Easily Achieving DO and ARP Compliance

Akshay Chalana
Akshay Chalana7 min read

Category: Standards Overview


As an aero company, one of the biggest questions you face is:
“How do I achieve necessary process and product compliance so I can legally operate—without burdening and slowing down my engineering team?”

We’ve heard from partners across the industry that simply prompting a skilled team with “implement ARP-4754B Aircraft & System Guidelines” can send them on a wild goose chase. Teams can get lost documenting every little change and decision, missing the intent of “applying best effort” and only patching gaps after Proof of Concept.

1. Achieving Traceability with Minimal Effort: In-Place Metadata Tracking

From ARP4761A (Safety Guidelines) to DO-178C (Airborne SW) and DO-254 (Avionics HW), the emphasis is on maintaining traceability between:

  • System/component-level functions
  • Failure conditions
  • Mitigating requirements

While certification tools like AFuzion templates are useful, we believe this traceability should be embedded directly in your working environment—whether it's in code, CAD, or even Jira tasks.

With Saphira, your team can:

  • Track compliance metadata (requirement IDs, verification status) in context
  • Eliminate tool-switching and manual document maintenance
  • Connect everything—from shared Google Sheets to GitLab/Merge Requests

Even simple scripts (which we’ve built!) can bootstrap a traceability system. For example, a basic changelog in a Google Doc can handle early-stage Configuration Management, and evolve into a robust system later.

By integrating directly into your engineering flow, Saphira allows real-time collation of traceability artifacts from Jira and GitLab—ensuring certification doesn't come at the cost of engineering velocity.

2. Ensuring Safety with Minimal Overhead: Confident Hazard Identification and Tracking

Hazard tracking shouldn’t require complex, redundant workflows.

To efficiently comply with ARP-4754B:

  • Record and assess hazards rapidly at every system level
  • Focus on critical hazards first—get 80% of the risk reduction with 20% of the effort
  • Postpone deeper analysis until after your first working prototype

This means reverse-engineering your Safety Assessment by starting with the risks you won’t accept.

Saphira helps by:

  • Linking hazards to requirements, mitigations, and verification steps
  • Supporting proactive safety tracking during design—not just after the fact
  • Soon launching tools to systematically assess hazard impact across levels

This integrated hazard framework helps your team work smarter—not harder—when it comes to risk reduction.

3. Staying Standards-Aligned Effortlessly: Real-Time Referencing and Validation

Manually navigating thousands of pages of ARP and DO standards wastes time.

Instead, compliance becomes effortless when:

  • Engineers can reference relevant standard sections directly in their workflow
  • Real-time validation ensures they stay aligned with regulatory expectations

With Saphira’s intelligent standards search, teams can:

  • Instantly locate the right DO-178C or ARP-4754B clauses
  • Search by subsystem, requirement, or design function
  • Skip redundant document reviews and maintain momentum

This continuous verification helps engineering teams stay standards-aligned from the start—without costly compliance overhauls later.

Achieving Compliance Without Compromise

Saphira transforms certification into a seamless extension of your engineering workflow. By focusing on:

  • In-place metadata tracking
  • Hazard management
  • Real-time referencing of standards

...you can achieve DO-178C and ARP-4754B compliance without sacrificing speed or focus.

Want to see how it works for your team?

👉 Book a demo