**They're currently in the "do half the work and then disappear without a trace for several weeks" phase that seems to be fairly prevalent in the contractor community.
***Those aren't actually the words that the planning committee used, but they're surprisingly close.
****We thought otherwise until recently, largely because we had been explicitly told otherwise, but that's really neither here nor there.
*****Assuming, of course, our contractors get their collective shit together. But we covered that already.