Participants: Baldwin, Cecil (minutes & chair), Diaz, McMahan, Sebring, Simkin. Dottori and Elston were unavailable.  The telecon lasted 1 hour. Tom Sebring outlined how the project was proceeding with the contractors, and his cost-control strategies. The second half of the telecon was devoted to a discussion of how to refine the Draft Instrument Requirements Doc.

Sebring said he would try to participate in SAC telecons whenever he was in town. He first rehashed his presentation to the SOAR Board from the day before. 4 study contracts have been released, 2 each for the telescope mount (L&F, Magellan scaledown, Gemini instrument on a flange; Comsat/RSI, Keck-like space-frame, Gemini instrument in a cage) and the active optics system (Contraves, hydraulic M1 supports like WIYN & AEOS for Maui; HDOS, electro-mechanical actuators for M1), $25K each.  The active optics system is an active M1, actively positioned M2 for slow collimation & focus, rapid tip/tilt on either M2 or M3, a wavefront sensor for optimization, and all software & controls required to operate it. Another contract is for $18.5K for  the Brazilian Industrial initiative, which is an attempt to identify how to keep as much Brazilian money  there as possible.  A very competent company has been identified (and visited by Sebring et  al.) The final contract is for the facility architectural layout; M3 in Tucson will do this. They are actively involved in Magellan and Gemini, and their staff is very familiar with Pachon. They will also do all the site drawings and renderings for the concept review.

The project has also initiated a contract for $135K to level the site, which will be completed by the formal ground-breaking ceremony. Sebring felt that it made more sense to clear the site before doing the geotech survey because it was nearly impossible to get  a drilling rig to the site now, and Gemini had already surveyed nearby so the rock structure was reasonably well understood.

Personnel changes: Kitty is going back to university in early Jan. Interviews for a replacement will be held before Xmas; Dan Blanco is leaving the project and may return to NOAO. He was unhappy with the approach the project was taking to cost control. Sebring  will hire a replacement with more emphasis on contract management abilities than on in-house design. The concept design review may slip a month or two because of these personnel changes.

Project labor costs are a serious problem. We have close to $6M in labor costs including NOAO overhead costs and the cost of doing business in Chile. In fact, 5.5 yrs + 12/14 people came out w/ labor cost of $9M (100% overhead at CTIO, 35% salary differential in Chile, moving costs.) So, the project approach was altered to minimize the amount of engineering done by a much smaller project team. Also, procurements are now lumped together into major functional subsystems. 95% of the telescope will come from facility, dome (both done on site before the team leaves to integrate the telescope), mount (including steel, bearings, encoders, instrument rotators, software to make mount w/ pointing demonstration at contractor), active optics system (including control software, manufactured and loop closed at contractor).  There will then be a 90-day period to install the telescope mount and active optics system (these systems will be held at the manufacturers until we are ready for them.) During a Jan. visit Sebring will negotiate w/ CTIO on the integration costs, to ensure that their engineering team plays a major role during this phase. He will also try hire operations people early so that they become members of the integration team. This will make the transition to commissioning and operations much smoother, avoiding the usual 6 month loss of momentum. These will be CTIO on-site employees rather than SOAR employees who are moving down there to work. Simkin commented that this was exactly the approach favored by the OWG. Finally, the project hopes to use a Brazilian electrical engineer, especially if they are paid by Brazil (to avoid NOAO overhead.) With this approach, labor costs drop to $5.5M and about 6 months is cut out of the project to get us done in late Sept. of 2001.

Sebring & Cecil will be visiting both UNC and MSU in January for colloquia. Sebring will also be in Brazil in Jan.

In summary, Sebring is daily more optimistic that there is serious cost competition underway between contractors, that the contracting teams are up to the performance and fiscal challenges, and that he will bring the telescope in on cost target.

Simkin noted that the 35% premium has been on and off, and that there appeared to be a mechanism to get this removed for short-term visitors. Sebring replied that SOAR employees would actually not incur this overhead. They would be based in the US and work 2 weeks on, 1 wk off and that the project would pay the  smaller travel bill instead. We will also buy the installation labor as required from the contractors, in other words it becomes cost effective to say to e.g. Contraves that your contract includes the cost of sending 3 technicians to Chile for integration to install the optical system. Simkin asked about interfaces, noting that both the OWG and ERB had emphasized the need to keep these modern and compatible. Sebring said there are several rungs to this.  The contractors would provide the interfaces internal to their subsystem & would be given strict protocols to follow for connecting to the external world. Sebring felt the PS & SAC should define what connectors, etc. are required at the focal plane.

In response to a question by Baldwin, Sebring noted that the project will own all contractor designs and will be free to mix and match as desired. The project office  will be looking for objective trades to distinguish between the two concepts, e.g. deformation modes, resonant frequencies, bearing capacity, servicing logistics, etc. This will probably result in the project office making a choice. However, if this fails to make a meaningful distinction between the two, then  the office can fall back to a performance-based spec. using both designs and let costs decide. Both contractors can go head to head and bid anyone they want. The complexity of using  e.g. a Brazilian or S. Korean steel company is that the actual materials cost is roughly $0.3M in a $2.5-3M contract for the mount. The savings in reduced cost/kg of stuctural steel are minute compared to the added costs of a subcontract. Keeping $0.3M in Brazil for a $12M investment is not an interesting percentage. However it is likely to be a serious pain to deal with. Simkin suggested that e.g. S. Korea could do the electronics integration as well, so there might be more significant cost savings. Sebring agreed that this was an interesting twist.

Simkin asked that the instruments be viewed by the project as an integral part of the telescope so that the point of this all wasn't lost. Sebring replied that all his spreadsheets had the telescope coming out at $22.5-23M. This did not include those items already identified as legitimate ``telescope" expenses for the instrument budget.

McMahan wondered how Sebring would avoid finger-pointing between contractors if things screw up because there is not full integration testing. Sebring noted that this was the main reason why the number of contracts was reduced to the bare minimum, to minimize the number of interfaces. He noted that there would be 1.5-2" thick specification documents written before each contract is let. All these will be subject to design reviews in which the SAC members are welcome to participate.

Draft Science Requirements Doc.

Simkin felt that the current document needed to be reorganized to clearly state what we were after with the telescope, with up-front conclusions and supporting info in Appendices. McMahan agreed that the Executive Summary should stand alone as a summary document and that the document be much terser and more formal. It should be easy to bulletize. Cecil noted that the draft was often vague  because the SAC had not yet made the hard choices. He felt that the document in its present form was in fact a challenge to much of the partnership from the SAC to PROVE that their science could NOT be done on the Blanco in an adequate fashion. The content of Table 1 was NOT wishy washy. Table 2 stated clearly where SOAR could excell and so where our efforts should go.

It was agreed to circulate the draft for revisions. Simkin will work to reword it, then Diaz, then McMahan, then Baldwin. The goal is to complete this first go-around by the middle of Jan.