The present article describes a simple element-driven strategy for the conforming refinement of simplicial finite element meshes in a distributed environment. The proposed algorithm is effective both for local adaptive refinement and for the division of all the elements within an existing mesh. We aim to provide sufficient detail to allow the practical implementation of the algorithm, which can be coded with minimal effort provided that a distributed linear algebra library is available. The proposed refinement strategy is composed of three basic components: a global splitting strategy, an elemental splitting procedure and an error estimation technique, which are combined so to guarantee obtaining a conformant refined mesh. A number of benchmark examples show the capabilities of the proposed method. Error is estimated for the incompressible fluid-flow benchmarks using a novel indicator based on the computation of the sub-scale velocity.