RICS APC Case Study Choice in MENA
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What is this blog about?
In MENA, it is essential to select the right RICS APC Case Study for you, particularly if you are working on a Giga project and need to focus on your specific input and advice.
Working on a Giga project can make choosing your Case Study harder because it's simply too big. You need to focus on ‘scaling down’, i.e., extracting part of your specific role or advice, rather than trying to do too much at once.
Why not select part of a project or a specific sub-project, where you provided Level 3 reasoned advice relating to two or three technical competencies?
Drill Down Approach
Don't try to cover the whole project. Instead, follow the drill down approach:
The Giga-Project (The Context): NEOM / The Line (Mention this in 1-2 sentences only).
The Sub-Project (The Focus): Infrastructure Works for Phase 1.
The Work Package (The Detail): Piling and Foundations Contract.
The Case Study Issue (The Advice): ‘I provided reasoned advice on a significant variation claim caused by unforeseen ground conditions in Package 3’.
Where you work as part of a wider project team, avoid using ‘we, us and ours’. Always use the first person, ‘I, me and my’ - it is your advice and role that the assessors are interested in. What assessors need to understand is what your role was and what was your own work.
First Person Checklist
Once you have written your Case Study, work through our first person checklist below to ensure that you are not hiding behind your team:
Did you...
[ ] Replace every instance of ’We’ with ’I’?
[ ] Replace ’The team decided’ with ’I recommended to the team’?
[ ] Replace ’It was agreed’ with ’I negotiated the agreement’?
[ ] Replace ’The report was issued’ with ’I authored the report’?
[ ] Identify a specific reasoned advice moment where you were the primary person speaking to the client?
[ ] Ensure your Level 3 examples clearly state: ‘I advised the client to [Action] because of [Risk/Regulation/Data]’.
Demonstrating Level 3 Reasoned Advice
Giga projects also require surveyors to manage multiple stakeholders and the interface between them. This could create interesting key issues if you provided reasoned advice on managing the cost-reporting interface between different packages of a wider project, for example. This could demonstrate your depth of knowledge relating to the construction ecosystem in MENA.
Equally, if you have only worked on one Giga project then it may be difficult to show breadth of experience on a variety of different projects. You will need to extract examples from your single project to showcase a wide variety of technical competencies, including your advice at Level 3.
Dealing with NDAs
Many MENA projects, especially if they are PIF-funded or Government-led, may be subject to non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). You will need to find a way to overcome this in your Case Study. This is usually by amending your confidentiality statement and redacting key details. You, of course, need to include enough general detail so that the assessors can assess your competence and Level 3 reasoned advice. This can include focussing on the process of your advice, rather than the identity of your client and the project.
Is my Case Study too big? Yes, if…
· You spent more than 2 pages describing the project.
· You can't name 3 specific decisions you made (not the team).
· Your advice relies on a ‘Master Plan’ you didn't create.
Selecting the Right Case Study for You
Identify two or three potential ideas which could make a good Case Study choice. Ensure that you have not already covered your Case Study topics in your Summary of Experience.
For each, identify which technical competencies you provided advice on at Level 3.
For each, see if you can describe your project in no more than 150 words. If you can’t, then it is potentially too wide and you haven’t scaled down your focus sufficiently. Keeping it simple often works best!
Sit down with your Counsellor and discuss which Case Study provides you with the best opportunity to demonstrate your advisory capacity. You should also have a genuine interest and be passionate about your final choice.
Select your preferred option and write down an outline draft, using bullet points. Write this within the Word document Case Study template that you can download from the RICS Assessment Platform.
Over time and with support from your Counsellor, you can begin to add more detail into your basic draft - until you have a fully written first draft ready for refinement.
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N.b. Nothing in this article constitutes legal, professional or financial advice.