Surveillance

Changes You Will See

While many of the changes resulting from the three integrated projects will be invisible to operators, some changes in CAA processes will be apparent.

Audit Frequency

Some operators may notice a change in the period between audits. The regulatory principles of proportionality and targeting suggest that the same level of audit and inspection should not be applied to all participants in the civil aviation system. The type, depth and frequency of audit and inspection is primarily driven by two factors.

  1. International commitments - the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) states that no certificated organisation should be visited less frequently than once per year (document 9734-AN/959 "Safety Oversight Manual" (Part A), paragraph 3.8.6)
  2. The risk profile of the operator and / or that sector of the aviation industry.

Both factors are taken into consideration when deciding what inspection and monitoring an operator should receive. The weighting given to ICAO guidance varies according to the nature of a participant's involvement in the civil aviation system. Operators that are involved only in domestic operations and which have maintained a very low risk ranking may receive audit / inspections visits less frequently than once per year. When considering a reduction in audit / inspection attention, the CAA will tend to give preference to reducing the depth of an audit over decreasing frequency. Audit / inspection frequency will vary over time, depending on an operator's ongoing risk profile, and the consequent level of confidence the CAA has in the organisation.

Audit Report Format and Content

The Director has decided that the introduction of the improved surveillance processes will permit him to reduce the range of information that has previously been provided in audit reports. The new report will provide the findings raised during the audit, the organisation's risk profile for the certificate that was audited, and a brief analysis of what was observed during the audit.

This will reduce the time taken by auditors to write the report, as both the findings and the risk profile can be automatically extracted from the data entered in the auditor's tablet computer during or immediately following the audit.

Click here to see the new audit report format.

Finding Notices

Long-time participants in the civil aviation system will remember that the CAA used to categorise surveillance findings by their origin. Non-conformance findings were used to describe a failure to comply with exposition content that was not traceable to a rule requirement, while non-compliances were those failures traceable directly to a rule requirement. Having the two categories did not help identify the cause of safety failures, and it was common for debate over how a finding should be categorised to detract from identifying and correcting the cause.

Therefore, there is now only one type of finding. A surveillance finding is defined as:

The act of identifying and concluding from objective evidence, a failure by a person or organisation to comply with a specified standard or a condition attached to an aviation document.

A finding is raised to record non-compliance with Civil Aviation legislation, a condition attached to an aviation document, or the provisions of any document forming, in whole or in part, the agreed standards or conditions on which the issue and continuance of an aviation document depends.

Use of Checklists and Tablet Computers During Audit

In order to improve the consistency of audit and inspection, and to provide input to the risk assessment system, greater use of checklists will be made when conducting surveillance. Where possible, these will be completed in electronic format directly into tablet computers to save double-handling.

The Demise of the Quality Index

The Quality Index (QI) system was introduced in 2000 as a tool to permit CAA staff conducting routine audits to establish a 'confidence level' for clients, based on observations made during audits.

For some years the QI has coexisted with two other measures of operator performance or risk - the Operator Risk Profile and the Non-Compliance Index (NCI). Improvements to the CAA risk profiling system resulting from the Risk Assessment and Intervention project will see the content of the QI and the NCI absorbed within an Operator Risk Profile. Thus, the QI will cease to exist and an operator's risk profile will replace the QI on audit reports.