Questions about the APC draft workspace

It is a counting and checking workspace for the written part of the APC. You write your case study in four sections with the parts that are not counted kept apart, and your summary of experience by competency and level. It counts words the way the published rules describe, shows the 1,500, 4,000 and 3,000 word limits and the 95 to 100 percent band, checks your project dates against the 24 month window, tallies CPD hours and diary days, and prints your draft.

No. It never writes, rewrites, suggests or completes text, and it has no AI, no phrase bank and no sample statements. The candidate guide says AI software must not be used to generate submission content, and it allows tools for spelling, grammar and word count. APC Draft is only the last of those.

It follows the rules Word is widely reported to use: a word is a run of characters between spaces or line breaks, so hyphenated words, numbers with commas, units and web addresses are one word each. Words joined by a dash with no spaces are counted as one word too, but we could not confirm this in Word. Our count may differ from Word by a few words; check the final count in Word before you upload. The official count is made in Microsoft Word.

Everything from the introduction to the end of the conclusion, including your headings and sub-headings, and any table or chart you put in the body. The project name, the date of the project, the confidentiality statement, the table of contents, the table of competencies and the appendices are not counted. The workspace keeps those in their own boxes and shows their words separately.

Only the text you write in the summary of experience column, including references and citations. The competency names and levels in the first two columns of the template are not counted. The mandatory competencies share one 1,500 word total and the technical competencies share one 4,000 word total.

No. APC Draft does not judge your competence or predict a result; the assessors decide. The workspace checks arithmetic and dates against the published limits. The assessors read your submission and judge your competence at the interview.

Only in this browser, on this device, in local storage. There is no account and no server, and nothing you type is uploaded. Export a backup file to keep a copy or to move to another device, and add a passphrase if you want the file encrypted.

Five pathways as data: Quantity surveying and construction, Building surveying, Commercial real estate, Valuation and Project management, each with its mandatory, core and optional competencies and required levels paraphrased from the December 2025 pathway guides. For any other pathway you can build a custom one from the full list of technical competencies.

APC Draft is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) or any other professional body. The body is named only to say which published rules the workspace follows. Always use the current templates from the assessment platform.

It is deleted, and nobody can recover it, because it was never stored anywhere else. Export a backup file from the workspace regularly and keep it somewhere safe.