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LSST E-News

LSST E-News

October 2009  •  Volume 2 Number 3  •  Archive

Project Manager’s Corner

Pushing the button on the Final Design Proposal. (L-R) Don Sweeney, Daniel Calabrese, Sidney Wolff

On August 17 the LSSTC formally submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation titled the “LSST Final Design Phase,” which will provide substantial support to the LSST project from April, 2010 to the beginning of construction, a period of time between 18 and 30 months depending on the pace of federal action on LSST funding. The Final Design Phase takes the project from the Preliminary Design Phase to the point that construction is ready to begin. It’s also an important precursor for the last major NSF review called the Critical Design Review.

This proposal is the first submission we expect to result in funding from the NSF coming directly to the LSSTC; our previous NSF money was awarded through the NOAO Cooperative Agreement. Institutional accreditation of the LSSTC by the NSF is currently pending, and action is due soon.

The LSST management team has also decided to use this Final Design period of up to 30 months to initiate the formal project management techniques and control tools that are required by both the NSF and DOE during the construction phase. While we’ve used these tools to plan the construction phase, we haven’t used them to manage the daily activity of the project. Now is the perfect time to exercise these tools to learn the full details and discipline necessary that’s required during construction.

Primavera Training, Tucson, August 18-20, 09. L to R: Jeff Barr, Bill Gressler, Melissa Bowersock, Linda Price, Chuck Claver, Nadine Kurita, Daniel Calabrese, Mike Freemon, Jeff Kantor, Suzanne Jacoby, Victor Krabbendam, Suzanne Dodd, David Gehrig, Jeff Fillmore, Don Sweeney

We started with 3 days of formal training of the entire management staff. We hired a consultant to review details of Primavera, a schedule and resource management software tool. We reviewed concepts for integrated work-packages, schedule and budget control. This software also interfaces with an accounting package so that we can implement certified earned-value management. The consultant will continue involvement in the project to assist us and critique our progress.

Our subsystem leads and their teams are now working to create a work breakdown structure, define activities, assign resources and schedule tasks during the 30-month Final Design period. This will all be coded into the Primavera database. We will track progress against the activities and milestones as a function of time and resources consumed (i.e., earned-value). This will jump start the management processes required during the hectic construction phase.

So far, we are off to a good beginning. This earlier than necessary adoption of a formal project management control system will give us the time and tools to deal with any issues that emerge.

Article written by LSST Project Manager Don Sweeney

 

LSST is a public-private partnership. Funding for design and development activity comes from the National Science Foundation, private donations, grants to universities, and in-kind support at Department of Energy laboratories and other LSSTC Institutional Members:

Brookhaven National Laboratory; California Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University; Chile; Columbia University; Drexel University; Google, Inc.; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Johns Hopkins University; Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology - Stanford University; Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Inc.; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Los Alamos National Laboratory; National Optical Astronomy Observatory; Princeton University; Purdue University; Research Corporation for Science Advancement; Rutgers University; SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Space Telescope Science Institute; The Pennsylvania State University; The University of Arizona; University of California at Davis; University of California at Irvine; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Pennsylvania; University of Pittsburgh; University of Washington; Vanderbilt University

LSST E-News Team:

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  • Sidney Wolff (Editorial Consultant)
  • Additional contributors as noted

LSST E-News is a free email publication of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project. It is for informational purposes only, and the information is subject to change without notice.

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