ATM/ANS.OR.B.015 Contracted activities

RESPONSIBILITY WHEN CONTRACTING ACTIVITIES

(a)A contract should exist between the service provider and the contracted organisation clearly defining the contracted activities and the applicable requirements, including training and competences requirements for air traffic safety electronics personnel (ATSEP) employed by the contracted organisation, where applicable.

(b)The contracted activities, performed by an organisation that is not itself certified in accordance with this Regulation to carry out such activity, should be included in the service provider’s oversight process. In this context, where the contracted activity requires the ATSEP employed by contracted organisation to undertake any aspect of this activity, the service provider should ensure that those ATSEP have received the applicable training and competences foreseen in Subpart A of Annex XIII.

(c)A service provider should ensure that the contracted organisation has the necessary authorisation, declaration or approval when required, and commands the resources and competence to undertake the task.

RESPONSIBILITY WHEN CONTRACTING ACTIVITIES

(a)When the contracted organisation is itself certified in accordance with this Regulation to carry out the contracted activities, the service providers’ compliance monitoring should at least check that the approval effectively covers the contracted activities and that it is still valid.

(b)When the service provider is not certified itself to provide the service, it should only contract or purchase services from a certified organisation when so required by this Regulation.

SAFETY — ATS PROVIDER

An air traffic services provider should ensure adequate justification of the safety of the externally provided and supplied services, having regard to their safety significance within the provision of its services.

DATA LINK COMMUNICATIONS — ATS PROVIDERS

ATS providers that rely upon other organisations for the provision of communication services for data exchanges with aircraft which are necessary for air-ground applications should ensure that those services are provided in accordance with the terms and conditions of a service level agreement, including in particular:

(a)the description of communication services in accordance with the requirements of the data link services;

(b)the description of the security policy put in place to secure data exchanges of the air-ground applications;

(c)the relevant materials to be supplied for the monitoring of the quality and performance of communication services.

SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT — SURVEILLANCE DATA

(a)When transferring surveillance data from their surveillance systems and surveillance data processing systems to other air navigation service providers, ATM/ANS providers should establish formal arrangements with them for the exchange of the data.

(b)Formal arrangements between ATM/ANS providers for the exchange or provision of surveillance data should include the following minimum content:

(1)the parties to the arrangements;

(2)the period of validity of the arrangements;

(3)the scope of the surveillance data;

(4)the sources of the surveillance data;

(5)the exchange format of the surveillance data;

(6)the service delivery point of the surveillance data;

(7)agreed service levels in terms of;

(i)surveillance data performance;

(ii)procedures in case of unserviceability;

(8)change management procedures;

(9)reporting arrangements with respect to performance and availability including unforeseen outages;

(10)management and coordination arrangements;

(11)ground-based surveillance chain safeguarding and notification arrangements.

GENERAL

(a)A service provider may contract certain activities to external organisations. ‘Contracted activities’ means those activities within the service provision conditions attached to the service provider’s certificate that are performed by other organisations either themselves certified to carry out such an activity or if not certified, working under the service provider’s oversight. The scope of the service provider's oversight covers the contracted activities performed by the external organisation that is not itself certified in accordance with this Regulation.

(b)Activities contracted to external organisations for the provision of services may include areas such as:

(1)aeronautical information services;

(2)meteorological services, etc.

(c)In the case of activities contracted, the service provider should define relevant management responsibilities within its own organisation.

(d)The ultimate responsibility for the services provided by contracted organisations should always remain with the contracting service provider.

RESPONSIBILITY WHEN CONTRACTING ACTIVITIES

(a)A contract could take the form of a written agreement, letter of agreement, service letter agreement, memorandum of understanding, etc. as appropriate for the contracted activities.

(b)A service provider’s assurance process could be included into the service provider’s management system and compliance monitoring programmes.

(c)In order to ensure that the contracted organisation is able to perform the contracted activities, the service provider may conduct a prior audit of the contracted party.

RESPONSIBILITY WHEN CONTRACTING ACTIVITIES

(a)Regardless of the approval status of the contracted organisation, the service provider is responsible for ensuring that all contracted activities are subject to compliance monitoring as required by ATM/ANS.OR.B.005(c), and in the case of air traffic services provider, also to hazard identification and risk management as required by ATS.OR.200(2).

(b)If a service provider requires a contracted organisation to conduct an activity which exceeds the privileges of the contracted organisation’s certificate, this will be considered as the contracted organisation working under the approval and oversight of the contracting service provider.

RESPONSIBILITY WHEN CONTRACTING ACTIVITIES

Table 4 below illustrates the responsibilities when contracting.

Table 4: Responsibility when contracting activities