Choosing the Right Project for the Paper
A candidate must select one project for the National Examination Paper. Option A is a large highway drainage scheme where the candidate produced 40 drawings under close supervision but made no design decisions. Option B is a small water-treatment upgrade where the candidate sized pumps, selected materials, and resolved a conflict between the client's flow assumptions and the site survey, but the project was only 3 months long and the candidate's manager has since left the company. Option C is a 12-month building-services project where the candidate coordinated 6 disciplines but the design was largely standardized. The candidate wants to choose A because it is the most impressive on paper and the manager is still available to confirm involvement.
1. Evaluate the three options against what the Paper is designed to test, and recommend one.
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The Paper tests the candidate's own engineering judgement, not the scale of the project. Option A offers volume but no decisions: 40 drawings under close supervision demonstrate diligence, not the ability to justify a design choice under constraint. It is the weakest fit despite its prestige. Option B is the strongest on substance: sizing pumps, selecting materials, and resolving a client-versus-survey conflict are exactly the judgement calls the Paper probes. Its weaknesses are duration and the departed manager, both of which are evidential, not substantive. Option C shows coordination but standardized design limits the depth of technical reasoning available. Recommend Option B, provided the candidate can reconstruct the decision trail from contemporaneous records (calculation sheets, meeting minutes, emails) and obtain corroboration from another person who witnessed the work, such as the client's engineer or a colleague. A short project with genuine decisions beats a long project with none, because the candidate must defend choices, not describe activity.
2. The candidate worries that a 3-month project looks thin. How should the Paper handle duration so the assessor sees depth rather than length?
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Duration is context, not the criterion. The Paper should foreground the decision points and treat the timeline as background. Structure the narrative around 3 or 4 pivotal judgements: what the constraint was, what options existed, what evidence was weighed, what was chosen, and what the consequence was. For Option B, that means explaining why the client's flow assumption was rejected, what the survey showed, how the pump sizing changed as a result, and what would have failed if the original assumption had been kept. Quantify where possible: head, flow, margin, cost delta. A 3-month project can yield 3 well-evidenced decisions, which is more than enough. The candidate should also state honestly that the project was short and explain why the decisions were nonetheless consequential, rather than padding with unrelated activity. Assessors reward a clear reasoning chain over a long list of tasks.
3. The manager has left the company and cannot be reached. What corroboration strategy should the candidate adopt, and what should the Paper say about it?
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Build a documentary spine first. Contemporaneous artefacts carry more weight than retrospective testimony: dated calculation sheets, revision histories, meeting minutes, transmittals, and client correspondence that show the candidate's name against the decisions. Then seek a secondary witness who was present, such as the client's process engineer, a commissioning technician, or a colleague who reviewed the outputs. A secondary witness who can confirm specific decisions is more useful than a senior figure who can only confirm employment. The Paper should include a short evidential note: what records exist, where they are held, and who can verify them. It should state plainly that the line manager has left and cannot be contacted, without editorializing. Do not overstate the secondary witness's role. If no corroboration exists for a particular claim, soften or omit the claim rather than assert it unverified.