it's clear in the thread that he got permission to do so
it's also reasonable to assume he had more information about the state of the location given his access as an employee, particularly given that it was a full two months before he actually retrieved them
It's clear in the thread that a forum user worked for BT. What was unclear was whether the site still belonged to BT and whether the employee was given official or any clearance to retrieve the parts. There was no 'we' language, all 'I', which is unusual at best. For a company of BT's scale one would expect a small team for such a recovery.
I'm curious, where is it clear in the thread that he got permission?
it's also reasonable to assume he had more information about the state of the location given his access as an employee, particularly given that it was a full two months before he actually retrieved them