[Eicpp_personnel] Electron-Ion Collider Partner Project All Hands Monthly Brief

[Sherry Thomas]

Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) Partner Project All Hands Monthly Brief

This is the first of a monthly all hands email to the EICPP Project Team established to provide a brief project status on high level topics and other project news.

Jim Fast, EIC Project Manager

As you all know, Jefferson Lab (JLab) has partnered with Brookhaven National Lab (BNL) on the EIC to be built at BNL.  JLab is responsible for significant parts of the design, including contributions to cryomodules, normal-conducting magnets, cryoplant, and the detector, and staff from across JLab are contributing to this work.  We are working towards a Critical Decision-3A (CD-3A) review in the fall, which will give us approval to move ahead with Long-Lead Procurements (LLP).

In preparation, an EIC LLP Cost Review was held this week, June 26-29, at BNL.  The Review Committee evaluated the project’s cost and schedule planning, as well as considering associated areas like risk and requirements.  The Committee found that some LLP items are not yet at the required design maturity or do not have backup materials sufficiently organized. They provided a number of valuable suggestions which will help ensure successful CD-3A review for the project.

Debt Ceiling Legislation and EIC

The legislation recently passed to increase the debt ceiling includes language that essentially caps discretionary spending at flat funding in FY24 and 1% increase in FY25 which will effectively be a reduction in spending power given inflation.  It remains unclear how this will flow down through the Department of Energy, the Office of Science and the Office of Nuclear Physics to the EIC project.  However, it is reasonable to anticipate flat funding for the next two years which is a significant decrease in funding relative to the current planning.  We are watching developments in Congress on the FY2024 budget process.

Project management is assessing how various funding profiles may impact the project plans. It is reasonable to assume that we will curtail hiring sooner than the current plan suggests and that design, prototyping and first article efforts will be slowed to level resources/cost to a lower level through FY2025. A priority in revamping project planning is to ensure that funding is available to support staff.

ESH

Information from Bill Rainey distributed by email received from EICPP_Directorate at jlab.org or EICPP_Personnel at jlab.org on 6/23/2023.

It will be important during future project reviews to demonstrate that the JSA Integrated Safety Management System is being applied to the EIC project.  Some of the major elements of that system are executed through our various work planning and control processes.  Consequently, I need to be able to identify EIC related WP&C transactions so they can be evaluated and reported.

I have attempted, with limited success, to work with the various system owners to insert a function for the identification of EIC related work.  As the attached figure shows, this can be accomplished in different ways:

  *   For OSP/TOSP/LOSP simply check the box labeled "EIC" and it will be routed to me
  *   For ATLIS and similar task lists simply place "EIC" in the title and I can search
  *   For ePAS, again, "EIC" in the title will allow me to search.
Lastly, for active tasks that have been placed in any of these systems prior to this direction, please email me the reference so I can find it.  And please email or call with any questions or suggestions.
(Bill Rainey: wrainey at jlab.org<mailto:wrainey at jlab.org> / 757-269-7898)

Staffing Update

After many years of service to Jefferson Lab and supporting the EIC Project as the deputy L2 manager for the Electron Storage Ring, Mark Wiseman will be taking early retirement this fall.  Sergei Nagaitsev has graciously agreed to serve as acting L2 until Mark’s replacement can be hired in.

Many EIC positions are posted on the JLab Career site (https://www.jlab.org/recruiting).  Please pass along to any qualified candidates who you think might be interested, or perhaps you are such a candidate! Two recent additions are the Cryogenic Systems Manager and EIC Project Quality Manager.  We will have a couple more high-level positions on the team posted soon. We also have several designer and ME positions left to fill if you know people who might be interested in those.

We welcome Alexander Fuller, Mechanical Engineer, who joined us in June!

Training

  *   EIC CAM Earned Value Training scheduled July 6 @ 1:00 p.m. in F324/325.
  *   EIC CAM/TR Training is scheduled July 11 @ 11:00 a.m. in F324/325 & Zoom.
Travel

  *   When planning EIC travel, remember to use the Travel Request form located on the EICPP SharePoint Travel site<https://jeffersonlab.sharepoint.com/sites/EICPartnerProject-TJNAF/SitePages/TRAVEL.aspx> (must be logged into SharePoint to access the link).
A few reminders….

  *   In accordance with DOE Order 243.1C Records Management, Jefferson Lab will implement an email retention period of seven years which will impact email in all Jefferson Lab Outlook email accounts. All email older than seven years will be deleted beginning Monday, July 10. Emails can be moved to your Archive folder if you need to keep them longer than seven years. Training slides are available on the Insight page.
  *   The EICPP Document Center<https://jeffersonlab.sharepoint.com/sites/EICPartnerProject-TJNAF/SitePages/Document%20Center.aspx?csf=1&web=1&e=QxJcBR> on our SharePoint site contains templates for EIC SOW and technical specification (must be logged into SharePoint to access the link).
  *   Send an email to eicpp_admin at jlab.org<mailto:eicpp_admin at jlab.org> if you have any questions or need assistance accessing the EICPP SharePoint Site.
I want to extend my thanks to the entire team for the work you are doing to make EIC a success.  There will be many challenges we will face over the coming years, but we will get through them.

I want to offer a final message about safety.  I have personally lived through several significant safety incidents in my time in the DOE complex and I would like to underscore what Stuart said in his briefing – if we have another incident we will be down for an extended period of time and at great cost. In one case Fermilab’s accelerator complex was shut down for 9 months and in another about 300 of us lost access to our building for a week with no warning and the recovery process for the incident was over a year.

I want to emphasize that everyone has Stop Work authority.  If you are uncomfortable raising a concern yourself, walk away and call me (757-230-6833) and I will step in. When in doubt, be conservative – pause and think about the situation critically, raise the concern and talk it through with coworkers, your line manager or me.  We have a decade to get the EIC Project done so any sense of urgency about losing an hour, a day, or a week, is just not real.

Jim Fast

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/eicpp_personnel/attachments/20230630/5768a553/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: EIC ESH.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 256029 bytes
Desc: EIC ESH.pdf
URL: <https://mailman.jlab.org/pipermail/eicpp_personnel/attachments/20230630/5768a553/attachment-0001.pdf>