SS
Your example perfectly illustrates my point about design reviews. To be chasing design shadows so late in the day is a very bad sign and indicative of little or no understanding, or the customer (MoD) making late changes. Often both! If proper Design Reviews had been held, the first thing you do is regress a couple of months to a time when everyone agreed the design was correct, then establish what has changed. This also helps the company, as it establishes liability. Not always that simple, but you get the idea.
Squirrel41
Excellent observation about the DTI. I’d add the Home Office, as many technical differences between our kit and that of others countries are dictated by them; which in turn means you can’t buy Off the Shelf as no-one else makes it, as no-one else knows the spec. Hence the need for certain indigenous capabilities. For obvious reasons I can’t discuss details, but this is little understood in MoD and there are currently many aircraft with equipment at the wrong design standard because they have refused to pay to upgrade to new HO standards, not realising it isn’t optional. If the HO had to pay, I’m sure the mods would be approved without question. But the HO doesn’t bother about money, and MoD is simply told to cut something else to pay. Merlin Mk1 was one of them. Nimrod MR2 was another, although they then compounded the matter by deciding not to fit the kit at all, having spent tens of £M buying it! Not even unpackaged, and thrown in a skip. Lynx. Chinook. The knock-on effects are immense. Ultimately, you can’t verify repairs because the build standards of the kit, the test equipment and the Tech Pubs can’t be reconciled. Last time I looked, 66 HO mandated mods were entirely missing from the pubs suite of just one equipment on these aircraft.
It helps to understand MoD's problem here. As the senior staffs don't want to know (replace them!), the decision to comply with the HO is down to the individual aircraft PTs and what funding they have. If just one PT does comply, he must amend the (common) suite of pubs. That could render them unusable by every other aircraft as their kit isn't reflected in the pubs. This immediately raises configuration control issues, which is one of the fundamentals of airworthiness. Does he buy another Sample, Reference and Integration Rig, just because other PTs don't comply? Does he buy new Test Equipment? Do the ships have enough room to host two standards, when there should only be one? This is all cost escalation through no fault of the PT. And, as I always say, the mandated process to manage such issues has been in abeyance and unfunded for 21 years, meaning no-one has been trained in its use.