The 3rd Cost & Schedule Review of the projects HL-LHC and LIU (LHC Injectors Upgrade) was held at CERN on 26th – 28th of March 2018. As usual, the panel is composed by the CMAC (CERN Machine Advisory Committee) members with the addition of a few other international experts as reviewers.
The main outcome was that the panel found that “The HL-LHC team together with the ATS staff has done an outstanding job in implementing the cost reductions, which were discussed in detail during the C&S review in 2016. Approximately 80 MCHF worth of scope reductions were implemented into the design, while the design performance was maintained including some flexibility in the operational parameter space”. This affirmation closed definitively the chapter opened with the “re-baselining” of June-August 2016, when, to cope with a new evaluation of the cost of C.E., some de-scoping had to be carried out (half CC, no new large Q4, etc…) entailing the 80 MCHF saving mentioned by the reviewers and further 40 MCHF on the technical infrastructure. The saving of 120 MCHF allows to keep the project in the same Cost-to-Completion envelope as in 2015, 950 MCHF (material only) while preserving substantially the performance.
The reviewers also noticed that the project has now committed 1/3 of the budget and in certain WPs, the uncertainty in the budget estimate starts to reduce. However, the uncertainty on C.E. cost remains high (class 3), as well as the one of other critical WPs. The review also noticed that there is no contingency, no room for further substantial de-scoping without affecting heavily the performance. The attention to avoid any possible extra-cost must be kept very high since the CERN management is not likely to accept extra funding of the project. The panel has praised the risk analysis as it was presented and noticed the strong dependence on in-kind contribution from collaborators. While the in-kind are very positive to lessen the need of resources by CERN, their increase can be seen as a risk that needs to be managed, possibly also with incentives.
Among the recommendations on single work package. The most important has been the advice to insert the Hollow Electron Lens (device for Beam Halo control) into the baseline, confirming the advice already given by C-MAC at Chamonix 2018.
The next Cost & schedule review will be held approximately in October 2019.