DRAFT (September 24, 2003)

 

Minutes of the First Telephone Meeting of the Task Force on the Pre Global Design Organization (tentative name) for the International Linear Collider       

 

September 11, 2003, 09:00 – 11:00 US-EDT

21:00 – 23:00 JST&KST, 15:00 – 17:00 European DT

 

Participants: Brian Foster, Jonathan Dorfan, Maury Tigner, Won Namkung, Satoshi Ozaki, Yoji Totsuka, and Albrecht Wagner.

 

 

Agenda Item 1:

 

At the beginning of the telephone meeting, Maury Tigner, as the Chairman of the International Linear Collider Steering Committee (ILCSC), made a motion to confirm the selection of Satoshi Ozaki as the Chair of the Task Force. The Task Force members unanimously agreed with the motion and stated that they will help the Chair carry out the mission of the Task Force.

 

The mission of the Task Force is to recommend to the ILCSC the various issues involved in setting up a global organization that will define a self-consistent set of parameters for an International Linear Collider (ILC) and outline of the machine, define the mechanism to create the Conceptual Design Report (CDR), and establish the cost estimating methodology, and make schedule and cost estimates for the completion of the Technical Design Report (TDR). The functionality of this interim organization, Pre Global Design Organization (Pre-GDO), should naturally lead into the TDR activities of a global design organization when the funding agencies of governments world wide become involved with contributions of funds for engineering study and technical design, and begin to provide formal governance to the program. The draft agenda for the first meeting is appended at the end of these minutes.

 

Agenda Item 3 and 6:

 

The Task Force agreed at this meeting that we will aim at presenting a progress report at the November 19, 2003 meeting of the ILCSC in Paris and the final report, at least in draft form in the almost final stage, at the ICFA meeting in February/March 2004. This schedule was chosen in order to respond to statements that were made by a group of funding agencies that met on July 30, 2003 in London, UK, in an informal setting. The group recognized that the scientific communities have established a need for future facilities of such a scale that an international forum of potential funding agencies/sponsors was needed. The idea, then, was to show the group that the scientific community is moving forward with the plan to establish a (Pre) Global Design Organization for ILC. The agencies’ group would meet again in early spring 2004, hopefully after the ICFA meeting mentioned above.

 

Agenda Item 2 & 4:

 

There were extensive discussions on the overall scheme of the global design organization as indicated in the draft charge to the Task Force:

 

Yoji Totsuka, from the point of view of KEK, would like to see the mission of this organization be extended to include the preparation of the construction-ready TDR. There are a couple or reasons: (1) If a global design organization (GDO, this word is used instead of GLCC) is considered to officially involve funding agencies world wide, some countries will not be able to timely participate in GDO because their governments may move slowly (Japan may be the case.). (2) The time to the LC construction is not long. If one spends a year or two for the pre-GDO just for scheduling etc., one will lose precious time for real R&D and detailed costing etc. which will need more than a few years. (3) Hence it makes more sense to establish GDO from the beginning without initial involvement of funding agencies. This GDO corresponds to what the GLC group says pre-GLCC. It is apparent that his concern involves how to obtain R&D funding from the Japanese government during the (Pre-)GDO. The governance structure of KEK will change during 2004 to a more autonomous institution within the Japanese Government system, giving it a flexibility of allocating their annual operating budget within KEK. Nevertheless, a strong justification will be necessary to obtain additional significant R&D funds ount for ILC.

 

Albright Wagner also expressed some concern related to the budget issue, but his main concern was on the balance of role and responsibility of the central team relative to the regional teams. He believes that the overall issues such as the development of overall design of the facility, including detectors, and establishing the cost estimating methodology should be with the central group, but with an active participation of the regional groups. The regional groups should identify what sub-systems they wish to take ownership of for the TDR development and possibly beyond as soon as the technology choice is made.

 

Jonathan Dorfan believes that the central group has non-trivial job in going through the TRD process, in concurrence with the activities of the regional groups. It, therefore, must have significant technical strength to carry out the mission.

 

Since there is significant diversity in the opinions of the members on the overall scheme of the organization, the Chair will collect people’s ideas off-line, and try to come up with a scheme that can accommodate some of the concerns.

 

It is understood that the organization in question is interim in nature and is expected to lead to an establishment of the global design organization. The number of the regional groups is expected to be three, at least for now.

 

Agenda Item 5:

 

With a belief that the most challenging task should get early attention, Jonathan Dorfan suggested that the Task Force should undertake the task of estimating the time and particularly money it will take to develop the CDR and then TDR. In particular, the completion of TDR requires an internationally organized design with an agreed upon cost, and involves significant engineering work.

 

In this regard concerns were raised by Yoji and Albrecht that this task is indeed the one that (pre-)GDO should do, the cost of developing CDR and TDR may be technology dependent, and a generically developed cost estimate, according to an assumed spending profile may not tell the true figure, and thus a waste of time. In addition, some of this work was done at DESY for the TESLA Project and at KEK for JLC/GLC work. For that matter, there exists preliminary work on this subject at SLAC for NLC also. It was decided that DESY, KEK and SLAC would send their existing cost estimates to complete the CDR and TDR for TESLA, JLC/GLC, and NLC, respectively to the Chair so that he can make a meaningful comparison among them.

 

Agenda Item 7:

 

It was understood that the work of the Task Force will be carried out mostly by periodic telephone meetings between now and February 2004. In addition, S. Ozaki will try to visit the Task Force members using his opportunity to travel to various laboratories. It was agreed that in order to help the Chair take notes for the minutes of the meeting, a voice-recording device will be used for future meetings.

 

Agenda Item 9:

 

In order to avoid confusion among the Task Force members, one should establish a common name for the subject organization. It was agreed that the Chair should take his prerogative and select an appropriate name and acronym of the organization in question. The name and the acronym shall be:

 

o      Pre-Global Design Organization (Pre-GDO) and

o      Global Design Organization (GDO)

 

The meeting adjourned at 11:30 EDT

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Agenda for 1st Meeting of the Pre-Global Task Force (Draft)

 

  1. Confirm Satoshi Ozaki as Chair
  2. Go over the charge to make sure there are no additions, deletions or clarifications needed.
  3. Note that a progress report will be wanted at our Nov. 19 meeting in Paris and, if possible, we should have a final report to discuss at our Feb. meeting in Paris
  4. Discuss overall scheme of organization of Pre-global activity
  5. Decide on order of work to be done
  6. Decide time frame for work
  7. Decide on method of procedure
  8. Make any needed assignments
  9. Other business
  10. Arrange next meeting