M.A.712 Quality system

1.Procedures should be held current such that they reflect best practice within the organisation. It is the responsibility of all employees to report any difficulties with the procedures via their organisation’s internal occurrence reporting mechanisms.

2.All procedures, and changes to the procedures, should be verified and validated before use where practicable.

3.The feedback part of the system should address who is required to rectify any non-compliance in each particular case and the procedure to be followed if rectification is not completed within appropriate timescales. The procedure should lead to the accountable manager specified in M.A.706.

4.The independent quality audit reports referenced in AMC M.A.712(b) should be sent to the relevant department for rectification action giving target rectification dates. Rectification dates should be discussed with such department before the quality department or nominated quality auditor confirms such dates in the report. The relevant department is required to rectify findings and inform the quality manager or the quality auditor of such rectification.

5.The accountable manager should hold regular meetings with staff to check progress on rectification except that in the large organisations such meetings may be delegated on a day to day basis to the quality manager subject to the accountable manager meeting at least twice per year with the senior staff involved to review the overall performance and receiving at least a half yearly summary report on findings of non-compliance.

1.The primary objectives of the quality system are to enable the CAMO to ensure airworthy aircraft and to remain in compliance with the Part-M and, as applicable, Part-ML requirements.

2.An essential element of the quality system is the independent audit.

3.The independent audit is an objective process of routine sample checks of all aspects of the CAMO ability to carry out continuing airworthiness management to the required standards. It includes some product sampling as this is the end result of the process.

4.The independent audit represents an objective overview of the complete continuing airworthiness management related activities. It is intended to complement the M.A.902 or ML.A.902 requirement for an airworthiness review to be satisfied that all aircraft managed by the organisation remain airworthy.

5.The independent audit should ensure that all aspects of M.A. Subpart G compliance are checked annually, including all the sub-contracted activities, and may be carried out as a complete single exercise or subdivided over the annual period in accordance with a scheduled plan. The independent audit does not require each procedure to be checked against each product line when it can be shown that the particular procedure is common to more than one product line and the procedure has been checked every year without resultant findings. Where findings have been identified, the particular procedure should be rechecked against other product lines until the findings have been rectified after which the independent audit procedure may revert back to the annual interval for the particular procedure. Provided that there are no safety related findings, the audit time periods specified in this AMC may be increased by up to 100% subject to agreement by the competent authority.

6.Where the organisation has more than one location approved the quality system should describe how these are integrated into the system and include a plan to audit each location every year.

7.A report should be raised each time an audit is carried out describing what was checked and the resulting findings against applicable requirements, procedures and products.

8.The independence of the audit should be established by always ensuring that audits are carried out by personnel not responsible for the function, procedure or products being checked.

9.An organisation should establish a quality plan acceptable to the competent authority to show when and how often the activities as required by M.A. Subpart G will be audited.

A small organisation is considered to be an organisation with up to 5 full-time staff (including all M.A.706 personnel) or equivalent proportional number when using part-time staff. The complexity of the organisation, combination of aircraft and aircraft types, the utilisation of the aircraft and the number of approved locations of the organisations should also be considered before replacing the quality system by an organisational review. Appendix XIII to this AMC should be used to manage the organisational reviews. The following activities should not be considered as subcontracting and, as a consequence, they may be performed without a quality system, although they need to be described in the continuing airworthiness management exposition and be approved by the competent authority: Subscription to a technical publisher that provides maintenance data (Aircraft Maintenance Manuals, Illustrated Parts Catalogues, Service Bulletins, etc.), which may be applicable to a wide range of aircraft. These data may include maintenance schedules recommended by different manufacturers that can be afterwards used by the continuing airworthiness management organisation in order to produce customised maintenance programmes. Contracting the use of a software tool for the management of continuing airworthiness data and records, under the following conditions (in addition to M.A.714(d) and (e)): If the tool is used by several organisations, each organisation should have access to its own data only. Introduction of data can only be performed by personnel of the continuing airworthiness management organisation. The data can be retrieved at any time.