How to Prepare for the Tandem Submission System

If you have been submitting accreditation materials by email and PDF for years, the rules have changed. Tandem, Engineers Canada’s accreditation data management system, has replaced the old Word-and-PDF workflow, and all submissions for the 2026–2027 accreditation cycle must be made through it [1]. Most coordinators are reading the user guide and wondering what it means for their daily evidence management. This post translates the technical requirements into practical next steps.

Tandem is not a cosmetic change. It is a structural one. It changes how you organize evidence, how you compile submissions, and how the visiting team receives your materials before the visit. If your evidence lives in spreadsheets and shared drives, the transition will feel like a migration. If your evidence is already organized in a connected system, it will feel like a minor upgrade.

This guide covers what Tandem is, what it changes for your workflow, and the concrete steps you should take now to prepare. It also touches on a second development — proposed changes to the faculty licensure criteria, which affect the evidence you collect — because both are in play at the same time.

What Is Tandem?

Tandem (app.tandem.ca) is Engineers Canada’s online system for accreditation visit materials, supporting document submission, review, and record-keeping [2]. It replaces the previous process, in which the Questionnaire was completed in Word; those Word versions are no longer in use [1].

Under Tandem, you enter data and submit materials through structured forms. According to the User Guide, the main building blocks are [2]:

• Faculty information — faculty members and their details, which feed the AU calculations.
• Generic course information — hours of instruction, content category and elements, and CEAB graduate attribute content, where you select a descriptor (introduced, developed, or applied) for each attribute a course addresses.
• Program-specific information — assigning courses to a program and supplying supporting material such as syllabi, assigned work and assessments, and examples of evaluated student work.
• Program dashboard and artifacts — summary views of the program’s evidence.
• The Questionnaire — the Questionnaire for the Evaluation of an Engineering Program, completed and submitted in Tandem.

Tandem is the submission layer. It is a submission and review system, not a year-round evidence management tool. The daily work that happens between submissions — collecting assessment data from faculty, tracking which indicators need fresh evidence, or maintaining the curriculum map across the accreditation cycle (up to six years) — remains yours.

That distinction matters. Tandem rewards programs that have their evidence organized before submission time. It is hard on programs that try to organize six years of scattered data in the weeks before a deadline.

For the technical details, Engineers Canada publishes a Tandem HEI user guide [3]. This post focuses on what the requirements mean for your workflow, not how to click through the interface.

What Tandem Changes for Your Workflow

To understand the impact, compare the old workflow with the new one:

Before Tandem:

• Evidence scattered across spreadsheets, shared drives, and individual faculty computers.
• In the weeks before the deadline (materials are due eight weeks before the visit [4]): scramble to find, organize, and PDF everything.
• Submit a massive package. Hope nothing was missed.

With Tandem:

• Structured forms for faculty, course, and program data.
• Materials submitted digitally — no more Word versions of the Questionnaire.
• The completed Questionnaire is shared with the visiting team before the visit [2].
• Program dashboards and artifacts summarize what you have entered, so gaps in your data are visible sooner [2].

The net effect: Tandem shifts the coordinator’s role from compiler to curator. You are no longer gathering materials at the last minute and hoping they hold together. You are maintaining an organized evidence set year-round and uploading it when the cycle arrives.

That sounds simpler. For programs with organized evidence, it is. For programs still running on spreadsheets and shared drives, it adds a layer of preparation that the old process did not require.

The Evidence Gap: What Tandem Exposes

Here is the challenge that Tandem makes unavoidable: your evidence must be organized by the categories Tandem expects, not by the categories your spreadsheet uses.

If your spreadsheet has forty tabs organized by course code, and Tandem asks for data organized by course, content category, and graduate attribute descriptor, you need to translate between two filing systems. If your Continual Improvement evidence lives in a separate document from your curriculum map, you need to consolidate. If some of your evidence is three years old and was carried forward because nobody updated it, a structured format makes that gap easier to see.

Programs that maintain organized evidence year-round spend hours preparing for Tandem submission. Programs that wait until crunch time spend weeks. The difference is not the amount of evidence — it is the organization.

