ICE CPR Written Exercise
Last night I attended an ICE event on the Written Exercise (WE) portion of the CPR. It was not a technical seminar or anything of the sort. It was one reviewer, Ian Jenkinson, giving us his opinion and guidance on the CPR in general, but focussed on the WE.
Ian Jenkinson has been an assessor for over 30 years and at some point or another has sat reviews with over 25% of all current reviewers. So his opinion on the review carries a bit of weight and shows a good spread of the opinions of most reviewers.
After the talk I felt much more at ease with completing the WE and taking the CPR on a whole. One of his key points (in the slides) was that the CPR is not an interrogation or a discussion between two adults (reviewers) and a child (us), it is a discussion between three engineers.
The slides you might find helpful, but I will summise a few of his key points here:
- The questions will be picked based on what you say in your report – through this you can essentially set your own questions.
- The reviewer will check you have some knowledge on the subject during the review, if they believe the question is unfair or they have not understood your report, they can still change the questions before you sit the WE.
- When answering the question:
- Do an essay plan (If all else fails and you have cold sweats and palpatations – people have still passed the WE based on a good essay plan
- Tell a story – this is not a technical paper
- They are looking for a good first draft (not polished ICE Journal submissions)
- Use minimal direct quotes and reference them properly – plagiarism will fail you
- Better to use your own thoughts, reasons and communicate them succinctly
- Some examples he gave had typed essays in the region of 1000-1500 words
- Well laid out but no unnecessary formating, front pages etc
- Another key point he made was not to get wound up about the essay. You won’t fail CPR based on a shocking essay, if you fail CPR it is because of the interview session.
- Alternatively, if you have a shocking interview, the WE might turn it around for you (on one attribute…maybe).
- Less than 0.5% of people fail CPR with the WE stated as the reason.
The marking rubric consists of three pairs of characteristics of the WE:
- Knowledge and relevance
- Grammar and syntax
- Clarity and presentation
Questions asked:
- What if the questions you get you cannot answer – Speak to the invigilator and they will help as best they can – he implied that there is always a way to answer the questions they set.
- What attribute do most people fail on – Independant judgement and responsibility. Ian spoke about taking responsibility and saying “I” and what the outcomes and consequences were to your actions. Secondly he said commericial awareness lets people down, but having a base knowledge of the contracts your projects were under would get you 90% of the way there.
His last point, and a slide that isn’t included in the pack was that they are not looking for the ultimate polished engineer, but an engineer who has the potential and drive to become a good engineer.
I hope this helps and sets a few minds at ease about the CPR process as a whole. It would be interesting to hear some of the guys opinions who have been through CPR last year?
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Mate, awesome article and really useful thank you. With the ground rush firmly upon us this is Music to people’s ears.
Good blog Chris. I’ll have a look through the presentation when i’m finishing off AER 5. I’ve found this ICE book has some good guidance as well: “Successful Professional Reviews for Civil Engineers. Fourth Edition” (ISBN 978-0-7277-6100-2)
The feedback that i’ve had about the WE is that it’s not worth worrying over. Like you said, it probably won’t be the reason for failure. If like me, anyone is weighing up the pro/cons of hand written vs laptop, one of the ICE webinars also states that you can submit a hand written essay plan even if you choose to do your essay plan on a computer. Useful for me because I find it better to plan on paper, but easier to write and check an essay on the laptop.
Tony, that was a point echoed by Ian Jenkinson – the essay plan should be done on paper as this mitigates any issues with laptops etc towards the end of the time allowed. Only his recommendation, not a stipulation.
Chris
Thanks for the info, interesting.
That’s all good stuff and I certainly would echo the conversation between engineers aspect but…
It remains firmly the responsibility of the candidate to demonstrate possession of the necessary attributes on the day so a good chat that skirts around attributes will be unlikely to lead to success. I believe that the most common attribute failed is actually Health, Safety and Welfare with Knowledge and Understanding of Engineering, and, Technical and Practical Application of Engineering coming in close behind. It is unusual for a candidate to fail on only one attribute and, if borderline, you will likely either be judged OK on all or inadequate on several, although H, S & W is a red line fail no recovery. It is all evidence based and not on a face fits basis with failure letters containing description of why reviewers considered each attribute as either met or not met using specific examples from your review.
The decision to fail a candidate is made immediately after the review and it is most unlikely that this will change in the light of an essay, regardless of it’s quality. The essential position being that the attribute was not demonstrated at review so the candidate either does not possess it or they failed to communicate well enough (fail communication), which is something of a catch 22. The WE demonstrates communication and can result in a fail but this is unlikely (c.f. your bullet points you won’t fail for the WE and 0.5% fail for the WE). I agree that the essay is not to be feared, the criteria are exactly as you have stated, however, Ian’s comment “you won’t get failed for a shocking essay” are perhaps unfortunate in their potential interpretation. A very poor essay will not lead to a fail, one that shocks for the wrong reasons will. The bear pits are: plagiarism, failure to address the question or demonstrating that you are unsafe/ignorant/cavalier about H, S & W or technically inept.
Hope that helps.
Incidentally, I haven’t seen the slides yet and will need to wait until I’m able to access a computer system that will allow it.
Expect the “how does H&S in the Army compare with civvie street” question. I found having a copy of the ICE’s Civil Engineering Procedure useful for the written exercise. It was on CDM. Good luck!