It is critical that the Hall A collaboration demonstrate its interest
and enthusiasm for the physics program that will be done using the
equipment we have all worked so hard to put in place. I consider the
commissioning a "burden" to be shared by the full collaboration and as such
it should be considered a coherent part of the first set of experiments.
Everyone who is participating in those experiments should participate in
the commissioning as well. If we can't muster the manpower to get the
spectrometers and related instrumentation working, it will have a very
negative impact on what has recently been a very nicely rising curve of
visibility for the hall and its physics program both here and within the
larger Jefferson Lab community. Both the new hall leader, Kees deJager,
and the Coordinating Committee share my concerns about this problem, and
toward the end of this note we present some possible approaches to solving
it for your thought and consideration.
In what follows I provide you with information on how we will be
planning the commissioning activities and the details of the shift
scheduling for the hall. I begin with information on the establishment of
an electronic mailer for scheduling-related issues and then discuss the
process we will follow for the weekly evolution of the run plan. Finally
there is information on how to "sign up" for participation in the running.
If you have suggestions on ways we can improve on the plans outlined
below, or on ways we can more effectively incorporate users into the
commissioning and running process, I would be most interested in receiving
them.
Regards,
Larry
ELECTRONIC MAILER FOR SCHEDULING INFORMATION
We have established this electronic mailer for transmitting
information on the run plan and for coordinating the shift scheduling. The
initial list of subscribers has been taken from the coordinating
committee's list of the Hall A collaboration membership. Anyone can:
add their name to the list by sending a mail message to:
mailserv@cebaf.gov containing the message:
subscribe halla_runs
remove their name from the list by sending a mail message to:
mailserv@cebaf.gov containing the message:
unsubscribe halla_runs
read the archives of every message posted to the list by either sending a
mail message to: mailserv@cebaf.gov containing the message:
send [halla]halla_runs_archive.lis
or
using a web browser and connecting to
http://www.cebaf.gov/~buckle/Hypermail_List_Archives
THE COMMISSIONING PLAN AND WEEKLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEAR-TERM RUN PLAN
The planning for the commissioning runs is being consolidated and made
more public. The basic commissioning plan continues to be available in
Eddy Offerman's document on the World Wide Web
(http://www.cebaf.gov/halla/calibrations/calibration.html). We will use
the second half of the weekly Hall A meeting here at Jefferson Lab as a
forum for planning upcoming runs and for reviewing progress of the
commissioning. This planning will be incorporated into the weekly hall
meeting (which takes place Tuesdays in Room L104 at CEBAF Center) whenever
there is a run scheduled for the following week (or weekend). The purpose
of this discussion will be to define priorities for the work to be done the
following week (or weekend) and to share relevant information with as many
of the people who will be taking shifts as possible.
The run-scheduling portion of the weekly hall meeting will begin with
a discussion of the spectrometer commissioning planned, then review
upcoming detector and DAQ systems activities. Then there will be an
opportunity for anyone interested in an ancillary measurement to present
their ideas and requests (based on previous experience these will cover
everything from beam studies to background measurements to tests focusing
on particular activities that are of interest to individual upcoming
experiments).
If you have some activity that you would like to see on the run plan
there are several avenues to get it included. The first would be to
discuss it with the Hall A staff member who has responsibility for the
broad area in question (e.g. Eddy for the optics, Bogdan for the detector
packages, Bob for the DAQ/trigger, Arun for the beamline, etc.) and have
that staff member add the issue in question to their portion of the run
plan. For items that are not directly part of the spectrometer
commissioning, but rather are related to a specific experiment, the Hall A
staff member assigned as experiment coordinator would be an ideal point of
contact. . You are, of course, welcome to present your test plan yourself
or send your request to me.
In considering requests for beam time during commissioning the basic
priority rules will be as follows:
Priority 1. Anything related to the basic spectrometer commissioning
plan
Priority 2. Anything necessary to prepare for the first commissioning
experiment (the two oxygen measurements)
Priority 3 Anything necessary to prepare for one of the experiments
on the "EXPINT" recommended list of first round
experiments (i.e. things on the published accelerator
schedule).
Priority 4. Anything else.
We will make an effort to schedule additional activities that are of
interest to specific collaboration members in advance, but until the
spectrometer commissioning is well in hand I feel it is critical that we
"keep our eye on the ball" and focus on getting the base equipment working
without diverting time and effort to peripheral (but nonetheless
interesting) issues. This approach will NOT preclude our doing things that
are peripheral - there will be, no doubt, many occasions when there is
enough time left in a run to do some small ancillary measurement but not
enough time to do the next major commissioning activity. However, a key
element of this approach to the commissioning activities is that it WILL
prioritize the work we do in a manner that is understandable by all
concerned.
WHY TAKE SHIFTS?
As I noted in my cover memo to this message, it is critical that the Hall A
collaboration demonstrate its interest and enthusiasm for the physics
program that will be done using the equipment we have all worked so hard to
put in place. I consider the commissioning a "burden" to be shared by the
full collaboration and as such it should be considered a coherent part of
the first set of experiments. Everyone who is participating in those
experiments should participate in the commissioning as well. If we can't
muster the manpower to get the spectrometers and related instrumentation
working, it will have a very negative impact on what has recently been a
very nicely rising curve of visibility for the hall and its physics program
both here and within the larger Jefferson Lab community.
THE PROCESS WE WILL FOLLOW IN DEVELOPING THE SHIFT SCHEDULES FOR
COMMISSIONING ACTIVITIES
As has been the case since the beginning of the commissioning effort,
Riad Suleiman (a Kent State student in residence at Jefferson Lab) will
manage the shift schedule. The procedure will be as follows:
1- A request will be emailed (using this listserver) to hall A
collaborators to inform them of the upcoming commissioning run in Hall A.
