Altogether, the Toolbox includes over 560 web-pages (some equivalent to two or three printed pages), 83 substantial self-contained documents in pdf format, and 5700 hypertext links. No paper document the size of the Toolbox, involving collaboration across disciplines, institutions and countries, would be altogether easy to construct. But with a web-based document, issues of planning, sequencing and iteration, became particularly important. While the main policy themes could be identified early in the process, the number, titles and contents of policy pages depended on the identification of environmental risks by the technical specialists. Any page added might necessitate revision of pages written earlier in the process, both from the point of view of content and of whether their hypertext links continued to function and to be appropriate. It took time to develop modes of working between those writing content in Word and those responsible for assembling the Toolbox and constructing links in html. The final checking of links, especially as parallel website and CD-ROM versions were published, could not be entirely automated and was very time consuming. The time necessary to construct the Toolbox, both in terms of content provision and of programming, surprised all the team and should not be underestimated in future initiatives of this kind.
