The Nimrod Review - Official Documents

The Nimrod Review
11.206 Fourth, as emphasised above, the efficacy of NSC project was fatally undermined by an assumption that the
Nimrod was safe anyway; and, therefore, the actual content of the Safety Case did not matter as much as
compliance with the rule which said one must be produced within a certain timescale.
(5) The Nimrod IPT failed to read the NSC reports carefully or otherwise check BAE
Systems’ work.
11.207 In my judgment, the Nimrod IPT failed to read the NSC reports carefully or otherwise check BAE Systems’
work.
11.208 The Nimrod IPT’s approach was no more pro-active or intelligent following eventual receipt of the six NSC
reports from BAE Systems. In Chapter 10B, I expressed my doubts in relation to whether George Baber or
Michael Eagles ever read any of the six reports at any stage, since they had been content to leave the matter
entirely in Frank Walsh’s hands. Whilst Frank Walsh must eventually have delved into the detail of the reports
and realised the extent of the work that remained to be done, in my view this was not until some considerable
time after the six finalised reports were delivered to the IPT on 21 September 2004.
Failure to read BLSC Reports carefully or at all
11.209 In my view, if at this stage, i.e. immediately upon delivery, someone at the Nimrod IPT had read or carefully
checked the BLSC Reports they would and should have picked up on the fact that there was a large hole in
BAE Systems’ NSC work, namely 43 of the 105 hazards had been left “Open”, 32 “Unclassified”, many with
only vague recommendations along the lines of “Further analytical techniques are required…”, and immediately
drawn this to the attention of George Baber and the PSWG, as well as raising it with BAE Systems.
11.210 Within the Nimrod IPT, primary responsibility for checking the NSC ‘deliverables’ lay with Frank Walsh (as Safety
Manager and primary point of contact with the BAE Systems NSC team) and Michael Eagles (as Head of Air
Vehicle with overall responsibility for the production of the NSC under the SMP). In my judgment, both must be
criticised for their failure to do so: Michael Eagles because he was ultimately charged with the responsibility for
doing so, and Frank Walsh because he had in fact allowed himself to be placed in a position whereby he was
effectively running the project on his own, and was certainly capable of reading and understanding the BLSC
Reports. There can be no excuse for not carefully reading reports which one had gone to the time, trouble and
expense of obtaining from consultants.
Why?
11.211 How and why did the situation come about whereby the Nimrod IPT failed properly to review the NSC reports? In
my view, whilst regrettable, the Nimrod IPT’s failure properly to read the NSC reports is not altogether surprising
when viewed in context. A number of factors were at play at the time. First, the IPT had to a large extent been
lulled into a sense of false security by the comforting PowerPoint presentations given by BAE Systems at the
Customer Acceptance Conference. Second, Frank Walsh had formally agreed with BAE Systems at the meeting
that the PDS task ‘could be considered closed’ and no doubt reported this back to Michael Eagles. In a very
real sense, therefore, the Nimrod IPT had already been ‘sold the pass’ and switched off as far as the NSC task
was concerned. Third, reliance was placed on QinetiQ as the IPT’s independent advisor, who had been present
at every stage of the project and participated at the Customer Acceptance Conference, and who was not only
party to the ‘consensus’ that the aims of project had been achieved, but also praised BAE Systems’ work. Fourth,
the six reports certainly would have looked impressive: they ran to many hundreds of pages, had frontispieces
with an impressive array of signatures, contained an impressive number of tables and flow charts, and being
delivered together en bloc would had a considerable ‘thud’ factor. Fifth, the Nimrod IPT was stretched. It was
tasked with providing clearances for Urgent Operational Requirements for Nimrod deployed on operations,
dealing with its additional responsibilities for Depth maintenance, dealing with the continuing extension of the
Nimrod MR2 out of service date due to delays in the MRA4 programme, as well as covering its wide portfolio
including the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and the ‘Helix’ project. Michael Eagles, in particular, was tied
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