 The Navy then took the best characteristics from each submission and made its own improvements before awarding the contract to "Sociedad Española de Construcción Naval" (SECN), a consortium created by three of the British firms—Armstrong Whitworth, Vickers, and John Brown & Company.In addition to the contracts for the ships themselves, SECN was also contracted to build the shipyard in Ferrol, Spain that would in turn build the ships.The repeated delays in the Spanish naval reconstruction program proved to be a detriment as well, since the "España"s were rapidly surpassed by foreign vessels, most notably the so-called "super-dreadnoughts".