"Four years ago the UK Ministry of Defence and BAE Systems woke up to the full extent of the cost and schedule overruns of the Royal Navy's Astute-class submarine programme. In late 2005 a team of welders at BAE Systems Submarines' Barrow-in-Furness yard completed the final butt weld on Astute: the first Astute-class nuclear attack submarine (SSN) for the Royal Navy. It marked the physical completion of Astute's structure, enabling teams in the mechanical and combat systems area to 'open up' their work areas earlier than previously planned. All this was a far cry from the disarray that the Astute programme found itself in back in early 2002. It was then, five years after the original prime contract award, that BAE Systems and the Ministry of Defence (MoD0 finally woke up to the enormity of the cost overruns and schedule delays arising from a combination of project poor management, an immature computer-aided design (CAD) tool and a haemorrhaging of skills and experience in the submarine industry."