How to Prepare for the Tandem Submission System

If you have been submitting accreditation materials by email and PDF for years, CEAB just changed the rules. The 2026–2027 accreditation cycle is the first to require digital submission through Tandem, a new structured upload platform that replaces the old workflow. 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 CEAB reviews your materials before the visiting team arrives on campus. 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 change happening at the same time — new faculty licensure requirements that affect the evidence you collect — because both shifts land in the same cycle.

What Is Tandem?

Tandem (app.tandem.ca) is CEAB’s new online submission platform for accreditation visit materials. It replaces the previous process, where programs compiled Word documents, converted them to PDF, and emailed massive packages to the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board.

Under Tandem, you upload your self-study materials through a structured portal organized by accreditation category. The system expects your evidence in organized sections covering:

• Graduate Attribute coverage — how each course maps to each indicator, with supporting evidence.
• Curriculum structure — program structure, course sequences, credit distributions.
• Continual Improvement — the closed-loop process showing how assessment data leads to curricular changes.
• Institutional context — faculty qualifications, resources, student outcomes.

Tandem is the submission layer. It handles uploading organized materials to CEAB. It does not handle the daily evidence management that happens between submissions — collecting assessment data from faculty, tracking which indicators need fresh evidence, or maintaining the curriculum map across the six-year cycle.

That distinction matters. Tandem rewards programs that have their evidence organized before submission time. It punishes programs that try to organize six years of scattered data in six weeks.

For the technical details, Engineers Canada publishes a Tandem HEI user guide. 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.
• Six to eight weeks before the visit: scramble to find, organize, and PDF everything.
• Email a massive package to CEAB. Hope nothing was missed.
• No feedback until the visiting team arrives on campus.

With Tandem:

• Structured upload portal with organized sections aligned to accreditation categories.
• Materials submitted digitally — no more email attachments or PDF compilation.
• CEAB can review materials before the visit — earlier feedback, fewer surprises.
• More transparent process. Gaps in your submission are visible sooner.

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 expects evidence organized by Graduate Attribute indicator, 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, Tandem’s structured format will make that gap obvious.

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 Tandem Makes Visible

Before you upload anything, be aware of what the structured format reveals:

1. Missing indicators. Tandem’s categories align with CEAB’s Graduate Attribute indicators. If an indicator has no evidence, the empty section tells you immediately. In the old process, missing evidence might not surface until the visiting team asked.
2. Stale evidence. The digital format encourages programs to note when evidence was last updated. Evidence from 2019 that was carried forward into 2026 will stand out — and CEAB will notice.
3. Disconnected CI cycles. Continual Improvement requires 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. Tandem’s separate CI section makes broken loops harder to hide.

These gaps are not new. They have always existed in spreadsheet-based programs. Tandem just makes them impossible 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 upload structure, the required sections, and the file format requirements. 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

Log in to Tandem at app.tandem.ca. Navigate the interface. Test a document upload. Understanding the system before submission time saves hours of last-minute troubleshooting.

Action: Upload one sample file — a current course syllabus or an assessment report. Verify it appears correctly in the system. Note any questions about the upload 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 Tandem’s required categories. For each category, 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 Tandem category, 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 by CEAB severity:

• Critical: Missing Graduate Attribute evidence for core courses. These are the indicators the visiting team will examine in depth.
• High: Stale evidence (older than two academic years). CEAB expects current data.
• Medium: Incomplete CI loops. A decision without follow-up assessment is a common gap that can usually 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 CEAB 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. Account for the Licensure Changes

Tandem is not the only change in the 2026–2027 cycle. Engineers Canada is also implementing new faculty licensure requirements that affect the evidence you collect and how you demonstrate faculty qualifications.

The new requirements may change what constitutes acceptable evidence of faculty engagement with professional practice. If your current evidence was built around the previous standards, you may need to collect different types of documentation to satisfy the updated expectations.

Action: Review the faculty licensure changes post to understand how the new requirements interact with your Tandem preparation. Both changes land in the same cycle, 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. Account for the licensure changes. 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.

Related posts:
→ Faculty Licensure Changes: What CEAB Coordinators Need to Know — the other major change in the 2026–2027 cycle.
→ Getting Faculty to Submit Evidence on Time — the operational playbook for year-round evidence collection.