It Depends Aero GmbH

Aircraft and System Development

Development Plans

We support aerospace organizations in systems development in accordance with ARP-4754B, covering both the implementation of processes and the preparation of the required plans.

System Engineering Activities

Our service includes capturing and validating requirements, defining and documenting system architectures, defining functional and item Development Assurance Levels (DAL), and ensuring complete bidirectional traceability across aircraft, system, equipment and software levels.

Compliance Reviews of Plans and Processes

We prepare, review, and improve Development Plans, Verification Plans, Validation Plans, and Process Assurance Plans, and conduct compliance reviews of these processes and plans against ARP-4754B to confirm alignment with industry standards.

Training and Templates

Depending on project needs, we can implement the plans directly within the project or provide high-quality templates to accelerate preparation. This ensures a structured, transparent, and compliant development lifecycle from initial requirements through final verification.

Certification Verification Engineer

We can independently check your systems design artifacts and verification evidence as a Certification Verification Engineer (CVE) in your design organisation.

Validation and Verification

Validation and Verification Plan

We implement the Validation and Verification Plan for your project, or we support you by providing template material and by reviewing your existing plan, to check for alignment with ARP-4754B and common industry practise.

Verification Methods and Test Cases

Based on your verification strategy and your test infrastructure, we define verification methods for your requirements and derive test cases, to prepare the traceable verification of all your requirements.

Training and Templates

If you just want to refresh your knowledge or learn from our experience, we can provide a Training on Validation and Verification for you and your team.

Requirements Engineering

Requirements Management Plan

We implement the Requirements Management Plan for your project, or we support you by providing template material and by reviewing your existing plan, to check for alignment with ARP-4754B and common industry practise.

Implement Requirements Specifications

We can implement unambiguous and comprehensive requirements for your aircraft or system, based on your certification basis, your customer specification, and applicable industry standards. We know the most popular industry tools like IBM Rational DOORS, Jama Software, and Polarion.

Validate and Manage Requirements

We can contribute to the requirements validation by reviewing the requirement quality, their traceability and completeness of your requirements sets.

Training and Templates

If you just need guidance or help to get started, we can give you a training on requirements engineering and provide guiding material on formulating high quality requirements.

Interface Management

We help organizations strengthen their interface management capabilities in different ways: by training teams on methods and best practices, by independently reviewing existing processes and tools, and by setting up tailored interface management systems complete with clear guidelines and documentation and in alignment with best industry practise.

Configuration Management

Items Management

We help aerospace organizations establish control and transparency across their projects. Our support covers the definition of configuration items, setup of change management procedures, maintenance of configuration status records, and execution of independent configuration audits.

Plan and Process Reviews

Depending on your needs, we can review and improve existing processes, checking their compliance against ARP-4754B, implement a Configuration Management Plan, provide template material to implement a plan, or provide training and guidelines to strengthen your internal capabilities.

Processes and Process Assurance

Process Reviews

Our team supports you by reviewing your processes, by assessing process compliance with standards such as ARP-4754B, ARP-4761A, ED-202/203 and related guidelines, and by identifying gaps to these standards.

Independent Audits

We can perform independent audits of your deliverables and development artifacts to assess process assurance.

Process Assurance Plan

We can implement a Process Assurance Plan within your project or supply ready-to-use templates that accelerate the setup.

Plan Review

In addition, we review your plan for consistency with ARP-4754B and alignment to industry best practices, ensuring that projects not only meet regulatory expectations but also achieve efficiency and clarity in execution.

Failure Mode and Effect Analysis

Our Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) services help aerospace organizations systematically identify potential failure modes, evaluate their impact, and prioritize risks based on severity, occurrence, and detection. We support teams in defining clear mitigation actions, improving design robustness, and ensuring compliance with aerospace safety and security standards. Depending on your needs, we can moderate FMEA sessions to guide discussions effectively, provide training to build in-house expertise, or deliver practical reference material to standardize the process across your projects.

System Architecture

Functional Architecture

With our background in systems engineering and system safety, we define clear and independent functions, which satisfy the needs of both worlds. We establish the system functional architecture by a complete allocation of functions to sub-systems and equipment.

Logical and Physical Architectures

We support aerospace organizations in defining and optimizing the logical and physical architectures of their aircraft and systems. We apply a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) approach, using SysML to develop structural and behavioural diagrams, use cases, boundary diagrams, and context diagrams that ensure clarity and traceability.

Security Architecture

With the identification and evaluation of threat conditions and threat scenarios, we assess the security risks of your system. By adding procedural and technical security measures, we iterate the security architecture to lower the security risks to acceptable levels.

Trade Studies and System Analysis

To guide decision-making, we conduct trade studies that compare architectural alternatives and identify optimal solutions. With extensive experience in analysing electric fault effects in hybrid-electric propulsion systems, we provide insights that strengthen safety, performance, and compliance in next-generation aircraft designs.