Norbert Nawrocki
Airworthiness Engineer — Lead · Certification & Airworthiness
Warsaw, Poland
Lead Airworthiness Engineer with over a decade of experience in EASA and FAA type certification for commercial aircraft and engine programs. Leads the certification team for new programs — defining the certification basis, establishing compliance strategy, coordinating DER activities, and managing regulatory liaison with EASA and FAA. Has personally led two successful TC amendments for major aircraft modifications.
Expertise
- CS-25 and FAR Part 25 compliance
- EASA and FAA type certificate amendment
- certification basis definition and compliance strategy
- DER coordination and authority liaison
- Means of Compliance (MOC) definition
Technologies
Work History
2025-01
AI-assisted compliance matrix management — collaborated with AI team to build a tool that extracts compliance status from engineering reports and maps to the certification compliance matrix. Defined accuracy requirements and reviewed tool outputs.
Challenge: AI extraction of compliance status from engineering reports had a 7% error rate on the first pilot — mostly in reports that used non-standard terminology for compliance status ('satisfactory' vs. 'compliant' vs. 'in compliance'). Required building a normalization dictionary specific to aerospace certification vocabulary.
Learned: Compliance status extraction from engineering reports requires a domain-specific vocabulary normalization layer. Aerospace certification reports use many synonymous phrases for 'compliant' and 'not compliant' — a simple keyword match misses equivalences that an aerospace-domain dictionary handles correctly.
2024-06
Type Certificate Amendment (TCA) for a thrust uprate modification — defined the compliance basis, coordinated 23 DER assessments, and managed the EASA authority review package submission.
Challenge: The thrust uprate changed loading on 7 existing type-certificated structures that needed re-substantiation — but 3 of these structures had original substantiation reports from the 1990s with unknown methodology. Required locating original test data and re-deriving the compliance basis before re-substantiation.
Learned: Type Certificate Amendments for increased loading must trace back to original substantiation data. Original test data archiving is a long-term program obligation — 30-year-old substantiation re-use requires access to original raw data, not just the approval reports.
2023-11
EASA-FAA bilateral coordination for concurrent certification — managed the technical coordination meeting (TCM) agenda for bilateral validation under the BASA agreement. Aligned interpretation of 8 CS-E vs. FAR-33 differences.
Challenge: FAR-33 and CS-E diverged on the definition of 'critical parts' requiring life limits — FAA required more components to have life limits than EASA, increasing the LLP (Life Limited Parts) list from 12 to 18 items. Each LLP requires a separate engineering substantiation analysis.
Learned: Bilateral FAA/EASA certification planning must explicitly map CS-E vs. FAR-33 differences for every certification basis item. Don't assume bilateral validation is automatic — regulatory differences that require additional compliance substantiation must be identified and scheduled early.
2023-03
Certification basis definition for a new turbofan engine program — identified applicable EASA CS-E (Engine Certification Specifications) requirements, Special Conditions for novel design features, and established the compliance matrix with 340 individual compliance items.
Challenge: Three novel design features (ceramic matrix composite (CMC) turbine vanes, AM combustor dome, direct drive gearbox) had no existing CS-E Special Conditions. Required submitting proposed Special Conditions to EASA and negotiating the compliance framework — a 9-month process that was on the program critical path.
Learned: Novel technology features that have no regulatory precedent must be identified at program launch and Special Condition requests submitted to EASA/FAA immediately. Waiting for a design freeze before engaging with the authority adds 9-12 months to the certification schedule.