How to structure a Situation, Action and Outcome example
Use the Situation for context in two or three sentences, the Action for what you personally did and why, and the Outcome for the result and what it shows about the competency. Spend most of your characters on the Action. Write in the first person, name the specific codes, methods, documents or people involved, and tailor each example to the one competency it is meant to prove.
Build one example in six steps
The same order works for every competency. Draft offline in the competency desk, where each box counts against your regulator's limit.
- Pick the competency first. Read the competency's description and decide what it is really asking you to show before you choose a project.
- Choose one real piece of your work. Pick a single situation where you had responsibility and can describe your own decisions, not a whole job or a whole project.
- Write the Situation short. Give the project, your role and the problem in a few sentences, leaving room for the Action.
- Write the Action as your decisions. Describe what you did, how and why: the method, the code or standard, the check, the judgement, in the first person.
- Write an Outcome that proves the point. State the result and connect it back to the competency, with a number where one is honest.
- Count, then cut. Check each box against the limit including spaces, remove blank lines and repeated context, and read it as someone who has never seen the project.
What belongs in each box
Situation
Context only: the kind of project, your role, and the problem or decision you faced. APEGA's July 2026 guide asks for a brief overview; Ontario's August 2026 guide asks for enough background to picture where you worked. Project budgets and locations rarely help unless they explain the difficulty.
Action
The heart of the example. Every guide describes it as usually the longest part. Describe the steps you took, the engineering judgement behind them, and the alternatives you considered. Name the standard, the calculation method, the software and how you checked it, the stakeholder you briefed. Point form is allowed in Alberta and on the shared system.
Outcome
What changed because of what you did: a design approved, a defect caught, a cost avoided, a schedule held. Ontario's guide suggests quantifying where you can and relating the result to the competency.
Your voice, your work
Write I, not we, even for team work: the assessor needs to know what you did. The shared system's guide warns against vague phrases like participated in or involved with. Ontario's August 2026 guide adds that examples must describe real work you personally completed, not hypothetical situations or colleagues' work.
Each competency deserves its own example. Alberta allows the same situation for several competencies but says whole examples must not be reused, and that the Action has to be specific to each competency. The desk warns when two competencies share identical Action text.
Worked example: a character budget for each box
Before writing, split the limit. The table shows the limits the desk uses for each profile and a working budget: roughly one sentence of context per 100 characters of Situation, and most of the space in the Action. Alberta's numbers are confirmed in its July 2026 guide and Ontario's on its February 2026 application form; the shared system's are unverified until you read them in your portal.
| Profile | Situation | Action | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ontario (34 competencies) | 300 | 1,650 | 300 |
| Alberta (22 competencies) | 400 | 1,800 | 400 |
| Shared system: BC and five other provinces (34 competencies) | 300 (unverified) | 1,200 (unverified) | 300 (unverified) |
A structure for an Alberta Action of 1,800 characters might be: one sentence restating your responsibility, three or four short paragraphs or points each naming a decision and the reason for it, and one sentence on how you checked your own work. That is a plan for the shape of the text; the words have to be yours.
Common mistakes
- A Situation that tells the project's whole history and leaves no room for the Action.
- An Action that lists duties from a job description. Alberta says copying a job description is not enough.
- Repeating the competency's indicators back as sentences instead of describing what you did.
- An Outcome that says the project was a success without saying what your part changed.
- Several small examples squeezed into one box. Alberta asks for one strong example per competency.
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 use bullet points?
Alberta and the shared system allow point form. Keep in mind that each bullet takes a full line of the box, and APEGA warns that bullets and blank lines can overflow the visible space before the character limit.
Should I write in the past tense?
Most applicants do, because the examples describe completed work. The guides ask for first person and specific actions; tense is your choice as long as it is consistent.
Can the same project appear in many examples?
Yes. Every guide allows it, provided each example describes the actions relevant to that competency. Alberta says whole examples must not be reused.
Sources
Last reviewed 27 September 2026 against:
- Applicant Guide: Navigating Competency-Based Assessment, Professional Engineers Ontario, August 2026. Used for: Situation, Action and Outcome descriptions, first person, real work only, quantified outcomes
- APEGA Competency-Based Assessment Guide for Professional Engineering Applicants, APEGA, V7.4, 18 July 2026. Used for: character limits, point form, one strong example per competency, no reuse of whole examples
- Competency Assessment Guide for Engineering Applicants and Trainees, Engineers and Geoscientists BC, revised April 2024. Used for: first person, avoiding vague phrases, Action as the longest part, point form
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.