NSF Proposal Elements and Planning US APA Construction Proposal - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

NSF Proposal Elements and Planning

US APA Construction Proposal Workshop June 10-11, 2019 Ed Blucher David Schmitz

Proposal Elements

• Project Summary (1 page)
• Project Description (25 pages)
• References Cited
• Biographical Sketches (2 pages each)
• COAs
• Subaward Budgets and Budget Justifications
• Facilities, Equipment, and Other Resources
• List of Senior Personnel
• List of Partner Institutions
• Project Execution Plan
• Cost and Schedule
• Letters of Collaboration
• Commitment Letters from ‘host organization’

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Proposal Elements

• Project Summary (1 page)

~done

• Project Description (25 pages)
• References Cited

~done

• Biographical Sketches (2 pages each)

~done

• COAs

~done

• Subaward Budgets and Budget Justifications

update

• Facilities, Equipment, and Other Resources

update

• List of Senior Personnel

~done

• List of Partner Institutions

~done

• Project Execution Plan
• Cost and Schedule
• Letters of Collaboration
• Commitment Letters from ‘host organization’

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Project Description

A. Science Drivers

a. Describe potential for addressing one or more identified high-priority science goals, its potential for advancing scientific discovery, and the project’s potential to benefit the broader U.S. research community.

i. A flagship particle physics experiment in the US

b. P5 report: https://www.usparticlephysics.org/

i. Pursue the physics of neutrino mass

c. NSF’s 10 Big Ideas: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/big_ideas/

i. Mid-scale Research Infrastructure ii. Windows on the Universe

B. Pre-implementation Activities Accomplished

a. Include results from prior NSF support and other relevant activities that have prepared the infrastructure project to be implemented.

i. Chicago/Syracuse/Wisconsin/Yale 2018 planning grant ii. Past NSF investment in LArTPC development and neutrino experiments iii. ProtoDUNE-SP

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Project Description

C. Implementation Plan

a. Discuss the management and technical activities that will be accomplished to prepare, initiate, execute and conclude implementation of the project through commissioning. This section should include a summary of the Project Execution Plan including a description of technical readiness and project management, and an

• rganizational chart or list of senior personnel and their roles.

D. Operations and Utilization Plan

a. Discuss the overall plan for operating the infrastructure including as a minimum management/governance plans, strategy for access and utilization of the infrastructure by the target research communities, and planned metrics and evaluation of the success and impact of the NSF investment in this infrastructure. This section must also identify the anticipated sources of operations and maintenance funding, including any needs for ongoing, NSF-supported operations and maintenance that may be requested outside of the Mid-scale RI-2 program.

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Project Description

E. Life-cycle Cost Estimation

a. Summarize the life-cycle cost estimation. Include a summary of activities and key cost drivers for each future lifecycle stage starting with implementation and ending with divestment.

F. Broader Impacts

a. This section should describe the anticipated broader impacts of the infrastructure, and specifically include how the implementation of the proposed infrastructure contributes to student training and involvement of a diverse workforce in mid-scale infrastructure development, and/or data management and the research activities stemming from such facilities. Provide an estimate of the size of the anticipated user base for the proposed research infrastructure and the basis of this estimate.

G. International Component

a. Proposals with an international component should include a description of the foreign collaborator’s role in the project.

i. Collaboration with UK to supply half of APAs for first two DUNE modules

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Project Execution Plan (PEP)

• Guidelines for the PEP are given in the (285 page) NSF

Major Facilities Guide:

• https://www.nsf.gov/bfa/lfo/docs/Major_Facilities_Guide_2019_Draft_For_Public_Comment_December_2018.pdf
• PEP has a prescribed outline with 16 Sections:
• Introduction
• Organization
• Design and Development
• Construction Project Definition
• Staffing
• Risk and Opportunity Management
• Systems Engineering
• Configuration Control
• Acquisitions
• Project Management Controls
• Site and Environment
• Cyber-infrastructure
• Environmental, Safety, and Health
• Review and Reporting
• Integration and Commissioning
• Project Close-Out

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• range sections are

required for mid-scale,

• thers are optional

Subaward Budgets… and justifications

• We’ll review each of the Work Packages at this meeting

and discuss the details of the local execution plans:

• Are the costs well estimated?
• BoEs and/or vendor quotes available for everything?
• Are the schedule assumptions realistic?
• Are local facilities and resources adequate?
• What are the setup requirements and start-up plan for

local operations?

• What is the local staffing plan? Type of labor, hours, and

rates?

• How much uncosted ‘scientific labor’ is assumed?

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Subaward Budgets… and justifications

• We need updated drafts of Budgets and Budget Justifications by

the end of the month - Friday, June 28

• Budget files can be sent directly to:
• Dave Schmitz: dwschmitz@uchicago.edu
• James Eason: jeason@uchicago.edu
• Budget Justifications: I will send new shares to a Google Doc file

that will initially contain your pre-proposal Budget Justification

• USE IT!
• If you want to develop it offline in a docx offline, fine, but move the text

into the google doc file when done.

