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The unexpected has happened. You are puzzled. You frantically check your submission paperwork, diary, logbook, professional development records and critical analysis reports. Why exactly have you been referred?

There is one single most common reason for this – candidates are simply not ready and are being put forward by supervisors and counsellors haphazardly.

So what happens if you are referred? Amongst other things, the referral report will ask the candidate to approach several people for support and advice. The candidate will have to undertake additional experience in the areas of weakness, which might well be quite diverse.

But in reality the employer, supervisor or counsellor cannot simply pull the candidate out of their existing commitments on projects and slot them on another new timetable over the next six months before a resit. There is also no correlation between additional time spent on further experience and competency necessarily gained.

So what else can be done? I have coached a number of candidates resitting the APC, and this is my recipe for success:

1. Undertake a one-off audit

You will have already gained a minimum of two years practical experience and the chances are that your supervisor or counsellor has not actually undertaken a proper assessment/interrogation role. Once you have your referral report, you should find someone who can re-assess you across the full range of the competencies as a one off audit. They should identify all weaknesses, not simply the ones the assessors picked up in the limited 60 minutes available.

Remember the assessors may well ask new questions next time around. Make sure that it is a minimum of one day and not a chat over a cup of tea. The person does not have to be your supervisor or counsellor, it can be another person, perhaps a good QS in your firm, a friend, or a recent candidate?

2. Get regular support

Once you have identified the weaknesses, you need someone who can spend time regularly with you, reflecting on the knowledge you have already gained and using that as a means of prompting you to develop further knowledge. Quite often candidates have vast knowledge and can apply it in their normal environment, but are unable to explain it to a third party in the correct way. This approach is different to one which is normally advocated – it assumes you already have adequate experience, but you need to make the most of it. It may be something that you have taken so much for granted over the years that it can be a problem answering the depth of it.

3. Cover all bases

Ensure you cover everything this time. Often it’s about fitting what candidates have and have not done in the normal sequence – the QS processes and procedures, applying the skills and techniques as well as considering various options and choices available to hand. For example, if you are working under a partnering environment, you still need to produce a cost plan, consider potential savings, value engineering, life cycle costing, prepare tender/contract documents, analyse the tender, undertake interim valuations, prepare final accounts – it doesn’t all happen intermittently, unplanned and on a back of a cigarette packet.

You still need to consider all the risks involved : cost, time, quality in the same way as traditional procurement – partnering in its simplest form is simply negotiated tendering as opposed to competitive tendering. All the other processes and procedures still need to take place.

Alpesh Patel is the director of APC Coach