This directive establishes the procedures for audit follow-up action to ensure that a company has implemented its approved Corrective Action Plan (CAP).

Managers who have been assigned responsibility for audit follow-up must establish a formal system to track and verify the progress of a company's approved CAP.

1. The responsible manager will review the company's CAP to determine whether the short term and long term corrective actions are correctly identified, prioritized and acceptable by ensuring that:
   1. the short term action will correct a non-conformance which does not pose an immediate threat to aviation safety but will ensure compliance is established quickly (normally within 30 days) until long term action has been completed; and

   2. the long term action identifies the cause of the non-conformance and indicates what measures will be taken (normally within 12 months) to prevent a recurrence. Since these measures will necessitate a system change, the company should develop a timetable to implement this long term action.

2. If the CAP is not acceptable, the OPI will return it to the company indicating the reasons why it is not acceptable and issue a target date for the revised CAP.

3. The Audit Corrective Action Plan Tracking Form (included as Appendix IX to Chapter One, Section Five in the Manual of Regulatory Audits) should be used to track the status of audit follow-up and CAP progress. Alternatively, a regionally developed computer program is acceptable.

4. During audit follow-up, interim surveillance may be appropriate until the company's CAP has been fully approved. Subsequently, however, post-audit surveillance will be required to verify that the company has implemented its approved CAP and returned to a state of full compliance. This will be carried out as a final surveillance visit or follow-up audit.

Specific enquiries concerning this directive may be addressed to R. Aubin at (613) 990-1091.

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