Mr. Fred Barry:

I agree. It was in the board's interest to conclude the negotiations and get a price agreed. It was probably in the interests of the contractor to run the clock down a bit. I was not there but if I look at it from the outside, that is how it looks to me.

I noticed from the reports that there were great difficulties in reaching agreement on unit prices with the contractor. Most of the pricing issues ended up going to the independent expert for adjudication. Normally, in these situations parties get most things agreed through negotiation and only a minority of issues would go to the independent expert because they could not be agreed. For virtually all the pricing issues to go to the independent expert suggests that both parties to the negotiation were not in the same space.