This request will contain instructions on how to reply. Please respond by
filling in the "shift schedule example" which will be emailed with the
request and returning it (via the standard email "reply" function) to Riad.
2- Note that emailing the "shift schedule example" back is the ONLY way to
ask for your name to be put on the shift. Riad has enough of a job as it
is without having to respond to phone requests, hall conversations etc. as
well.
3- There will be a deadline listed in the request. This deadline will have
two implications:
a. For people on site (in Hampton Roads: Williamsburg, Newport News,
Norfolk & Virginia Beach), the response MUST be received BEFORE the
deadline. Any response after the deadline WILL BE IGNORED.
b. For people off site (outside Hampton Roads), you are requested to
respond before the deadline BUT you will be given the chance to reply late
(this is but one way in which we are trying to encourage your
participation). Please note that the earlier you reply the better the
chance to get the shift(s) you prefer.
4- Hall A collaborators are encouraged to give as much flexibility as
possible in selecting their favorite shifts. You will be asked to indicate
the shifts for which you are NOT available due to your personal
constraints, and allowed to indicate shifts you would prefer if there are
no problems in filling out the shift schedule. Graduate students and
postdocs are expected to take at least HALF of their shifts as night
shifts.
5- Please keep in mind that you are more than welcome to come and join the
commissioning activities at any time, but to have your participation
recognized by having your name included in the official shift schedule you
must comply with these instructions.
6- Normally, you will be asked to choose a responsibility (magnets,
detectors, data acquisition, beamline/target, or data analysis) you ask for
shifts. In accepting the responsibility for some portion of the
commissioning run it is your responsibility to make sure that you know what
you need to know to fulfill the responsibility. Probably the only way to
do that for most collaboration members will be to participate in earlier
shifts (without direct responsibility for a portion of the equipment) so
that you have the opportunity to learn what to do and how to do it.
7- It is, of course, also the responsibility of each participant to ensure
that they have had the training required to work on site (EH&S, ODH & Rad
Worker). If you have any doubts about the status of your training or need
information on how to get it, please contact the Liaison Office for more
information or see the User Liaison Office page on the Jefferson Lab web
site at:
http://www.cebaf.gov/general/visit/userl.html
8- Each hall A staff whose is responsible for a hardware or a software
which is going to be used in the commissioning run will be asked to provide
a list of the individuals who will be on-call for each shift, in order to
provide emergency "expert help." It is, of course, essential that members
of the collaboration become expert in many aspects of the equipment, so
that we eventually reach a situation in which it is straightforward to have
"on shift" collections of individuals who have the skills necessary to
diagnose and correct all but the most obscure and unusual problems. By the
time we are taking physics data, a requirement for inclusion on the shift
schedule will be that you have been certified as "expert" in at least one
of the relevant areas (or are a novice learner).
9- In case there are not enough people who ask for shifts, the shift
schedule will be assignd randomly from all Hall A collaborators names,
using an algorithm that will work toward distributing the shift
responsibilities equally among all users and hall staff on site. Then,
each collaborator is responsible for taking care of his assignment
CAVEAT FOR THE FUTURE
You will notice that we have not included in the process outlined
above anything beyond moral exhortation to users to participate in the
commissioning activities. If history is a guide, this is not likely to
work and we will be forced to develop a more draconian approach. There are
three periods of time for which we need to have a policy in place: the
remainder of the commissioning activities(which will include 7-day a week
running starting in February); the "EXPINT" experiment phase; and the
remaining experimental program. For the experimental program (past the
"EXPINT" phase) the solution is easy - I will simply require each
collaboration responsible for a particular experiment to provide the
trained manpower necessary to run the experiment. If they are not prepared
to do so, they are not ready to be included in the schedule. The difficult
problem is what to do for the commissioning and early (EXPINT) running.
Absent a dramatic turnaround in the willingness of the collaboration
members to participate, I have discussed the following approach with both
the coordinating committee and the new hall leader, Kees deJager, and they
agree that it is probably the best approach. I outline it here for your
information and feedback prior to its adoption.
For the period from the beginning of the commissioning in February
through the end of the oxygen experiment, I will take the collaboration
list as provided by the Hall A collaboration chair, and randomly assign
shift coverage responsibility (in blocks of about a month at a time) to
groups of collaboration institutions. The assignments will be in
proportion to their membership. The institution will be responsible for
either providing shift coverage during the period in question or,
alternately, negotiating a "trade" with another member institution. These
trades can be from one period to another or for times within the period at
the discretion of the institutions making the "trade."
For each of the remaining EXPINT-recommended experiments, I will ask
the spokespersons for the experiments to manage the shift schedule. I draw
a distinction between the oxygen experiment and the remainder of the
EXPINT-recommended experiments simply because the oxygen experiment is the
first one that will be done with the equipment, and the full collaboration
SHOULD participate in the commissioning and in this experiment. For the
"post-oxygen" EXPINT experiments, I remind you of the policy endorsed by
the coordinating committee at its last meeting:
"Any collaboration member who participates in an EXPINT experiment
will get his or her name on the author list for the publication of
that experiment. Participation is defined to mean either taking at
least one shift on the experiment or meaningful participation in the
analysis, interpretation or publication of the data. Anyone who
participated in the construction of the initial complement of Hall A
equipment, whether or not he or she participates in an experiment,
will be included in the author lists of the NIM article describing the
Hall A facility and in the first two publications of data obtained
using this facility."
The coordinating committee has endorsed this approach to enhancing
collaboration participation in commissioning. While I would like to think
it will not be necessary, I am highly doubtful. Therefore, if you have any
thoughts on alternative approaches to solving the problem please either
send your thoughts to me or contact a member of the coordinating committee.