00:00The whole scheme, which includes, of course, the tracks, the overhead lines, the trains, the system integration,
00:07we're about a third complete against the whole scheme.
00:11The civil engineering is 60% complete.
00:15The reasons are, you know, very simply that to obviously put the track down, put the overhead line up, you need the civil engineering.
00:23And this job is a unique challenge in this country.
00:26You know, a third of this route is actually underground or in cuttings.
00:30This is a huge, considerable, maybe the biggest civil engineering project ever undertaking in this country.
00:38And the facts are, in the first two years of effort, we simply didn't make enough progress.
00:44And the reasons for that are, you know, the lack of design maturity, the lack of consenting.
00:49And in the five years of main work civils, we might have achieved two and a half to three years of planned work.
00:55Now, if you look at it closely, there is obviously the effect of the exogenous events and the lack of design maturity.
01:02I also think the original estimate was optimistic.
01:07There was what is termed optimism bias at the very, very beginning.
01:11So those collection of events mean the thing that's really in delay is the civil engineering.
01:17The stations, the system engineering, they really haven't got going, apart from at Aldo Common, where we're making good progress, actually.
01:27But the real delay here is in the 100 miles of civil engineering between Aldo Common and Curzon Street.
01:34We simply haven't made the progress that we thought we would, mostly because, not lack of effort, simply we've been blocked by not having the design, not having the permission to do it.
01:44All these things that should be done really up front before major construction commences.
01:50All these things that should be done really up front of us.
