The Part 145 Audit Checklist: What the FAA Looks For, and How to Stop Dreading It
Every repair station knows the feeling: the FSDO calls, and suddenly the whole shop is digging through filing cabinets, chasing signatures, and cross-checking tool calibration certificates against a spreadsheet nobody fully trusts. Audit prep eats most of a week at many Part 145 shops, not because the shop is out of compliance, but because the evidence of compliance is scattered across five systems and three file rooms.
Here is what inspectors typically ask to see, organized the way you should organize it. (Always verify against your own Repair Station Manual, Quality Control Manual, and current FAA guidance, since your ops specs govern.)
1. Manuals and required documents
- Repair Station Manual and Quality Control Manual, current revision, accessible to staff
- Ops specs and capability list, current and matching the work you actually perform
- Certificate displayed; anti-drug and alcohol program docs if applicable
2. Personnel and training records
- Roster of supervisory and inspection personnel, with qualifications
- Training records for every technician: initial, recurrent, and task-specific
- Signature and stamp roster matching who actually signs work
3. Tools and calibration
- Every calibrated tool with current cal date, cert number, and traceability
- A system that flags due and overdue tools before the inspector finds one
- Records for personally owned tools used on customer aircraft, if your manual allows them
4. Work order documentation
- Complete work orders: discrepancy, corrective action, parts used, who performed and who inspected
- Signatures at the right level: technician, inspection, and return to service by authorized personnel
- If you use electronic signatures: compliance with FAA AC 120-78B, including attribution and tamper protection
5. Parts and traceability
- 8130-3s, certs of conformance, and receiving records tying parts to the work orders they went on
- Shelf-life items in date; quarantine process for suspect parts
- Customer parts segregated and documented
6. Return to service records
- RTS entries with the correct statement, certificate number, and date
- The complete package: signed logbook entry plus supporting documents, retrievable per work order
Why this takes a week on paper, and 30 minutes in one system
None of the list above is hard. What is hard is that the training records live in a binder, calibration in a spreadsheet, work orders in a filing cabinet, 8130-3s in a scanner folder, and invoices in QuickBooks. The audit is really a retrieval problem.
Shops running Orion handle the same request differently: work orders, signatures, tool calibration, training records, and RTS packages are one system, so "show me the last annual on N12345" is a search, not an excavation. Every signed record carries a SHA-256 tamper hash and a full audit trail, which tends to shorten the signature conversation considerably.
If your number was measured in hours, schedule a call and we will show you the same retrieval in Orion on a real job.