Day 168 - 03 Oct 95 - Page 38
1 RCDs. If it carried on working and it carried on working,
2 you would make a check of the grills; you would make sure
3 that they actually reached the appropriate temperature and
4 then carry on cooking.
5
6 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What was the situation that occurred then?
7 Was it that you reset the RCD? Was that just putting down
8 the switch?
9 A. It is literally, you walk up to the (indecipherable),
10 and you would see which light was flashing and you would
11 press the reset button. After unplugging the equipment
12 downstairs, you would then plug the equipment back in piece
13 by piece. If there was a problem with a piece of
14 equipment, it would make the RCD trip out again.
15
16 Q. So you unplug the equipment on that circuit?
17 A. That is right, you would then reset -----
18
19 Q. Let me just make a note of this. Press the reset button?
20 A. You would then go back downstairs and plug in one piece
21 of equipment at a time.
22
23 Q. If it tripped again, that would ---
24 A. Indicate.
25
26 Q. -- be an indication that there was a fault in that set of
27 equipment?
28 A. That is right, and you would then take the appropriate
29 action, either removing that piece of equipment or calling
30 the appropriate service engineer.
31
32 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I think -- either you do it or I will -- you
33 want to ask about the situation, do you, when the RCD
34 system was bypassed?
35
36 MR. MORRIS: Yes. (To the witness): You have said in your
37 statement that the Managers would authorise the trip switch
38 to be removed temporarily?
39 A. That is right. You would follow the procedure I have
40 detailed and then, if it became obvious that there was no
41 problem with a piece of equipment, i.e. you plugged all the
42 equipment back in and the RCD has not tripped again, the
43 first few times it has happened we phoned the service
44 engineers anyway. Then Clayton Construction informed us
45 that after following those checks, as long as the equipment
46 worked properly, that it was the RCD, we had to make a log
47 of the RCD fault and then trip it out and then remove the
48 circuit and rely on the individual fuses on each piece of
49 equipment to work.
50
51 MR. MORRIS: So you would not have to consult with Clayton
52 Construction each time it tripped out? It was just at the
53 beginning of that process?
54 A. No, but we would consult them on a weekly basis and
55 they would want to know on a weekly basis how many times it
56 had tripped out, and when it had tripped out, and if there
57 are any times when we had to completely remove the RCD
58 cover, then we had to phone them immediately and they had
59 to come in and they would place the part that I think was,
60 effectively, a fuse inside.
