Recommendation 18

Under the terms of the contract, General Dynamics is responsible for ensuring that Ajax vehicles are safe by design. The Department oversees and monitors this, conducting trials to ensure the vehicles are safe to use.35 The two parties disagreed on whether the levels of noise and vibration in Ajax vehicles breached contractual requirements. The Department therefore undertook testing of four of the early manufactured vehicles to understand their characteristics and the root causes of these problems. It told us it had not previously understood the characteristics of the Ajax vehicles, which had “a complex and unexpected fingerprint”.36 General Dynamics has proposed modifications to reduce noise and vibration levels and the Department has commissioned further trials to test whether these are acceptable. It needs to review and validate this test data before deciding whether it can accept General Dynamics’ proposed solutions.37