These are made in the spirit of developing a more robust process around these types of projects.
Universities are used to applying for large sums of money, often in the tens of millions of dollars. They are used to working with processes that are clearly laid out, with timelines that are clearly demarcated, and with expectations around comments and evaluations that will be returned to the university and to the researchers.
I think I can say in this case that all those things were obtained. But to say that things moved smoothly and in a timely way and that all the information that could have been provided was provided would be inaccurate. I think in terms of the timelines, there was a fairly frequent shifting of timelines and delays for reasons that were not explained clearly. Certainly in terms of the findings of the expert panel and the reviews, we did receive some fairly cursory remarks that were a summation from the experts who had reviewed the process. Normally we would see the full set of comments from the external panel or the reviewers, and those are very helpful to us. Then we see exactly where we've gone wrong, where we need to go, how we would now move on to develop a stronger proposal or to go back in the future. I think that was really key.
I mentioned the prospect of either a site visit or a panel, and that's also an important factor.