Blank page to submission-ready, five steps at a time
A Competency-Based Assessment is 22 to 34 separate written examples, each judged against a published rubric. CBA Pro turns that into one repeatable loop you run per competency, with one clear next action at every point in it.
- Steps 1 and 2 use no draft or evaluation credits
- One highlighted next action in the rail at each step
- Step back at any point; nothing you have written is lost
- 1Select best experienceContinue
- 2Answer missing detailsNo credit
- 3Generate preliminary draft1 credit
- 4Review and improve1 credit
- 5Finalize draftOn demand
What the competency workspace actually is
Most applicants stall on a CBA for a structural reason, not a skill reason: they are asked to produce dozens of short, evidence-heavy essays with no feedback loop until an assessor returns comments months later. The workspace replaces that with a five-step sequence you run once per competency: Select best experience, Answer missing details, Generate preliminary draft, Review and improve, and Finalize draft. Then you mark it complete and score it.
Each step is a real screen with a real output, not a progress bar. Step 1 ranks your own recorded work experiences against the competency in front of you. Step 2 asks the questions that competency's rubric implies. Step 3 turns your answers into a Situation, Action, Outcome draft sized to your association's character limits, with a live counter on every section. Step 4 marks that draft up. Step 5 is where you edit, recheck and finish.
The workflow is deliberately linear but never locked: you can walk back to step 2, add a detail you remembered, and come forward again without losing the draft you have so far. Every version is kept.
How one competency moves through it
- 1
1 · Select best experience (no credits)
The AI ranks the work experiences you have recorded against this competency and returns three, each rated honestly for closeness. You pick the evidence; the model only sorts it.
- 2
2 · Answer missing details (no credits)
Questions drawn from this competency's own reviewer expectations, indicators and common weaknesses: one direct question for each gap your chosen experience leaves open, in the competency's own vocabulary.
- 3
3 · Generate preliminary draft
Your answers formatted as a complete Situation, Action and Outcome, sized to your association's character limits, with a live counter on each section. Anything the model cannot confirm from what you told it comes back as a bracketed placeholder rather than a guess.
- 4
4 · Review and improve
A review of your draft: comments anchored to the exact words they refer to, each with a suggested rewrite you can apply in one click.
- 5
5 · Finalize draft
Fill the placeholders one at a time, edit freely, and recheck on demand. When the draft earns it, 'Mark competency complete' turns primary.
Why this beats writing it in a document
The first two steps use no credits
Ranking and the interview questions never use a draft or evaluation credit, so you see which of your projects fits and what the competency will ask before any draft is made. Opening a competency does take one of your plan's competency slots, for good.
One action at a time
Two things pointing at once is no guidance at all. The rail highlights one next action at each step, and a short guide note says what to do and where the control is.
The finish line is readiness-aware
Once your draft has been reviewed, 'Mark competency complete' sits in the rail, outlined, with a hint naming exactly what stands in the way: a section over the limit, a placeholder left, a comment not yet dealt with. When the draft earns it, the button turns primary.
It retires itself
The guided prompts switch off after your second completed competency, with a one-time note pointing to the setting that brings them back. It is a wizard for the first two, not permanent furniture.
What a good competency-based assessment example looks like
Assessors are not reading for prose quality. They are checking four things: that the example is a specific event rather than a job description, that your individual contribution is separable from your team's, that there is real technical depth behind the decision you describe, and that the outcome shows what changed because of what you did. An example that misses any one of them is the kind that comes back with comments.
The five-step structure exists because each of them is caught at a different point. Choosing the wrong project is a step 1 problem. Missing technical depth is a step 2 problem: the questions push on the indicators the competency lists. A thin Outcome gets flagged in step 4, where the review asks what your work changed at project level. And every step works to the same rule: an example is a specific workplace event, never a job description.
The same loop works whether you are writing your first competency-based assessment example or rewriting one that came back with assessor comments. A returned competency is usually better rebuilt from the experience than patched, so start again at step 1, with the assessor's comments in mind and a better-matched project if the old one was the problem.
