Must be more to this ...
Although the "employee" wasn't _just_ an employee, he was a director, you'd still expect a bit of due-diligence somewhere in the process.
In a contract this big, even if the MD him/her-self said "yes, we'll have it running in 9 months" you'd want that in writing as part of their proposal. Further, the client would want top see the timetable that would lead up to this (first of many) delivery. Not just the say-so of a senior person who's bidding for the work.
The days of "trust me, I'm a computer salesman" are long gone ..... you'd hope.
I think there must have been at least some sort of naivety on a massive scale for Sky to fall for this line. Either that or they believed what they wanted to, despite what common-sense, or industry experience was telling them. Therefore I doubt if the fault can be completely dropped in the lap of EDS (which is maybe why some of the other claims were refused). I just hope this £700m penalty teaches a few senior people a long-remembered lesson: on both sides.