Case Study: Diamond Light Source

Transcript

Prof. Dr. Gerhard Materlok, Chief Executive - Diamond Light Source Ltd
Diamond is nothing else but a big light bulb and with us light and we study nature in a very broad sense, we study it from aeroplane wings, down to the size of atoms.  We have to house it into a building, happens to be a 235 metre diameter building, the size of 5 football pitches, and that means it doesn't come cheap.  The Gateway process was started around 2001 and this project also took its final shape around the same time.  So they were coming along in parallel. 

Nigel Moulding, Director of Finance & Administration - Diamond Light Source Ltd
Certainly in the early stages of Diamond I think the Gateway process was very helpful because it was sort of creating something from nothing, so I think the formality and the framework of Gateway was very useful in those early days. 

Gerhand
The Gateway team gave us very valuable suggestions at that time, so looking forward into creating a joint venture agreement, creating a company, doing this and so on, finalising the budget again, value for money in that sense.

Nigel
It is useful just to know that there are these check points from time to time so I think it is useful from two purposes really, one is internally we know it will happen so it helps us make sure we have got all our paperwork in order etc etc,  makes us stop and think a little bit to check our progress, but also externally it is quite a useful Government process and so I think it is helpful to our Stakeholders and Shareholders and our Audit Committee and people like that, it is helpful for them just to have a third party come along who they know have no particular axe to grind, shall we say, just to come and check that we are doing what we say we are doing.

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