demonstrating what you
already know.

The guidance says:

Candidates should promote the message of sustainability through their words and actions.

The examiner will want to see that youre aware that every construction project has
environmental impacts, no matter how small. You then need to demonstrate knowledge of how
to respond to these impacts. There are a number of areas you could mention:

BREEAM & LEED assessment: These tools allow the environmental performance of a
building to be measured in order to get an idea of how sustainable it is. Projects are then
awarded a grade based on how well they perform. If you have worked on a project that
adopted one of these methods then you will likely have worked with a specialist
consultant to gather the information required, and will be familiar with the tabulated
documents they use to keep track of all the objectives.

Embodied carbon: Structural engineers are responsible for the superstructure and
foundation of a building, which often make up around 50% of the overall embodied
carbon emissions. You may have been involved in calculating the embodied carbon on
one of your projects, or making a comparison between two solutions based on their
carbon footprint.
 Operational carbon: This is the energy required to run the building throughout its
lifetime. Structural engineers are less directly involved in this area, but the structure can
have a big impact on the energy efficiency of a building, and you may have worked with
the M&E engineer to develop the best structural solution for their environmental strategy.

Protection of wildlife and vegetation: This is of concern to engineers working on site, and
you may have been involved in putting to together wildlife management plans for
minimizing the impact of your project on the local wildlife. You may have selected a
construction method which is less disruptive to vegetation.

Radon gas & contaminated land: The site investigation will often test soil samples to
identify contamination. The geotechnical engineer will identify pathways for the
contaminants to affect users of the site, and these pathways need to be cut off to make the
site safe for all users. This may involve specifying protection membranes or soil
remediation, or capping, or soil removal.

What to say in your final report:

Describe how you measured/reduced environmental impact on your project

State if you have worked with environmental consultants and how you interacted
Give an example of where you made a design choice for environmental reasons.

What to put in your portfolio:

Minutes from meeting with environmental engineer

Email/correspondence between you and an environmental engineer for example with
your comments on their BREEAM assessment table
Your calculations of embodied carbon for your project

StructE Core Objective 2.5 Construction

This Core Objective is about gaining practical experience on a construction site. To meet this
objective, you will need to demonstrate that you have experience working not just on paper, but
in practice contributing to the actual construction of a project.

The key to this objective is to document all of your site experience as thoroughly as possible,
clearly demonstrating what experience you gained on every site visit. To do this you should
complete a site experience record, which records how much time you have spent on site, and
describes for each project/visit/site/period of time what experience you gained, what work you
carried out and what you were responsible for. If you made lots of similar site visits on one
project, you dont have to list each one individually, just group them together and describe what
your role was, and give an indication of the estimated total time spent on site.

For site-based engineers, this objective will be simply a case of documenting the work you do
everyday. For office-based engineers, this objective can be more difficult to achieve, and may
require some time spent outside your office to gain site-based experience. The IStructE
recognises that not all engineers can spend a continuous period of time on site, and therefore
your site experience can be made up of multiple shorter periods. They say you should
accumulate about 3 months worth of site experience, but that this may be less as long as the
quality of experienced gained is good.

Experience gained during work placements, or as part of your university degree course can
contribute to meeting this objective. You might also have worked somewhere other than on a
construction site to gain this experience:

Manufacturing facility
Timber workshop
Precast concrete manufacturer
Steel fabricator
Structure laboratory
Soil laboratory
Offshore platform
Site surveying

Some of the tasks that you are most likely to have carried out as an engineer include:

Site surveying
Setting out
Site inspection such as surveying existing structures, opening up works, checking the
construction matches the design, checking steel reinforcement cages etc.
Ground investigation
Site supervision
Testing the condition of materials

There is also office based work that can be relevant to this objective, which tends to be relating
to the management of a construction site, for example programming and sequencing, site traffic
management plans, health and safety plans, working method statements, temporary works
design.

What to say in your final report:

Describe some examples that you think best demonstrate your site experience
List all the site activities you have been involved in
Describe other activities you have been involved in which are related to the running and
management of a construction site

What to put in your portfolio:

Site experience record

 Sketches or marked up drawings that you produced on site, such as survey drawings or
inspection markups
Site management plan or other documents you have produced relating to the running of
the project on site.

StructE Core Objective 3.3 Health and

Safety
All designers have responsibility under the CDM 2015 regulations, and so this is an obvious
place to start for this objective. It is advisable that you attend a CDM course to understand your
responsibilities under the health and safety legislation.

There are a number of places where you can read regular health and safety bulletins/information,
such as SCOSS reports, HSE construction bulletins and ICE/IStructE institution magazines.
Mention the sources such as these that you use to keep up to date with H&S news and
legislation.

Your firm will probably have some health and safety policies in place, and you can describe how
you follow these. This may include attending regular internal health and safety meetings. You
are also likely to have a risk register associated with each of your projects, which you might have
written yourself, or it may have been produced by a CDM coordinator (or Principal Designer) in
which case you will have read through it and made your own suggestions to be added.

There are other things which your firms health and safety policies might cover, which might
affect the way you work. Do you have a lone working policy? Do people ever visits sites alone,
or must they be accompanied by a colleague? You may also be required to write a risk
assessment before attending a site visit. Indeed under the health and safety legislation all
working activities should be covered by a risk assessment. This even includes working at your
computer, which is why you may have had to complete a checklist about the position of your
computer screens, keyboard and chair etc.

This risks to health and safety working in an office are obviously much less than those on a
construction site, but it is still relevant to this objective. The IStructE of course wants to see that
you understand there are risks in the construction industry to those who build and work in the
buildings that we design, and we need to consider what these risks are and eliminate or minimise
them where possible.

One important contribution structural engineers can make to health and safety is during site visits
and inspections. Have you ever carried out a site visit, and made a comment relating to health
and safety matters? You may have recorded this in a site visit report which you submitted to the
site manager.
What to say in your final report:

List the relevant training course youve been on

List the sources you have read which publish relevant health and safety information
Describe the health and safety policies you follow and how they affect your work
Give some examples of how your design has considered and mitigated against risk
Give some examples of when you have made a comment about health and safety on site

What to put in your final report:

Training course attendance certificates

A risk register you have produced or contributed to
Minutes of any health and safety meetings you have attended
Any reports you have written that contain health and safety comments/information