History of the Science Commissioning and Verification Plan of the Science IPT In the Project Plan v2.0, section 3.1.1, we find:

In accordance with Article 14 and 15 of the Bilateral ALMA Agreement, the JAO will be composed of the following personnel who report to the ALMA Board:

• ALMA Director

• ALMA Project Manager

• ALMA Project Scientist

• ALMA Project Engineer

The responsibilities and authorities of these positions are defined by the ALMA Board.

The Project Plan does not offer us further wisdom on the duties of the Project Scientist. The Board approved the text of a Vacancy Notice which does describe the duties:

ESO/NRAO are now seeking applications for an ALMA Project Scientist, who will be part of the staff of the JAO. The Project Scientist is responsible for ensuring that ALMA is constructed, commissioned and operated in such a manner as to meet the scientific requirements of the ALMA Agreement.

Essential duties and responsibilities:

• Defining and maintaining the top-level scientific requirements and scope of the project.

• Establishing the scientific requirements for the ALMA system, working in conjunction with the IPT Leaders, and their Deputies.

• Together with the European PS and North American PS leading the global effort of the Science IPT

• Setting scientific requirements for various discipline areas

• Final responsibility of reviewing and monitoring compliance of all ALMA documents with the scientific requirements

• Responsible for the ALMA commissioning

• Responsible for the ALMA scientific activities in Santiago

The ALMA Project Scientist reports to the ALMA Director.

The position of Project Scientist has remained vacant. In lieu of a Project Scientist, the Science IPT leads for North American and for Europe have been fulfilling these duties.

The JAO ALMA Operations Working Group (OG) convened a telecon Tuesday 18 November 2003 1400 UTC attended by Silva, Haupt, Sramek, Wootten, Simon, and Emerson. Minutes are available. In that telecon there was discussion of what the commissioning task of the Project Scientist was exactly:

The Commissioning plan is the responsibility of the (missing) project scientist. On the science side - many efforts are needed, for example, to develop a calibration list at 3 and 1 mm.

Silva was imagining a commissioning matrix. Lists major modes of observing, checking off what works.

Sramek asked - who will calibrate 1 baseline, or 1st dozen baselines. He assumes that this is the commissioning team is the Science IPT (Wootten agrees.)

There was general agreement that C/V should be under the control of the Project Scientist. For now - put the C/V plan (chapter) in the Integration plan. It is primarily under the control of the construction team, using resources as needed from operations. In the Science Ops plan, Science Ops will have to support C/V activities, starting sometime in 2006.

There will be a chapter in Sys Integration plan titled "Commissioning". Science IPT will work with System to write this chapter. Silva would like to be kept in loop.

Deadlines: Integration plan due by end of December. Expect to have a medium level draft.

As a result of this action item, the Science IPT appointed Robert Laing to write this chapter. This was done, the document placed in almaedm as ALMA Commissioning and Science Verification Plan ALMA-90.00.00.00-007-A-PLA dated 2004 Feb 28. Some aspects covered in this document were also included in versions of the Operations Plan as it wended its way through various versions. At the JAO/IPT meeting in Elmau in early March, Laing described the elements of this plan to the assembled JAO and IPT leads and other parties present. Two action items on the Science IPT resulted from this plan which were addressed in subsequent documents. At the March 2004 AMAC meeting, the Science IPT reported its activities in the Operations Group, including the submission of the ALMA Commissioning and Science Verification Plan. Laing presented the Plan to the ASAC at its face-to-face meeting in Cambridge in May 2004. Elements of the ALMA-90.00.00.00-007-A-PLA plan are contained within the Operations Plan, in various versions, of the JAO Operations Group, presented on numerous occasions to all components of the ALMA Project and to many outside parties. The ALMA Board, on 2004 August 5, sent the ASAC a list of five charges, the fifth of which was:

5. Consider the project’s plans and progress towards a Science Verification Plan.

As a result, Laing and the Science IPT revised the Plan of 2004-Feb-28 and presented the revised version, ALMA-90.00.00.00-007-B-PLA, to the ASAC during their face-to-face meeting in Charlottesville in September 2004. The Science IPT reported on this activity in their presentation to the JAO/IPT meeting in September 2004. Wootten worked on transforming this document into a ‘Microsoft Project’ Plan, submitting this to Sramek for consideration shortly after the JAO/IPT meeting. This plan was subsequently further revised by Mangum and Wootten and submitted to the PMCS group through Greg Patton for inclusion in the overall ALMA Project Schedule.

-- AlWootten - 08 Dec 2004
Topic revision: r1 - 2004-12-08, AlWootten
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