Fermilab's future needs quality and safety now

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone discusses the laboratory's current and proposed facilities and experiments at an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 9. Watch the meeting via streaming video.

The future of Fermilab is a full plate of projects on the three research frontiers. But to make that ambitious scientific program work, the laboratory needs a strong operational base, said Director Pier Oddone.

In an all-hands meeting Wednesday, he touched on three initiatives that will strengthen Fermilab's reputation and prepare it to handle the rigors of being a leader on the energy, intensity and cosmic frontiers during the next decade.

An Integrated Quality Assurance program underway analyses work processes at every level and details programs to maximize efficiency, quality and consistency. While the laboratory already does this in many areas, IQA will create a systematic approach lab wide. Quality Assurance engineers and a representative from each division will help employees meet these goals and express quality metrics in terms familiar to QA auditors. Employees should think of IQA management as the responsibility of individuals as well as groups, Oddone said.

A new engineering manual is one step toward this standardization of quality. The 33-page manual, which will launch on line shortly, defines the roles, responsibilities and risk-management reviews for engineers in all divisions. This will standardize practices and make working across divisions more efficient.

Another step is to reduce injury rates, a focus of ES&H. The number of recordable cases and injuries requiring days away from work has doubled since last year. This erases the improvements of last year and returns the laboratory to an injury pattern it has held since 2003.

To learn more about these initiatives and the science programs they support, watch Oddone's all-hands presentation here.

-- Tona Kunz

New Quality Assurance site features links and Q&As

Employees can submit their questions about Integrated Quality Assurance through a new Fermilab Web site.

Fermilab is implementing an Integrated Quality Assurance program. Between Sept. 14-18, DOE teams will meet with employees to assess the implementation phase. A new Web site provides a tool box with information on quality assurance and features a page with questions and answers about quality assurance at our laboratory.

Project X collaboration meeting Friday, Saturday

The most recent conceptual design for Project X proposes a 2-GeV continuous-wave linear accelerator (straight red line). Most of the 2-GeV protons would be used for various experiments with kaons and muons (green lines), and the rest would be accelerated by a Rapid Cycling Synchrotron to 8 GeV (red ring). The 8-GeV protons could be stored in the existing Recycler storage ring and delivered to experiments (light blue line), or they could be transferred to the Main Injector accelerator for acceleration to 120 GeV and the production of a high-intensity neutrino beam (dark blue).

A meeting this week at Fermilab may help decide the initial configuration of Project X, a proposed high-intensity proton accelerator complex that could provide beam for a variety of physics projects.

Roughly 85 people from 10 laboratories and institutions have registered for the workshop, which will take place in One West on Friday, Sept. 11, and Saturday, Sept. 12.

Steve Holmes, Fermilab's associate director for accelerators, will give an introduction to the project and an overview of the proposed project's strategic plan during the opening plenary session from 8:30-10:30 a.m. Friday. Registration for the workshop via the Web site is encouraged, but not required. Both staff and users are welcome to attend. The meeting will conclude with working group report sessions on Saturday morning.

During the meeting, collaborators will re-examine the first potential design plan for Project X, which includes an 8-GeV pulsed linear accelerator. They will also look at a second design plan, which proposes a continuous 2-GeV linac and rapidly cycling synchrotron. This plan could provide greater flexibility in the establishment of a varied physics program at lower energies.

"We want to get the collaboration engaged and help them understand the second configuration as a potentially viable option," Holmes said.

Hopefully, collaborators will offer critiques on the design alternatives during the meeting, Holmes said, so that they can move forward on a preferred design in 2010. The meeting will also allow collaborators to form an FY2010 work plan that outlines and assigns tasks.

The collaboration will look to the Accelerator Advisory Committee, which convenes mid-November, for technical advice on the proposed project's second design plan. Collaborators hope the project will receive CD-0 in 2010.

For more information on Project X, visit the proposed project's Web site.

-- Rhianna Wisniewski