ICA Evidence Requirements – What do we mean by ‘Essential Knowledge Assignment’?
Within the MTCS Individual Competence Assessment (ICA) program, as part of the evidence requirements, we require you to provide an ‘essential knowledge’ written report which demonstrates your understanding of your role and also the importance of it.
Essential knowledge is evidence, explanations, and examples of how you get the job done safely, in a timely fashion and to the required industry standards. It is very important to include examples that are as recent as possible, they need to be within the past 12-18 months.
Why is an Essential Knowledge report needed in the ICA?
To accurately assess your application for an ICA, MTCS need an Essential Knowledge report, as this is your opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of your role and responsibilities. This should allow us to be certain that you have sufficient knowledge in your area of work, so MTCS can deem you competent.
An ICA is a remote assessment, which comes with a degree of ambiguity and so MTCS must have enough relevant supporting information to have confidence in your abilities.
Supervisor Grade ICA – Be sure to focus on examples of your safety and leadership skills, we want to see evidence of your ability to act in a supervisory role. Examples to include could relate to overcoming problems within your team and underperformance from individuals, correctly navigating relational issues with difficult client representatives, and any safety issues you have encountered such as emergency entanglement or breakdown of an ROV, for example.
How to write a report:
Essential Knowledge reports should be clear with specific and detailed information. We need to know your thought and action process. You can use a bullet point format to layout information clearly.
Describe any issues you may have come across and how you handled them, explain what went right and what went wrong, if anything, and how you handled it!
You should back your report up by include supporting documentation, i.e. fault finding/maintenance report and any other documentation relating to the task/job.
Please take time when writing your essential knowledge report as this is your opportunity to explain your understanding of the role, if it is deemed too weak, we will come back to you for more information which may prolong the process.
As English is the common language of communication in the Maritime Industry, we need all documentation to be in English. However please know we are not here to grade you on your English ability, we will try our best to work with your standard of English.
To help you, we have created an Essential Knowledge Report Template which you can download and use to organise your report.
Report writing Do’s and Don’ts:
- Do include dates and signatures
- Do use a lot of ‘I did’ or ‘I handled’ when explaining examples
- Do include supporting information, such as risk assessments, maintenance reports
- Do include anything relevant that is not project sensitive.
- Reports should be written in English
- Do make information clear and easy to read
- Explain your role in the scenarios you explain
- Do not use your CV as your Essential Knowledge Report
- Do not re-write you CV in long-hand either, keep it concise
- Do not copy and paste your job description
- Do not be vague or generic in the examples you give
Our video on How to Complete an ICA will also help and we suggest viewing this before starting your application. The video and further information can be found here: https://mtcsuk.com/certification/individual-competence-certification/
