Revision history: first published 2001-12-14

CERN reacts to increased cost to completion of LHC

The CERN Council, where the representatives of the 20 Member States of the Organization decide on scientific programmes and financial resources, held its 120th session on 14 December under the chairmanship of Prof. Maurice Bourquin (CH).

CERN adjusts to the LHC

Director-General, Luciano Maiani, stressed that CERN was now fully engaged in the LHC and outlined the first moves to react to the increased cost to completion of the LHC. The new accelerator is an extremely complex, high-tech project which CERN is building under very severe conditions. However, the technical challenges are solved and industrial production of accelerator elements, and installation are starting.

Professor Maiani said that 2001 had been a very hard but decisive year for CERN. An important milestone had been passed during this meeting with the approval of the LHC dipole magnets contract, the last major contract for the accelerator.

The new costs to completion of the LHC project are now clear. A first proposal of how to adapt the Laboratory’s activities to this new situation will be submitted to Council in March and this proposal will evolve into the Medium and the Long Term Plans which will be presented to Council in June 2002. Prof. Maiani confirmed that CERN will find a sizeable part of the extra cost to completion of the project within the Organization’s baseline budget.

The Director-General has set up five Task Forces to examine: the cost of different scientific programmes, possible areas of saving across the Laboratory, and re-structuring and improving tools for managing CERN resources. He also announced to Council that Dr K.H. Kissler has been appointed as CERN Programme Controller.

CERN has always provided Member State physicists with first class facilities and scientific programmes including neutrino, heavy ion, CP-violation, low energy nuclear physics and antiproton programmes. It is now time to focus on the LHC whilst maintaining the diversity of the Laboratory in these other areas. 2002 will see a new plan for the LHC and a new phase in the life of the Laboratory.

The Director General also presented an overview of the scientific activities in 2001. (see summary)

Dr Robert A. Eisenstein from the United States’ National Science Foundation (NSF) reacted to the Director General's statement saying : "We reaffirm our intellectual and financial commitment to CERN, especially with respect to our contributions to the ATLAS and CMS detectors and to the accelerator. CERN remains the pre-eminent example in the world of fruitful and highly constructive scientific collaborations. Because of this, CERN is greatly admired and emulated the world over. We in the US wish the LHC project every success. In view of the recent difficulties, we are very pleased that strong steps are being taken to remedy problems."

External Review Committee

Council approved the Director General’s proposal to establish an External Review Committee (ERC) which will be asked to examine two main areas:

LHC accelerator, experimental areas and CERN's share of detector construction.
CERN's scientific programme not directly related to the LHC

The ERC will conduct a comprehensive factual analysis in these two areas and will report to the Council. The review will be carried out in parallel with the work of the internal Task Forces which have been recently set up by the Director General.

The ERC will present an interim report to the Committee of Council and other Committees in March 2002, so that it can be taken into consideration for the revised Medium-Term and Long-Term Plans of the activities of the Organisation. The final written report will be presented to the Council and other committees in June 2002.

Dr. R. Aymar (FR) was appointed Chairman of the ERC and, following nominations from the Member States, he designated the following members of the ERC :

Dr Stephan Bieri, ETH (CH),
Dr Bjorn Brandt, Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SE),
Prof Enrique Fernández, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (ES),
Dr Sigurd Lettow, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (DE),
Prof Italo Mannelli, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (IT),
Mr Marc Pannier, Ministère des finances, de l'économie et de l'industrie (FR),
Prof John Peoples, Fermilab (US),
Prof David H. Saxon, University of Glasgow (GB).

The compositon of the Committee is a balance between recognised members of the international scientific research community and senior financial and managerial experts from the Member States.

Budget

Council approved a budget of 1060 million CHF for 2002. It was also agreed that 5% of the budget (53 million CHF) would be provisionally frozen in the material budget. In March 2002, Council will decide on the release of this 5% following management proposals for aligning the 2002 budget with the new Medium and Long-term Plans.

Council also approved an overal cost variation index of 0.76% and a salary adjustment index of 1.3% for 2002.