Draft your competency examples before you open the portal
Draft everything outside the portal first: your experience history, your validators, and every example, counted against the real limit. Check the minimums, averages and validator rules, talk each validator through their competencies, and only then paste field by field. Portals lock or slow things down once validators are notified, and a draft you own is also your backup.
Seven steps from blank page to portal
Each step maps to a view on the competency desk. Nothing leaves your browser at any point.
- Choose your profile and read the limits. Pick your regulator's profile, open your portal once, and enter any live limit that differs from the profile's number in Settings.
- List your experience. Add one record per role with dates, country, supervisor and the validator who can speak for that period.
- Name your validators. Record each validator's relationship to you, licence and when they were licensed, and check the regulator's minimum number.
- Map competencies to records. Decide which record each competency's example comes from and spread the load across validators, using the coverage matrix.
- Write and count each example. Write the Situation, Action and Outcome in your own words, cutting until every box fits with no blank lines.
- Rate yourself and run the checks. Give each competency the rating your example supports, then fix every failed minimum, average or validator rule.
- Review with validators, then paste. Print each validator's packet, talk it through, and paste the final text into the portal one field at a time.
Why draft offline
Ontario's August 2026 guide says the experience information cannot be changed once your validators are notified, and encourages you to start documenting early. Alberta's July 2026 guide says every change to a competency after submission has to be revalidated and rescored, and that multiple revisions delay processing. The shared system lets you save drafts, but its box is a place to type, not a place to see all your averages at once.
Offline drafting also keeps confidential project details on your own machine until you choose to submit them. Alberta's guide notes that examiners need enough detail to judge your competence, not proprietary specifics; drafting first gives you room to find that balance.
The experience record comes first
Every regulator asks for a chronological history of your roles, and it drives both the month count and the validator rules. Ontario's Experience Records Form (February 2024) asks for the company, address, dates, whether the role is current, responsibilities and whether the work was before graduation; the shared system asks you to explain gaps and overlaps. The desk's records hold the same kind of information in its own layout.
Worked example: what the checks catch before the portal does
An Alberta applicant drafts 22 examples with one validator for 21 of them and a second for the last. Before anything is submitted, the desk reports the three-validator rule not met: 2 validators are assigned so far. It also shows communication averaging 3.33 in a shared-system draft while 2.1 sits below its own minimum, and an Ontario example validated by someone licensed after the work. Each of those would otherwise surface as a request for revision, or a decline, weeks later.
Common mistakes
- Drafting in the portal and losing text to a session timeout.
- Pasting from a word processor that adds smart quotes, tabs or invisible spaces.
- Notifying validators before the examples are final.
- Keeping no copy of what was submitted. Export a backup of the final drafts.
Draft and check your own examples
The desk holds your experience records, validators and a Situation, Action and Outcome editor for every competency, with live counts against the limit and the rating, category and validator checks, each with its rule cited. Everything stays in this browser.
Frequently asked questions
Can I paste from the desk into the portal?
Yes. The plain text export gives each field exactly as you typed it, with line breaks normalised, and a copy button per field.
Does the desk submit anything for me?
No. It has no connection to any portal. You paste the text yourself.
Can I keep drafts for two regulators?
Yes. Each profile keeps its own examples, while records and validators are shared.
Sources
Last reviewed 27 September 2026 against:
- Applicant Guide: Navigating Competency-Based Assessment, Professional Engineers Ontario, August 2026. Used for: locked experience information after validators are notified, starting early
- APEGA Competency-Based Assessment Guide for Professional Engineering Applicants, APEGA, V7.4, 18 July 2026. Used for: revalidation after changes, confidentiality of examples, revision delays
- Competency Assessment Guide for Engineering Applicants and Trainees, Engineers and Geoscientists BC, revised April 2024. Used for: saving drafts, explaining gaps and overlaps, validator selection
This guide is our own summary of the published documents, not legal advice and not a finding about your application; the regulator's assessors decide. If it disagrees with the current documents, the documents win. Competency Desk is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Professional Engineers Ontario, APEGA, Engineers and Geoscientists BC, Engineers Canada or any other engineering regulator.