Three Things a Structured Format Makes Visible

Before you submit anything, be aware of what a structured format tends to reveal:

1. Missing indicators. The criteria call for documented indicators and at least one set of assessment results for all twelve graduate attributes within six years or less [5]. When course-level graduate attribute data is entered in a structured form, an attribute with thin coverage is easier to spot.
2. Stale evidence. Evidence from 2019 that was carried forward into 2026 stands out once everything is laid out side by side, and a visiting team may notice too.
3. Disconnected CI cycles. The continual improvement criterion expects processes showing that results are validated, analyzed, and applied to the further development of the program, and that this has led to specific improvement actions [5]. Think of it as a closed loop: assessment data leads to a decision, which leads to a change, which leads to new assessment data. If your CI evidence shows a decision without a follow-up, or a change without new data, the loop is broken.

These gaps are not new. They have always existed in spreadsheet-based programs. A structured submission just makes them harder to overlook.

Six Steps to Prepare Now

You do not need to wait for your submission date to start preparing. Here are six concrete steps, ordered by priority:

1. Read the Tandem User Guide

Engineers Canada publishes a detailed HEI user guide. Read it. Familiarize yourself with the forms, the required sections, and how supporting documents are provided. Know what Tandem expects before you start organizing your evidence.

Action: Bookmark the Tandem resources page and download the user guide. Set aside one hour this week to read it cover to cover.

2. Get Access and Test the System

Tandem has a separate training environment where users can learn and experiment; data entered there cannot be transferred to the production environment, and access is requested through [email protected] [2]. Use it to navigate the interface before submission time and save hours of last-minute troubleshooting.

Action: In the training environment, enter one sample course — its hours of instruction, graduate attribute descriptors, and supporting documents such as a current syllabus. Verify it appears correctly. Note any questions about the process.

3. Audit Your Evidence Against Tandem’s Categories

Open your current evidence set — spreadsheet, shared drive, whatever you use — and cross-reference it against the sections Tandem asks you to complete. For each, ask:

• Do I have evidence for every Graduate Attribute indicator?
• Is my curriculum map current, with accurate course sequences and credit distributions?
• Does my Continual Improvement evidence show complete closed loops?
• Is my institutional context data (faculty qualifications, resources) up to date?

Action: Create a simple checklist — one row per section of the Tandem forms, columns for “Have it,” “Needs updating,” and “Missing.” This becomes your preparation tracker.

4. Identify and Prioritize Gaps

Every program has gaps. The question is which ones to fix first. Prioritize with a simple scale like this one (our suggestion, not a CEAB classification):

• Critical: Missing Graduate Attribute evidence for core courses. These are the indicators the visiting team is most likely to examine in depth.
• High: Stale evidence (for example, older than two academic years — our rule of thumb, not a CEAB requirement). Current data is more convincing.
• Medium: Incomplete CI loops. A decision without follow-up assessment is a gap that can often be addressed with one additional data collection cycle.
• Low: Institutional context updates. Faculty lists, resource descriptions, and administrative details can be refreshed closer to submission time.

Action: Mark each gap in your checklist with a priority level. Schedule work on critical and high-priority gaps within the next academic term.

5. Build a Year-Round Evidence Collection Habit

The coordinator who spends six weeks scrambling before every submission does not need a better submission system. They need a better evidence collection system.

Tandem rewards programs that collect evidence continuously. Here is how to build the habit:

• End-of-term collection: At the end of each term, request updated assessment data from every course that maps to a Graduate Attribute. One email per term, not six emails per crunch cycle.
• Termly CI check: Review your Continual Improvement loops once per term. Are decisions being followed through? Is new assessment data being collected to verify changes?
• Annual syllabus refresh: Confirm every course syllabus is current. A syllabus from 2020 that lists outdated learning outcomes will create a mismatch when the visiting team compares it to your curriculum map.

This is the hardest step. It requires faculty engagement, consistent follow-up, and a system that makes it easy for faculty to contribute. If you are currently relying on individual emails to forty faculty members, consider whether a connected platform could automate the collection and tracking. Our post on getting faculty to submit evidence on time covers the operational playbook for this challenge.

