It didn't guess. That's the point.
You sign your Competency-Based Assessment. Anything in it that turns out to be invented is your problem, not your software's — so CBA Pro is built so that it cannot invent anything in the first place.
- No invented standard, clause, metric, date, employer or outcome
- Unknown facts become bracketed placeholders you fill
- The consent step states this in plain words before you start
Situation / Action / Outcome
Writing…Situation
Action
Outcome
3 placeholders to fill
It didn't know the station name, the standard, or your measured clearance — so it didn't guess. That's the point.
A rule, not a disclaimer
Every AI writing tool has a paragraph somewhere about verifying the output. That paragraph is doing nothing. If the model produces a fluent, specific, plausible sentence containing a number it made up, the odds that a tired applicant catches it at 11pm are not good.
CBA Pro takes the opposite approach: make the gap visible instead of filling it. The core prompt rules bar the model from supplying any fact it was not given. Where a fact is missing, the output contains a bracket — [applicable standard], [measured outcome], [start date] — which is impossible to miss, impossible to submit by accident, and gets its own guided wizard so filling it is a two-second job.
This is also stated to you before you write anything. The onboarding consent step lists what the AI will not do — invent projects, inflate a role, add outcomes, claim standards — as a step you have to read, not a checkbox buried in terms.
Where the rule shows up
- 1
In the CV import
The parser leaves blanks blank, never merges two employers into one record, and never upgrades 'Intern' to 'Engineer'.
- 2
In the draft
Every fact not supplied by you comes back bracketed. The draft is complete in structure and honest about content.
- 3
In the reviewer pass
Suggested rewrites carry their own brackets — accept a rewrite and any new gap it introduces is added to your placeholder wizard automatically.
- 4
In the scoring
The self-assessment score never inflates a rating to reach your regulator's minimum. It reports the shortfall and names the missing evidence instead.
Why this matters more here than almost anywhere else
You are the signatory
A CBA is a declaration to a regulator about your own professional history. There is no version of 'the AI wrote it' that helps you if a detail does not hold up.
Assessors probe specifics
The details a model would invent — standards, tolerances, measured results — are exactly the details an assessor is most likely to ask you about.
It keeps the work yours
Your CBA has to reflect your own engineering work. A tool that fills gaps for you is quietly writing someone else's application under your name.
It makes the tool trustworthy at speed
Because you can trust that nothing was invented, you can move fast through the parts that were built from your own answers — and slow down only where the brackets are.
Is it ethical to use AI on a Competency-Based Assessment?
Yes, with a clear line. Regulators require that your CBA reflects your own engineering experience and your own judgment. Nothing in that prohibits using software to organise, structure, review or check your writing — applicants have always used templates, mentors, colleagues and editors for exactly this.
The line is authorship of the substance. Choosing which project demonstrates a competency is yours. Stating what you personally decided is yours. Supplying the standard you worked to and the outcome you measured is yours. Structuring those facts into a Situation–Action–Outcome inside a character limit, and flagging where the argument is thin, is work software can legitimately do.
CBA Pro is designed so that line is enforced by the tool rather than by your willpower at midnight. It cannot supply substance it was not given, so the substance is necessarily yours. That is also the honest answer to give if a regulator ever asks how the submission was prepared.
Trusted by engineers 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.”
3 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.”
1 week 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.”
4 months ago
Next in CBA Pro
A draft inside the character limit
Situation, Action, Outcome — measured against your regulator's character limit, with everything the AI could not know left as a placeholder you fill.
Learn moreA reviewer marks up your draft
Word-style comments anchored to your exact words, each with a rewrite you can accept in one click — and handed to you one job at a time.
Learn moreYour CV in, structured evidence out
Upload your résumé and every proposed record opens for your review — gaps ringed amber, nothing written to your account until you say so.
Learn moreIt never makes it up — questions applicants ask
Regulators require that the experience and the judgment in your CBA are genuinely yours. CBA Pro is built so that it cannot add substance you did not supply: it structures, questions, reviews and grades your own material. Using it is comparable to using a mentor's feedback or a structured template — what matters is that the underlying work and the facts are yours, and by design they are.
Invent a project, inflate the role you held, add an outcome you did not report, or claim a standard, code or clause you did not name. Where any of these are missing, it produces a placeholder instead.
You would have to work at it. Unfilled placeholders are surfaced in the workspace rail, walked through one at a time by the placeholder wizard, and stand in the way of a competency being marked complete — the readiness hint names them directly.
Yes. A suggested rewrite that would need a fact you have not supplied carries its own bracket, and accepting the rewrite adds that bracket to your placeholder list automatically.
In short
CBA Pro enforces a hard non-invention rule across every AI step: it will not invent a project, inflate a role, add an outcome, or claim a standard, clause, metric, date or employer. Any fact the applicant has not supplied is emitted as a bracketed placeholder for them to fill, surfaced by a guided wizard and required before a competency can be marked complete. The rule is stated to the applicant in the onboarding consent step, applies to CV parsing and suggested rewrites as well as drafting, and means the substance of the submission is necessarily the applicant's own.
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