ANAC - TCCA Validation Improvement Roadmap 2022 – 2027

Issue 2, 24 October 2022

Table of Contents

• Preamble
• Introduction
• Roadmap Vision and Objective
• Roadmap Strategic Focus Areas
• Table A – ANAC - TCCA Roadmap Focus Areas

Preamble

This Validation Improvement Roadmap (Roadmap) was developed under the sponsorship of ANAC’s Superintendent of Airworthiness and TCCA’s Director Standards. This Roadmap outlines the goals and expectations of ANAC and TCCA in their intended governance of their bilateral relationship and their respective airworthiness procedures. It is also intended that this Roadmap implement the joint commitments by ANAC and TCCA to implement the CMT Collaboration Strategy described in the following section.

The first issue of this Roadmap was approved on 18 September 2018. ANAC and TCCA reviewed its implementation and updated the goals and expectations in this Issue 2 of the Roadmap approved on 24 October 2022.

Introduction

In May 2016, the Certification Management Team (CMT) comprising the Civil Aviation Authorities of Brazil (Agência Nacional de Aviação Civil - ANAC), Canada (TCCA), European Union (European Aviation Safety Agency - EASA) and, the United States of America (FAA), agreed to a Collaboration Strategy.

The CMT’s vision in the Collaboration Strategy is to exercise active confidence building initiatives among the Partners (ANAC, EASA, FAA, and TCCA) so as to enable maximum reliance on the Certificating Authority (CA) to the greatest extent practicable, allowing in the future for the reduction or elimination of technical involvement by the Validating Authority (VA) in validating aeronautical products and articles.

The Collaboration Strategy established the CMT’s strategic objectives as divided in four strategic focus areas, namely:

• Partnership Leveraging;
• Continued Confidence Building;
• Global Leadership; and
• Certification Policy Alignment.

The CMT Partners agreed to include the CMT vision and strategic objectives in their respective roadmaps and Implementation Procedures.

Roadmap Vision and Objective

The ANAC and TCCA Roadmap vision is to optimize their respective validation procedures by increasing acceptance of the Certificating Authority (CA) approvals and findings of compliance, involving minimal or no further technical review by the Validating Authority (VA), thereby maximizing reliance on the CA to the greatest extent practicable.

ANAC and TCCA recognize that while the ultimate objective under the risk-based approach to validation is to achieve full acceptance by the VA, with reduced or no further technical review or additional issuance of validation approvals, there remain challenges within their respective organizations and regulatory frameworks. Therefore, both Authorities are committed to functionally applying this approach and taking progressive steps to reduce, if not eliminate, in-depth technical involvement by the VA based on level of risk.

This Roadmap aims to accomplish this by developing and applying risk-based validation principles that enable reduction of the level of technical involvement in validation. This will result in the optimization of ANAC and TCCA certification resource expenditures while assuring each other a high degree of safety and promotion of regulatory cooperation and harmonization between Brazil and Canada.

Roadmap Strategic Focus Areas

The Roadmap will apply a risk-based approach to reduce, if not eliminate, the VA level of involvement in validation activities to the greatest extent practicable. The risk-based approach seeks to achieve validation approvals in three categories:

• 1. Acceptance of Certificates and Approvals: This category involves acceptance of an approval in the system of one Authority as constituting a valid approval in the other Authority’s system without any technical involvement or issuance of equivalent approval by the VA as the importing Authority.

  For those design approvals or products that benefit from Acceptance, a mechanism should be in place to ensure maintenance of confidence in the acceptance. This mechanism should be based on general performance of CA’s certification system and developed in coordination between ANAC and TCCA.

• 2. Streamlined Validation of Certificates and Approvals: An issuance of an approval in the system of one Authority leads to issuance by the VA of an equivalent approval without technical review.

  For those design approvals of products and articles that benefit from Streamlined Validation, a mechanism should be in place to ensure maintenance of confidence in this approach. ANAC and TCCA shall coordinate the development of this oversight mechanism and support each other when conducting verification of the agreed mechanism.

• 3. Technical Validation: The level of involvement by the VA is established based on a set of risk-based criteria mutually agreed to between the ANAC and TCCA, rather than on a comprehensive review by the VA of compliance findings already made by the CA. The validation activity involves use of a work plan that incorporates active management oversight to ensure CMT principles and procedures are applied to maximize reliance on the CA’s findings.

  Design approvals or products that are not eligible under Acceptance or Streamlined Validation must go through a Technical Validation process and utilize a work plan. For an effective implementation of this process, there should be a maintenance of confidence mechanism in place to allow the VA to minimize their level of involvement based on the degree of confidence with the CA. As with Streamlined Validation, ANAC and TCCA shall also coordinate the development of this oversight mechanism and support each other when conducting verification of the agreed mechanism.

As the Authorities continuously strive to align their certification policies and conduct the maintenance of confidence mechanisms, it is the mutual desire of ANAC and TCCA that their respective current validation procedures evolve from Technical Validation to Streamlined Validation to the greatest extent practicable, and where feasible to Acceptance.

Although this Roadmap intends to define progressive steps towards more acceptance and simplification of validation procedures, ANAC and TCCA currently don’t have technical implementation procedures in place, therefore, no validation procedures are formally applied. To make this Roadmap’s objectives feasible, ANAC and TCCA are committed to implement the initial issue of the Technical Arrangement.

Since the approval of Issue 1 of this Roadmap, ANAC and TCCA have engaged in bilateral meetings to develop the initial issue of the Technical Arrangement and are on track to have a Technical Arrangement signed by the end of Q2 2023. This Issue 2 of the Roadmap amends the timelines for the goals set at Issue 1 taking into account the progress made in developing the initial issue of the Technical Arrangement, and sets additional goals to be implemented in the next 5 years following approval of the initial issue of the Technical Arrangement.

Table A below identifies the key focus areas and associated initiatives that will be addressed in the initial issue of the proposed Technical Implementation Procedures for Airworthiness (IPA) between ANAC and TCCA as well as goals to be implemented after the initial issue of the IPA.

Table A – ANAC - TCCA Roadmap Focus Areas