Component Based Software Engineering (CBSE) is an excellent candidate to achieve greater software understanding, reuse and reliability. In this paper, we present how this paradigm can be applied in the design of real-time systems. In particular, we describe our component architecture, the different contractual specifications to be associated with each component, the compatibility tests to be performed for guaranteeing correctness of a configuration of components and the schedulability analysis to be carried out on the system using timed-automata.