16 Integration of Detectors into a Large Experiment: Examples from ATLAS. . .
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detector operation, monitoring of the data quality and data preparation, leading to
the analysis work required to understand precisely the behaviour of the detectors
and extract as efficiently as possible the exciting physics ahead of us. The years
spent together and the difficulties overcome over a 15-year long period of design
and construction have certainly cemented the collaborations in a spirit of respect
and mutual understanding of all their diverse components. This will surely turn
out to be an excellent preparation for the forthcoming challenges when faced
with real experimental data.
16.2.3.4 A Well Integrated and Strong Technical Co-ordination Team
It is clear that without such a team the experiments would most probably have
faced insurmountable construction delays and integration problems. The Technical
Co-ordination team must in a sense be perceived as the strong backbone of the
experiment by all the physicists in the community. This was indeed the case in the
installation phase of the experiments, at a time when it had to smoothly execute
a complex suite of integration and installation operations for detector components
arriving from all over the world. But this was less the case 10–15 years ago, at a
time when the physicists and engineers in this team were sometimes perceived as a
nuisance disrupting the delicate balance of the collaboration and were criticised in
different ways:
• many physicists and engineers had great trouble when asked to specify all the
details of cables, pipes and connectors, at a very early time (15 years ago) when
they were desperately trying to move into mass production;
• strong resistance to reviews was encountered, based on partially correct, but also
partially fallacious, arguments that all the expertise in a given area was already
available in the project under review;
• the multiplicity of reviews also caused sometimes considerable friction and
frustration, especially since an overall co-ordination between funding agency
reviews and internal project reviews was almost impossible to put into place.
In retrospect, these reviews are indeed necessary, whether or not all of their recommendations and outcomes have turned out to be of a specific concrete usefulness,
because they have usually forced the project teams to collect documentation, take
stock, step back and think about issues sometimes obscured by the more immediate
and pressing problems at hand.
Although the construction of the individual detector components can be argued
to have been quite successful under the umbrella of deliverables and in the absence
of a fully centralised management of the experiment resources, there are obviously
a variety of tasks, which have to be solved by a strong centralised team of designers,
engineers and physicists. As in any such process, this team is much better accepted if
it is built up at least partially from people within the collaboration, who are already
well integrated in and known to the collaboration. Despite all the grumbling and
713
detector operation, monitoring of the data quality and data preparation, leading to
the analysis work required to understand precisely the behaviour of the detectors
and extract as efficiently as possible the exciting physics ahead of us. The years
spent together and the difficulties overcome over a 15-year long period of design
and construction have certainly cemented the collaborations in a spirit of respect
and mutual understanding of all their diverse components. This will surely turn
out to be an excellent preparation for the forthcoming challenges when faced
with real experimental data.
16.2.3.4 A Well Integrated and Strong Technical Co-ordination Team
It is clear that without such a team the experiments would most probably have
faced insurmountable construction delays and integration problems. The Technical
Co-ordination team must in a sense be perceived as the strong backbone of the
experiment by all the physicists in the community. This was indeed the case in the
installation phase of the experiments, at a time when it had to smoothly execute
a complex suite of integration and installation operations for detector components
arriving from all over the world. But this was less the case 10–15 years ago, at a
time when the physicists and engineers in this team were sometimes perceived as a
nuisance disrupting the delicate balance of the collaboration and were criticised in
different ways:
• many physicists and engineers had great trouble when asked to specify all the
details of cables, pipes and connectors, at a very early time (15 years ago) when
they were desperately trying to move into mass production;
• strong resistance to reviews was encountered, based on partially correct, but also
partially fallacious, arguments that all the expertise in a given area was already
available in the project under review;
• the multiplicity of reviews also caused sometimes considerable friction and
frustration, especially since an overall co-ordination between funding agency
reviews and internal project reviews was almost impossible to put into place.
In retrospect, these reviews are indeed necessary, whether or not all of their recommendations and outcomes have turned out to be of a specific concrete usefulness,
because they have usually forced the project teams to collect documentation, take
stock, step back and think about issues sometimes obscured by the more immediate
and pressing problems at hand.
Although the construction of the individual detector components can be argued
to have been quite successful under the umbrella of deliverables and in the absence
of a fully centralised management of the experiment resources, there are obviously
a variety of tasks, which have to be solved by a strong centralised team of designers,
engineers and physicists. As in any such process, this team is much better accepted if
it is built up at least partially from people within the collaboration, who are already
well integrated in and known to the collaboration. Despite all the grumbling and