Life extension projects are often Commercially driven, but occasionally they can also be born out of necessity.

Our team has significant experience working on asset life extension projects. This has been gained on several different aircraft platforms but the fundamental principles can be applied to any engineering project.

The key principles are to manage the risk of the project by maintaining a robust set of requirements with traceability to new compliance evidence whilst maintaining an equivalent level of safety.

• We work closely and collaboratively with our clients seeking to understand the wider implications of a life extension project.
• There are different approaches to life extension, from applying the increased life requirement across the entire project with an associated update of all compliance evidence, to the more surgical way of applying the increased life requirement only to those areas of the project having significant, often safety related, failure effects.
• In all cases we strive to use existing compliance evidence to justify continued compliance with an increased life requirement.
• Where this is not possible, we would consider the application of additional maintenance practices to show that a project can continue to meet the new requirement.
• Whatever approach is taken there is often a balance to be found between recurring and non-recurring costs.