I've been meaning to ask this question of "The More Knowlegable" for a while. Does it really take over a year and a half to produce a BFS given that those who are preparing the Report are professionals and supposedly doing this for a living? Yes, the starter pit location may have changed; yes we are including the May 31 revised R/E numbers; yes we are doing a myriad of other things which we may not be privy to .... but

The Report was originally due early last year, then last fall and then by calender year end. And then by March 31 this year. And now by mid-late summer. In March, we were told the Report was weeks behind, not just a missed deadline by a few days because of manpower issues. OK. Well we are months behind that deadline now. Which begs the question. What on earth has been going on? If the Report ends up being 8-10,000 pages, well we know there is a lot of descriptive fluff which would have been ready last fall. We know that a lot of the calculations are computer-modelled and standard format. We know a lot of verbiage has been pre-written. We know that various costs are available for any Feasibility Study - we are not a new situation. And we hope that the Report authors are experienced and knowledgable. Now throw in Jim Gray on a very regular basis (posing all the Teck questions as well as his own input) and throw in regular CUU management meetings. Don't forget, TetraTech was very "embarrassed" about dropping the ball in March and would want to get this one off their plate. Yes we want to "get it right the first time" but at what point do you draw the line and call it complete. Economic conditions/pricings/costing change regularly.

So I'm asking ... what is so different about our BFS than others that have been started, completed and published? Did we get anything for the money we spent last year?