Mr. John Barry:

What we brought to this exercise was knowledge of what exactly we wanted to get out of this process. In terms of customer billing, work and asset management and all of the financial issues involved - the systems with which we are familiar - we have a key requirement and a programme such as this should define the scope very clearly and distinctly. One of the major drivers of cost overruns is scope creep. We would have started out to find exactly what we wanted, based on our experience and the PID document which was given to the bidders. It gave a very clear indication of scope to each of the bidders. When we engaged in these contracts, they would have been clearly aware of what we required and the timeline as to when we expected them to deliver.