“AtkinsRéalis Appointed As UK’s First Approved Drone Assessor”

Atkin­sRéalis, an engi­neer­ing ser­vices com­pa­ny based in Mon­tre­al, Cana­da with offices around the world, has been appoint­ed by the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) as its first approved asses­sor of com­mer­cial drones, plac­ing the organ­i­sa­tion at the fore­front of safe­ly enabling the expan­sion of drone ser­vices through­out the UK, reports a press release.

The release explains, “Atkin­sRéalis’ tech­ni­cal experts will assess the flight­wor­thi­ness of drone designs across var­i­ous sec­tors, includ­ing car­go, med­ical deliv­er­ies, sur­vey­ing and media, eval­u­at­ing whether com­mer­cial oper­a­tors and design­ers com­ply with the CAA’s new tech­ni­cal require­ments for design, man­u­fac­tur­ing and fly­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics.”

These assess­ments are to form the basis for Atkin­sRéalis’ rec­om­men­da­tions to the CAA, who will then issue the appro­pri­ate autho­ri­sa­tion or cer­tifi­cate to suc­cess­ful appli­cants.

James Rich­mond, Atkin­sRéalis Head of Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty, com­ment­ed,  “From expe­dit­ing deliv­er­ies of live-sav­ing med­ical sup­plies to more effi­cient mon­i­tor­ing of our crit­i­cal nation­al infra­struc­ture, drones are set to deliv­er sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits across mul­ti­ple indus­tries.” 

He con­tin­ued, “This pace of change will hinge on con­struc­tive part­ner­ships between indus­try and reg­u­la­tors, ensur­ing these air­craft inte­grate safe­ly into air­space while encour­ag­ing inno­va­tion.”

James Rich­mond

As of March 2025, the CAA report­ed there were more than 470,000 active reg­is­tered drone users in the UK.

As a Recog­nised Assess­ment Enti­ty for Flight­wor­thi­ness (RAE(F)) for unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems, Atkin­sRéalis will pro­vide two crit­i­cal ser­vices:-

: Assess­ing drone flight­wor­thi­ness for com­mer­cial oper­a­tors apply­ing through the UK Spe­cif­ic Oper­a­tions Risk Assess­ment (SORA) process. 

: Eval­u­at­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers’ drone designs under Safe­ty Assur­ance and Integri­ty Lev­el (SAIL) Mark poli­cies.

Sophie O’Sullivan, Direc­tor of Future of Flight at the CAA, remarked, “UK SORA is Britain’s ver­sion of a drone risk assess­ment process that has been devel­oped inter­na­tion­al­ly with con­sen­sus from mul­ti­ple avi­a­tion author­i­ties. It rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward in how the UK approach­es drone cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

She con­tin­ued, “As we enable the safe expan­sion of the UK’s com­mer­cial drone mar­ket to sup­port eco­nom­ic growth, Recog­nised Assess­ment Enti­ties like Atkin­sRéalis will play an impor­tant role in pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal exper­tise to ensure drone oper­a­tors and design­ers are com­pli­ant.”

Project CAELUS

The appoint­ment builds on Atkin­sRéalis’ exten­sive expe­ri­ence in advanced avi­a­tion projects and devel­op­ing inno­v­a­tive solu­tions for the future of flight in the UK. This includes lead­ing the Advanced Mobil­i­ty Ecosys­tem Con­sor­tium which is pio­neer­ing eVTOLs in the UK, and CAELUS, the UK’s first drone dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work for med­ical sup­plies through­out Scot­land.

Drone oper­a­tors and design­ers can now access Atkin­sRéalis’ RAE(F) ser­vices at:-

https://www.atkinsrealis.com/site-services/raef

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.atkinsrealis.com

(Top image: CAA)

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