To be fair to Elmer, I think he has done everything he can to ensure this BFS is the best it can be, and that has probably involved revision requests from suggestions by many members of our team, including himself, and other management members, Matt Bender, Merit and other advisors. We have had an extremely experienced crew go over our information. When I was starting out doing some management consulting for a well-known CA firm many years ago, I always liked the definition of a consultant ..."someone who borrows your watch to tell you what time it is". I think Tetra Tech got a lot of valuable comments and suggestions from us on Schaft after they had finished most sections of the draft report, which caused them to revise sections of it, which in turn effected other sections. And I'm sure Elmer argued for certain more positive positions/numbers/ideas to be included which caused some push back and further discussions among the Tetra Teck consultants. Let's face it, with the apparent manpower problems Tetra Tech has had, the experience level of the engineeers working on our BFS is probably dwarfed by the experience level of our team. I think the whole process had gone on much longer than Elmer expected. Maybe we should bill TT for the training time.

When I talked to Elmer on Friday, he expressed frustration with the process, and said that trying to get a group of engineers together on the same page is like trying to herd a bunch of cats. So I think the process is out of Elmer's control right now, and all he can do is subtley and diplomatically push as hard as he can. On the positive side, I would think any professional engineer would want this off their plate by year end, so the pressure and timelines are gone for the first day back in the new year. And with Elmer taking a much-deserved vacation after Christmas, you can bet he is doing everything he possibly can to get it done before the holidays. I noticed the sequence of events has changed from what I was told a few months ago. Now, the NR will come out before the BFS is delivered to Teck, but the NR - which I'm assuming is ready to go - won't be issued until TT tells Elmer they have officially signed off. I would think that can all be done by E-mail exchange, or delivery of Notice to our Vancouver law firm. So while I always felt there wouldn't be any news just before the holidays because market attention becomes less focused, now I think it doesn't matter, because Elmer said the most important thing is to get the Teck Tock Ticking. So ... let's hope all those cats are still around this week and anxious to clean their plates.