I was talking to the old man the other day who was in at the beginning of building the Nimrod MRA 4 as a fitter for BWOS circa 2001.
He said that they knew it would be a white Elephant from the start by the working practices that were forced upon them, as although the aircraft was being built at Woodford the project was being managed from Warton, so.....
When you came across a problem {say on a Monday} and needed the Engineer to make a decision the answer was "phone Warton and wait until Thursday" when he had time to turn up. And when he did arrive the usual answer was "I'll have to go back and have a look at it" consequently a 2 minute job took a whole week, lots of card games and twiddling of thumbs.
They frequently requested that the Engineering be based at Woodford but BWOS management knew better. He reckons it would have been flying 2 years earlier at the minimum and that we would not find ourselves in the current situation.