6. Watch the Licensure Proposals

Tandem is not the only change in play. Engineers Canada held a national consultation from June 22 to August 3, 2026 on proposed changes to the accreditation criteria related to faculty licensure, intended to shift away from indirect input measures toward criteria that more directly reflect the outcomes of licensed engineers’ involvement with students [6]. The proposals could affect the evidence you collect and how you demonstrate faculty qualifications.

If adopted, the changes may alter what constitutes acceptable evidence of faculty engagement with professional practice. If your current evidence was built around the existing criteria, you may need to collect different types of documentation.

Action: Review the faculty licensure changes post to understand how the proposals interact with your Tandem preparation. Both are in play at the same time, so planning them together saves redundant work.

How MapOutcomes Bridges the Gap

MapOutcomes is designed to manage the evidence that Tandem requires — but on a daily basis, not just at submission time. Here is how the platform supports your Tandem preparation:

• Connected evidence maps. Every piece of evidence is linked to the course, the indicator, and the Graduate Attribute it supports. No more translating between filing systems.
• Automatic gap detection. The platform shows you which indicators have insufficient coverage, which evidence is stale, and which CI loops are incomplete. You see the gaps Tandem will expose, before you ever log in to Tandem.
• Faculty engagement flow. Faculty submit evidence through a simple interface. You get automated progress tracking and follow-up reminders. No more chasing forty people with individual emails.
• One-click PDF export. Generate a professional compliance report aligned with CEAB categories. The report you show your committee is the same evidence set you upload to Tandem.

Think of it this way: MapOutcomes manages your evidence year-round. Tandem handles the final submission. Together, they turn a six-week crisis into a structured process.

The Bottom Line

Tandem is not a burden. It is an opportunity to professionalize your accreditation evidence management. The programs that benefit most are the ones that start preparing now, not the ones that wait for the submission deadline.

Read the user guide. Test the system. Audit your evidence. Build the habit of year-round collection. Watch the licensure proposals. Do these six steps, and Tandem submission will be the easy part.

The alternative — six weeks of scrambling, forty tabs of spreadsheets, and a PDF package assembled at 2 AM — is not going away. Tandem just makes it harder to pull off.

Start preparing now. The visiting team is further away than you think.

This post focuses on CEAB accreditation in Canada. Tandem is specific to the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board. ABET programs follow a different submission process, though many of the evidence organization principles apply.

References

1. Engineers Canada, "2026-2027 Accreditation cycle," Engineers Canada, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://engineerscanada.ca/accreditation/accreditation-resources/2026-2027-accreditation-cycle
2. Engineers Canada, "Tandem User Guide (HEI users)," Engineers Canada, Sep. 2026. [Online]. Available: https://engineerscanada.ca/sites/default/files/2026-09/0.FINAL-Tandem_User-Guide-HEI-Users-Sept_2026-ENG.pdf
3. Engineers Canada, "Tandem resources for HEIs," Engineers Canada. [Online]. Available: https://engineerscanada.ca/accreditation/accreditation-resources/tandem-resources-HEI
4. Engineers Canada, "Manual of Accreditation Procedures 2025-2026," Engineers Canada, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://engineerscanada.ca/sites/default/files/2024-09/Manual%20of%20Accreditation%20Procedures%202025-2026-EN.pdf
5. Engineers Canada, "2025 Accreditation Criteria and Procedures," Engineers Canada, Nov. 2025. [Online]. Available: https://engineerscanada.ca/sites/default/files/2025-12/2025-Accreditation_Criteria_Procedures-EN.pdf
6. Engineers Canada, "National consultation: Proposed changes to accreditation criteria related to faculty licensure requirements," Engineers Canada, Jun. 11, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://engineerscanada.ca/news-and-events/news/national-consultation-proposed-changes-to-accreditation-criteria-related-to-faculty-licensure-requirements

Related posts:
→ Faculty Licensure Changes: What CEAB Coordinators Need to Know — the other development to watch.
→ Getting Faculty to Submit Evidence on Time — the operational playbook for year-round evidence collection.