2.12 On 1 May 1998 the Department invited suppliers to submit their final tenders. At that time the Department regarded EDS's timetable as being high risk. EDS proposed delivering 80 per cent of the functionality the system required, that is the most critical aspects of the system, within two years. The Department considered, however, that EDS's plans were based on a considerable amount of parallel development which did not recognise the likely need for a lot of reworking. This was a major factor that led to EDS re-evaluating its whole tender and concluding that it could not go ahead.