Trusted by P.Eng applicants across Canada
Sadegh Behboudian
“Using CBA Pro by CertNova Software Solutions helped me get my P.Eng. approved on the first attempt without any CBA rejections. What surprised me most was that the challenge wasn't my experience, it was how to present it properly. Having the right structure and guidance made the entire process much more manageable. Definitely saved me time and avoided the usual back-and-forth revisions.”
5 months ago
M. Ibrahim
“This was a wonderful experience. Hossein and Jenny were very helpful and prompt to reply to my emails and questions. Hossein got on a call with me before enrolling just to answer my questions. The review for my CBA questions was detailed, thorough with clear direction on what needs to be done to improve, which made it very easy for me to fix my answers. They gave me a time for looking into my CBA questions. They ended up delivering earlier than promised. Finally, they are very fairly priced. Definitely recommend their service for anyone looking to get someone to assess their CBA answers.”
2 months ago
Nahal Nobahar
“I recently used this service to review and strengthen my competency submissions for my P.Eng. application, and I had a very positive experience. Reza and the team provided detailed and thoughtful feedback on my existing drafts, helping me clearly understand what was missing and what needed improvement to meet the expectations of the P.Eng. assessment process. They didn't just correct wording, they guided me on how to better structure my responses, highlight my individual contributions, and align my examples with the required competencies. What I found especially valuable was their ability to point out gaps in my explanations and suggest exactly what kind of technical details, context, and outcomes should be included. Their feedback made it much easier to refine my responses and present my experience in a clear, concise, and professional way. Overall, this service was extremely helpful for improving both the quality and clarity of my submission. I would recommend it to anyone who is working toward their P.Eng. designation and wants expert guidance to strengthen their application.”
7 months ago
Next in CBA Pro
The right project for each competency
Three candidate experiences per competency, each rated honestly for closeness. You choose the evidence; the AI only ranks it.
Learn moreQuestions anchored to the indicators
Not “tell us about a project.” Direct questions about what this competency still needs from your experience, in its own vocabulary, and you can answer while they are still being written.
Learn moreYour answers, formatted to your character limit
Situation, Action, Outcome, measured against your regulator's character limit, with everything you haven't told it left as a placeholder you fill.
Learn moreThe five-step workspace: questions applicants ask
It is a tool. You choose which of your own work experiences to use, you answer the questions about what you actually did, and you edit and sign off on the final wording. CBA Pro interviews you, formats your answers into a draft, reviews the result and grades it, but the experience and the final words are yours. We do not ghostwrite CBAs.
The measured median time to a first draft is 38 minutes, and finishing a competency takes longer. The slowest part is almost always gathering the specific facts (dates, standards, measured outcomes), which is why the placeholders exist. Later competencies tend to go faster, because answers you gave about a job are filled in for you when another competency asks about the same work.
Yes, at any time, and nothing is lost. Every preliminary draft and every editing round is kept as its own version, and any text sitting in the editor is saved before an AI action runs, so stepping back never discards what you typed.
No. The draft is a starting structure built from your answers, and the editor is yours: rewrite any sentence, or all of them. The review, the placeholder wizard, the submit-readiness grade and the self-assessment score all work on whatever text is in the editor. CBA Pro is built to start each competency from an interview about your own experience; if you already have competencies written elsewhere and want them checked, that is our CBA Review service, where a licensed P.Eng reads them.
In short
CBA Pro's competency workspace is a five-step loop run once per competency in a Canadian P.Eng Competency-Based Assessment: (1) select the best matching work experience, (2) answer interview questions drawn from the competency's own reviewer expectations and indicators, (3) turn those answers into a Situation, Action, Outcome draft sized to the association's character limits, with a live counter on each section, (4) review it, with comments anchored to the draft text and one-click suggested rewrites, and (5) finalize. Steps 1 and 2 use no draft or evaluation credits; opening a competency uses one of the plan's competency slots. The applicant supplies all experience and has the final say on all wording.
Run one full competency, free
Every step, on a real competency, with no card. Everything you write carries over the moment you upgrade.