# Memorandum — Formal retraction of the memorandum "KOMET operating costs (provisional figures)" of 10 June 2024

**From:** Heike Brandt (Commercial Director)
**To:** Lenkungsausschuss Projekt LEUCHTFEUER, SEAGULL programme, PMO, document control
**Date:** 15 April 2026
**Classification:** internal

## 1. Retraction

My memorandum of **10 June 2024**, titled *"KOMET operating costs (provisional figures)"*, is
**formally retracted with immediate effect**. This retraction covers the memorandum as a whole and
each of the provisional figures it contained.

## 2. Reason

The final operations audit for the years 2024–2025, accepted by the Geschäftsführung on
31 March 2026, has closed the methodology that the 2024 memorandum's downtime-cost estimate was
built on — and closed it against us. The provisional estimation approach double-counted
contractual penalties that the affected customer accounts had in fact renegotiated, and it
extrapolated a peak-season hourly pattern across the whole year. The audited figures differ from
the provisional ones materially, not marginally. A memorandum whose central numbers are materially
wrong should not merely be corrected in a footnote somewhere; it should be withdrawn, and this one
hereby is.

I flagged the figures as provisional in the memorandum itself and asked at the time that they be
quoted with their caveat or not at all. Some of them nevertheless found their way into slide decks
with the caveat trimmed for space. I take my share of that outcome: a number in circulation
outlives every caveat attached to it, and the only reliable caveat is withdrawal. Consider this
memorandum me keeping the promise I made in June 2024 — that when the audit closed, the
provisional numbers would be retired from circulation rather than living on in old decks.

## 3. Handling of the withdrawn document

The 10 June 2024 memorandum has been **removed from the project record** by document control as of
today's date. Please do not rely on it, quote it, or restate its figures in any new document,
internal or external. Where an existing document of yours reproduces its figures, treat that
passage as withdrawn and remove it at the document's next revision; where such a figure has been
passed outward — to a customer, an insurer, or an auditor — inform me directly and I will handle
the correction personally rather than by circular.

The **corrected** figures are contained in the final audit report, which is distributed separately
under restricted access through document control; request it there if your role requires it. I am
deliberately not reproducing any figures, old or corrected, in this retraction: the entire lesson
of this episode is that numbers detach from their context the moment they are convenient, and I
decline to give these ones a fresh set of wings.

## 4. What this retraction does not touch

For the avoidance of doubt: the audit **confirmed** the annual KOMET licence and support figure as
it was reported to the steering committee elsewhere and repeatedly — that figure was contractual,
not estimated, and it is unaffected by this retraction. The business case for the migration is
likewise unaffected; it was argued on the licence reality and the vendor situation, both of which
the audit confirmed, and the programme it justified has in any case delivered. What is retracted
is one provisional estimate and the memorandum that carried it — not the history of the programme.

My thanks to the audit team for doing their work thoroughly enough to prove one of my own
memoranda wrong. That is precisely what audits are for, and it is considerably cheaper than
learning the same thing from a customer's lawyer.

Heike Brandt
Commercial Director, Blauwal Logistik GmbH
