The Nimrod Review - Official Documents

The Nimrod Review
300
HAZARD I/D ZONE DESCRIPTION SEVERITY PROBABILITY HRI RECOMMENDED
HAZARD STATUS
H73 Zone 514/614
Interacting System
Hazards – No. 7 Fuel
Tank
CATASTROPHIC UNCLASSIFIED – OPEN
11.144 Equally, there was nothing in the Fire & Explosion Report to reflect the fact that the BLSC Report concluded that
numerous fire and explosion risks (including Hazard H73) required “further analytical techniques...” before they
could be classified at all. It is clear that the marriage of these two reports was hurried and ill-considered.
No satisfactory explanation
11.145 Chris Lowe had no satisfactory explanation for these contradictions. It is clear that he drew up the Fire &
Explosion Report in isolation and without reference to Mech Systems or the Pro-Formas. Little or no thought
appears to have been given to the problems engendered by carrying out two overlapping hazard exercises. Chris
Lowe sought to argue in interview that the two reports were somehow ‘complementary’. They were not. They
were plainly contradictory and confusing. Eric Prince admitted in interview that he thought the idea was that
fire and explosion risks picked up in the zonal hazard analysis would be fed into, and drawn together by Chris
Lowe, in the Fire & Explosion Report, so that one would only have to look in one place for fire and explosion risk
on the Nimrod. This, of course, was the point: it was never done. The reason is that the various reports were put
together in a hurried, incoherent and sloppy manner.
(20) BAE Systems was in breach of contract for: (1) failing to exercise reasonable skill
and care; (2) failing to use appropriate data when sentencing risks; and (3) leaving
the NSC task incomplete.
88 11.146 In my judgment, BAE Systems was in breach of contract in relation to the NSC task which they were contracted
to fulfil by the Nimrod IPT, in three major respects. First, in failing to exercise reasonable skill and care in carrying
out the task. Second, in failing to use appropriate data when sentencing risks. Third, for leaving the NSC task
incomplete.
Failure to exercise reasonable skill and care
11.147 In my view, for the reasons set out above, BAE Systems’ planning, management and execution of the NSC fell
well below the standard that was to be expected of a DA entrusted with this sort of task and amounted to a
breach of contract. This manifested itself in the generally poor quality of the NSC work ultimately produced by
BAE Systems.
Failure to use appropriate data when sentencing risks
11.148 In my view, BAE Systems was in breach of contract for failing to assess and mitigate hazards by reference to all
the appropriate data which the Proposal contractually required it to consider, namely: (a) design configuration;
(b) test reports; (c) technical analysis reports; (d) maintenance/operating procedures and appropriate training;
and (e) service history, including incident and fault reports. 89 In particular, BAE Systems did not consider the fault
reports at all. This was a major omission: the reports would have revealed far more leak problems than the mere
incident reports. The “check list” in the Proposal was mandatory. BAE Systems admitted that it had not checked
fault data but sought to excuse its omission on the basis that ‘it was not mandatory to use all the list sources
of information if that was not necessary to mitigate a hazard down to a (recommended) “Managed” status’. I
disagree. The “check list” was not optional. The fault data would have shown that the risk of a fuel leak was
much more likely than “Improbable”. BAE Systems resorted to using inappropriate data to sentence risk, namely
the MRA4 generic data, because it was easy and time was running short.
88 PDS Task 06-3409.
89 Feasibility Study, dated November 2003, paragraph 3.2.