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Whatever happened to military precision?

By the end of last month, about 3,400 employees from the Department of National Defence were supposed to have decamped from their downtown offices and moved to part of the former Nortel campus in the city’s west end, the site of DND’s new headquarters.

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Instead, fewer than 1,000, all part of the military’s human resources group, have so far been relocated.

Now nine years in development, the $800-million-plus project is finally putting boots on the ground. Eventually, DND will consolidate 40 facilities across the national capital region into a handful, with more than half of its 16,000 local staff stationed in the new headquarters.

The initial target for completing the first of three phases destined for the former Nortel campus — the 3,400 — was March 31 of 2016.

However, the department delayed things one year to replace defective windows and to bring buildings up to code to withstand potential seismic events.