The Nimrod Review - Official Documents

The Nimrod Review
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contemporaneous evidence is clear. 64 Eric Prince is recorded as complaining at the meeting on 10 March
2004 that Mech Systems “did not have the resource or time to complete the requirements in anything like
the timescales required” and said that “we were not going to do the report in that manner.” It was agreed
that these issues would have to be clarified by the Airworthiness Department or delay in mitigating hazards
would seriously affect BAE Systems’ ability to meet the payment milestones. Chris Lowe sought to suggest in
interview that only Witness K [BAE Systems] had misunderstood the nature of the task which Mech Systems
was being asked to undertake. In my view, however, this was clearly not the case.
11 March 2004: optimistic report to Nimrod System Safety Working Group
10A.115 In these circumstances, it is surprising that Chris Lowe reported to a meeting of the Nimrod System Safety
Working Group on 11 March 2004 (attended by members of the IPT) that he was confident that Phase 2 of
the NSC would be finished “on time” and “on cost”. This indicated an optimism that subsequently proved to
be misplaced.
BAE Systems archives – a shambles
10A.116 In early March 2004, Witness K [BAE Systems] suggested that, before they went any further, he should
spend two weeks sorting out and indexing the Mech Systems archives in order to save time later. This was
agreed. It was recognised that they needed to be become ‘slicker’ with regard to mitigation. There had been
a reminder, however, that the man-hours budget had been ‘set’ for the task and must be adhered to.
10A.117 It took Witness K [BAE Systems] over two weeks to sort out the Mech Systems archives. The ‘local’ archive
was in filing cupboards located at the north end of the BAE Systems Chadderton office. It comprised various
master reports and other documents. These were stored fairly neatly in box files and were described by
Witness K [BAE Systems] as “fairly well managed”, although he still had to spend 25 hours indexing them.
10A.118 The Mech Systems ‘deep’ archive was an altogether different matter. It had been moved several times and was
in a fairly shambolic state. The apparent lack of care with which it had been treated by the Design Authority is
a matter of concern. It had originally been kept in a padlocked area in the Military Repair Centre at Woodford.
It was then moved to the south end of the factory, which suffered roof problems and was flooded on one
or two occasions. In the mid-1990s, the archive was split and part was moved to Chadderton when the DA
for the Nimrod and VC10 moved from Woodford to Chadderton. This part was kept in the auditorium area
at Chadderton, a large, dusty room with ‘Dexian’ shelving. It is not clear whether the remaining part of the
archive at Woodford was re-united with it. At some stage, the archive was in storage with Iron Mountain. 65
It was finally placed in racking on the first floor above the BAE Systems Tanker Transport & Reconnaissance
Organisation (TTRO) offices.
10A.119 There had been a previous attempt to bring some order to the deep archive when it was stored at the Military
Repair Centre at Woodford. The Mech Systems boxes had been identified and labelled with yellow stickers
marked “MSM” (Mech Systems Manchester) although no sorting out or indexing had been carried out at that
stage. Witness K [BAE Systems] found 30 boxes of files labelled “MSM” in the racking. These boxes contained
miscellaneous lever-arch files and documents stretching back many years, including documents relating to
the Comet and the AEW3 project. He spent a total of 70 hours methodically going through each of these
boxes looking at each document, deciding whether it might contain potentially useful mitigation material
and drawing up an index. He was not aware of the other Systems Departments doing the same exercise.
10A.120 It should be noted that time Witness K [BAE Systems] spent on the archives was charged to the Nimrod IPT
NSC account, i.e. 25 hours on local archive index compilation and 70 hours on deep archive index compilation.
Arguably, it should not have been because the customer was entitled to expect that BAE Systems kept its DA
archives in proper order.
64 See e.g. Witness K [BAE Systems]’s notes: “We have only budgeted for document search – EP [Eric Prince] agreed.”
65 A document storage company.