Just caught up with the financials and the discussions here.

My interpretation of the technical issues with the new equipment is as follows. Here's the respective paragraph from the MD&A again with some highlighting by me:

Beyond purely technical issues, the UCONN team had to deal with significant issues related to a new piece of equipment installed in late 2014 that was malfunctioning. This delayed the team’s progress in the last 3 months. The issue was resolved in the last week of March 2015 with the root cause identified as an inappropriate installation by a third party. Appropriate repairs to this equipment have been made. The team is confident to complete the three milestones over the course of the next quarter.

I do agree with the interpretation that the new device was/is not needed for the milestones. However, it had to do with the performance of the team. Since the new device did not work properly, it required a lot of time and effort by the team to analyse the error ("the team had to deal with"). This time and effort spent on error analysis could not be spent on the milestones. Consequently the milestones had to be delayed, even though the equipment itself did not have to do with them ("delayed the team's progress").

Error analysis can be very, very time-consuming. At first you typically spot inappropriate results, but you do not necessarily have any idea why. You are suspecting this, you are suspecting that, you run tests to verify or rule out one assumption after the other, you refine your tests to included aspects you didn't think of in the first instance, etc. etc. This can take a lot of time.

Once you have identified the root cause, the fix is usually easy (though not always). It seems to me the fix was easy here. Now the team is able to direct its attention to the milestones undivertedly and it is confident to complete the three milestones over the course of the next quarter.