Thank you, Minister.
The definition phase is to prepare in all respects the build for the ships. It's not just the design; it's testing the facilities, ensuring the procedures and processes are in place. It's an international best practice: to actually control costs in shipbuilding you do not start construction until you're fully ready.
Historically, we would have run a competition, selected a supplier, and then started the process of preparing to build, and we would likely have incurred cost overruns and potentially scheduled delays. In this particular case, the shipyard itself is literally being built anew on both coasts. In the case of Halifax, it's a brand-new world class facility that's rising. In the next 18 months they will continue to finalize the design. It's a very, very detailed construction design. We will actually build test modules in the facility, so there'll be a couple of components of the first ship that will be fully assembled and tested. We will look at acquiring long lead items, so material that would cause delays.
We're literally spending a couple of years to be fully ready to build these ships, which will also basically save us money in production. That was my point previously. Although we've incurred some costs for delays, we're actually also achieving some cost savings by being more efficient, by being fully ready, by having a completely capable shipyard ready to move, by having a design that has been completely tested, right down to having a 3-D model where we can do walk-throughs and test all of the availability and all the maintenance.
This is delivering a best-practice approach, a fully capable yard, a fully capable design, such that when we actually launch the construction we'll have a very good understanding of price, we'll know exactly what we're getting, and we'll be able to build through the arctic/offshore patrol ships and acquire both a capable facility and the people to then move through that and into the next generation of combatants.