Some reference material.

Hi,

As a follow-up to Saturday’s discussion, I’ve placed some reference material in the folder at: http://www-ppd.fnal.gov/stefanski.myweb/

Two documents deal with governance, one for MiniBooNE and the other from NoVA. We might want to be aware that the more we put in writing, the more we give up in flexibility. As an example, we might at this time wish to set down the process for adding collaborators, but we might just as well let the spokespersons deal with the issue without tying their hands to a written policy.

I also include DOE 413.3. At this point you may want to read page 1 of Chapter 1, Attachment III, page 2, and Attachment IV, page 1. These define the use of the term “critical decision” and the requirements DOE has for each.

In a nutshell, there are five critical decisions:
1. CD0, Approve Mission Need,
Requires an acquisition strategy, a justification of mission need document,
and a mission need independent project review;
2. CD1, Approve Preliminary Baseline Need,
Requires a Conceptual Design Report;
3. CD2, Approve Performance Baseline,
Requires a project execution plan;
4. CD3, Approve Start of Construction,
Requires Congressional approval if necessary;
5. CD4, Approve Start of Operations or Project Closeout,
Requires completion of construction.

There are also dollar thresholds:

$5M to $20M reports to a subordinate of the field office.
$20M to $100M reports to the field office manager.
$100M to $400M reports to the Program Secretarial Office.
Over $400M reports to the Secretarial Acquisition Executive.

I’m not familiar with NSF rules, but the CD process is a fairly standard part of science management these days. So, ultimately, we’re looking for the equivalent of CD0. This does not require a Conceptual Design Report, but does involve a “mission need independent project review.” An NSF review of reactor projects in January was mentioned at the collaboration meeting. This might be the equivalent to the mission need review, in which case we might want to concentrate on documenting the need Braidwood compared to other possibilities. At any rate, we might wish to clarify what NSF/DOE expects of us in the next few months.

Cheers,

Ray Stefanski
Fermilab, MS122
P.O. Box 500
Batavia, Il 60510
Phone: 630.8403872
Received on Tue Nov 23 14:59:49 2004