CERTON
Solutions for Safety Critical Systems, Software, and Hardware

The aerospace industry is in constant need of safety-critical engineering services to get avionics approved by certification authorities, such as the FAA, EASA, ANAC, and Transport Canada, for safety of flight. Development of these systems, software, and electronic hardware can be a complex and multidisciplinary activity that demands rigorous development and testing prior to use on an aircraft. CERTON Engineering has spent the past nine years improving the art and science of how the safest possible systems get to market in the least amount of time, working closely with equipment manufacturers to ensure successful TSO and/or Type Certification for any Design Assurance Level.

Headquartered in Melbourne, FL, CERTON was founded in 2006 and has developed tools and technology to drive down cost and eliminate errors in safetycritical embedded software and complex electronic hardware for the Aerospace industry. “We provide expert ARP- 4754, DO-178, and DO-254 engineering services under a business model that promotes efficiency and accountability,” says Timothy Stockton, President and CEO of CERTON. CERTON promotes direct involvement between systems, software, and hardware teams, including the Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) teams. This interaction happening early and often in the product development lifecycle ensures the customer requirements are complete, concise, traceable, and testable to streamline certification approval. This is key to success.

CERTON developed CertSAFE™; a model based development and verification (MBDV) tool designed specifically to bridge the huge gap between systems and embedded software engineers by supporting collaborative requirements capture in text and model form with real-time simulation and visibility for immediate validation of intended functions and detailed design. These prototype models are fully interactive and allow engineers to navigate and understand complex systems, make changes, and see the impacts in real-time to ensure clear and testable requirements prior to formal verification testing.

CertSAFE™ is complemented by CertBENCH™; a complete testing environment solution for systems, software level, and/or hardware level verification. The CertBENCH™ RIG integrates with CertSAFE™ to verify safety-critical software or hardware using the Test Cases & Procedures generated directly from the simulations used for validation to close the loop on safe product delivery.

We provide expert ARP-4754, DO-178, and DO-254 engineering services under a business model that promotes efficiency and accountability

In parallel with their continued success, the company has launched the CERTON International Innovation Center (CIIC) at Florida Institute of Technology. The new program allows students to work on CERTON internal research and development projects and real world safety-critical projects to see how the fundamentals of computer science and electrical engineering apply to the aerospace, medical device, and rail transportation industries.

In the days to come, CERTON plans to take their tools and intellectual property that have been used successfully for the last nine years and leverage them as a competitive advantage. This will include licensing these tools to customers for increased high margin revenues, along with maintenance, support, and engineering services to complement it for massive growth and expansion. The company also intends to work with educational institutions at several levels to create course curriculums focused on safety-critical engineering applications that incorporate the company’s tools. “Our programs will make graduating engineers more valuable to themselves and to the companies who will employ them, ultimately creating a better future for our safety-critical world,” concludes Stockton.