Day 132 - 07 Jun 95 - Page 10
1 not, in terms of systems?
2 A. Yes.
3
4 Q. And the approach of the Company?
5 A. Yes.
6
7 Q. Yes, and they felt -----
8 A. They felt that the definition of speed and efficiency
9 was the sort of thing that McDonald's fostered which
10 I think would ----
11
12 Q. Right. Going back to page 852, their brief would not have
13 been to analyse each job, would it, and evaluate each
14 particular task to see whether that particular task or that
15 particular timing allowed for each task was competent or
16 whatever; they were looking at systems, were they not?
17 A. Yes, but you can only look at systems by looking at the
18 operation of cooking. If you are looking to see whether
19 the systems that keep a kitchen safe are working in
20 practice, you have to observe that kitchen in operation,
21 then you can move from -- what the HSE do, and during an
22 audit -- you move from the specific observation to the
23 general point. So you use the specific observation to
24 say: "In that case we need a system to control that
25 non-standard action".
26
27 Q. Yes, but they were not analysing, they were not doing a
28 comprehensive review of each McDonald's job and job
29 description and time allotted?
30 A. Indeed not. All I am saying is they would have
31 observed most of the jobs being done and, obviously, to
32 make these sorts of comments about performance standards
33 being required, they must have observed those to say these
34 standards needed making.
35
36 Q. That is exactly what I was going to say, that although the
37 entire report is about systems and hustle being a
38 particular aspect of the systems, it does choose to mention
39 852 in passing examples of where performance standards did
40 not exist. In other words, these were things that they
41 noticed in a fairly non-systematic way that were worthy of
42 comment?
43 A. I am sure they would not agree with your statement of
44 in a "non-systematic way". One does not do a
45 non-systematic audit. If that is what the HSE felt were
46 missing, they were missing that, and I would not argue with
47 that for one second. But they would have done that
48 after -----
49
50 Q. But they are examples, are they not?
51 A. I cannot say that. I did not conclude the audit.
52
53 Q. It says there -----
54 A. What I am saying -- if I may finish -- is that they
55 would have highlighted these things after a comprehensive
56 trawl through the procedures that McDonald's had written.
57 They have highlighted these things as needing attention.
58 I would have expected the list to be more or less
59 comprehensive. These men are professionals. When they do
60 an audit they do it thoroughly, believe you me.
