Applying Appendix 7 Fatigue risk management system

The pre-application meeting is a voluntary meeting at no cost. The purpose of this meeting is to help you understand if an FRMS is the right choice for your organisation.

We will provide information about the process and requirements involved in obtaining an FRMS.

Please ensure that your FRMS manager or the FRMS implementation team attend the meeting.

Download and complete the Application for a Fatigue Risk Management System approval, renewal and changes form. Read the guidelines on the form for assistance.

Send your completed and signed application form, together with supporting documents, using the details on the form.

The required supporting documents include

• a completed FRMS gap analysis form
• a safety case establishing how you will identify and manage all relevant fatigue risks
• FRMS Manual
• Technical assessor worksheet detailing where you achieve compliance with all applicable criteria/requirements

If submitted online, we will send you an email confirming receipt of your application and supporting documents.

We will review your application to ensure that you have answered the relevant questions and provided all the required documents.

If your application is incomplete, we will contact you.

We will also provide you with a cost estimate of your application fee.

We base our application fee on an hourly rate. We will calculate the number of hours required to assess your application and provide an estimate. We will also tell you if we need any further supporting documents.

The estimate is valid for 30 days from the date we send the estimate. To proceed with your application, you need to:

• pay the amount noted in the estimate letter
• provide any further documents.

We will not assess your application until we have received your payment and supporting documents.

We will carry out a detailed assessment of your application which happens in 2 parts.

Trial period

Once you have met the approval requirements for a trial FRMS implementation, we will issue an approval allowing you to undergo a specified trial period. The trial period lasts between 12 and 24 months.

During the trial period you will need to apply the processes set out in your FRMS.

We will monitor, review and assess your trial FRMS implementation. We will use what we learn from the trial, and information provided by you, to make a determination of a full FRMS implementation approval.

Alternatively, we will provide advice if we require you to undertake re-work.

Final assessment

The final assessment for a full FRMS implementation approval may take place as early as three months before the end of the trial period.

An operator who intends to apply for a full FRMS implementation approval will need to submit a completed application form.  You must submit to the address details which you can find in the form.

We will consider what the required assessment activities will be. We will let you know what evidence (data and reports) you need to support your application for full FRMS implementation.

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Once the assessment for full FRMS implementation approval is complete, the assessment team begins the certification process for the full approval.

The assessment team prepares a recommendation to issue, or not issue, the approval.

At this stage, we will let operators know if the recommendation varies from what is in the application. We may apply conditions to the approval.

If your application is successful, we will provide your formal approval documents.

We'll reconcile our actual hours against our estimate and let you know if there's any adjustment.

If we've spent less time on your application than initially estimated, we'll send you a refund for those hours along with your certificate.

If you need to pay an additional fee, you must pay any outstanding amount before we send your formal documents.