The contract between the Commonwealth and the Australian Submarine Corporation was signed on 3 June 1987. Several days later two members of the ASC team, Graeme Ching and Ross Milton, were at Sydney airport and Milton remembers his companion saying to him while watching the throng of business people: ‘I don't know what any of them are doing, but I know it's not a patch on what we've just done – sign a contract for $2.9 billion.’

Intense negotiations had continued until the night before the contract was signed, and the ASC team were all exhausted. As Pelle Stenberg recalls: ‘Everyone was dead beat - but the real work had to start.’

Their focus had been entirely on winning the contract. While the project definition study and the evaluation process had established much of the framework for beginning the next phase, few of those involved appreciated the enormity of the project. To some extent this is not surprising as it was a project without precedent in Australia – it was the country's largest military contract and it aimed to achieve the highest proportion of Australian industry involvement of any major project, while at the same time having the most multinational flavour, with the prime contractor having joint Swedish, American and Australian ownership and sub-contractors coming from many countries.