yeah, i think he's wrong though. I think it's a case of, "we think it's too hard to explain, so we'd rather do it ourselves"....and then wait 2 years to actually get around to it.
It's classic micro-management.
there are enough long-term players who could get a pretty close first run & then let them tweak it a little. there are some obvious, some guesswork, a couple of existing examples to study. drawing, I don't know, but you also have to do the simple work of setting up the connections information in the database which volunteers can do unless it is completely different from what I imagine.
i think this is a 90% volunteer job.