• Later refinements should be done directly in the google doc
• This is how we guarantee common formatting and how we make sure we

do not lose a final version in an email attachment!

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Facilities… Equipment, and Other Resources

• Guidance from Solicitation:
• For NSF to review the scope of a proposed project, all organizational resources necessary for, and

available to, a project must be described in this section of the proposal.

• Proposers should describe only those resources that are directly applicable.
• The description should not include any quantifiable financial information.
• Proposers should include a description of the internal and external resources -- both physical and

personnel -- that the organization and its collaborators will provide to the project, if funded.

• Such information must be provided in this section, in lieu of other parts of the proposal (e.g.,

budget justification, project description).

• Please review your text against the above criteria!!
• Unfunded personnel resources (‘scientific labor’) are a big issue to be
• included. How much off-project labor is included in your plan?
• We need a quantitative breakdown of how much NSF-base-supported and

DOE-base-supported “scientific labor” is anticipated in each of the work plans (total FTEs and as a percentage of the effort).

• This will inform our Risk and Contingency estimates in the proposal.
• Need this also by June 28.

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Drafting of Other Proposal Documents

• Proposal PI team organizing the drafting of Project

Description and Project Execution Plan

• Aim for complete drafts by mid-July
• Cost Book and Schedule will be done in consultation with

Alberto (DUNE project controls) and must reflect the final Budgets for the subawards

• Hence needing them back before June 28

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Pre-Proposal Review Feedback

• First the good news: generally very positive reviews!
• In terms of broader impacts, my first comment would be that this experimental program is going to keep Fermilab

at the very forefront of experimental particle physics. This proposal is about as important as it can get for the future of US particle physics.

• This is an outstanding proposal and exemplifies the best characteristics of the mid-scale program. The

science that will be enabled by this proposal is widely recognized to be the highest priority in the US high energy physics program from the mid 2020's for many years.

• The bulk of the construction of the anode plane arrays is being done on university campuses. This is incredibly
• important. It allows undergraduate and graduate students in the universities to be actively involved in the

construction and testing project. With the enormous scale and lengthening timescale of particle physics projects, it becomes harder and harder to keep the field linked to educational institutions. It also becomes harder and harder to focus students' minds on the fact that physics is an experimental subject based on innovative technology. I have seen people do analysis on ATLAS data as undergraduates, then graduates, then postdocs, then junior faculty. It makes one wonder how future experiments will get done. The distributed construction project for DUNE is an example of how we have to do it.

• The principal broader impact of this proposal would be to enable a very diverse spectrum of engagement by an
• utstanding university community. It has been challenging within high energy physics for university groups to

lead large-scale fabrications. This would change this dynamic for many leading universities in HEP. Developing and building large-scale apparatus provides outstanding opportunities for undergraduate students, graduate students and young scientists to both learn by doing and to take leading responsibilities. The institutions in this proposal are well qualified to ensure this broader impact on future scientists.

• The proposal is very well organized and well written and the team involved has very significant experience both in

terms of the physics goals and with the detector hardware.

• They are part of a large collaboration which has access to significant resources through Fermilab.

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Pre-Proposal Review Feedback

• Also some good feedback for things to work on:
• Technical Readiness: ProtoDUNE has provided a good basis for evaluating general technical

readiness of this project for production. However, the 10-page proposal limit, and the lack of publicly available TDRs, leaves several open questions that the group should address in their full proposal.

• Are any changes to the prototype versions of the APAs or their electronics envisaged?

Experience from the ProtoDUNE production and run may lead to design changes, but none of these were mentioned in the proposal. If design changes are foreseen, what is the schedule to make them and how will they be verified?

• To date, all APA construction work in the U.S. appears to have occurred at Wisconsin.

Although the experience gained at PSL will inform work at the Chicago and Yale APA centers, I still would have liked to see more information about how their production lines are being set up and how their personnel are being trained.

• Testing plans for the APA wire planes and electronics need to be spelled out more clearly.

Successful APA construction will be measured by cold-testing 10% of the production APAs using a full readout electronics and a scaled-down version of the DAQ. No mention was made of how quality control will be performed on the other 90% of the APAs.

• Only minimal discussion of integration, commissioning, and installation plans are included

in this proposal. Some effort for these activities - mainly students - is called out in the institute budget justifications. Since these activities are likely to be quite complicated, a more complete view of the plans should be included.

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Pre-Proposal Review Feedback

• Also some good feedback for things to work on:
• Project management: A management structure at the work package level is discussed in the
• proposal. Length limitations prevent details of the management plan to be described, so I have several

questions that I would encourage the group to address in their Project Execution Plan.

• There are very complicated dependencies between the deliverables at the institutes contributing

to this project. Managing this will be a big job, but resources for this seem very thin. I would have expected to see project support correspond to 10-15% of the budget.

• The division of production effort between the U.S. and the U.K. is clearly defined. However, the

roles of the two countries in finalizing the APA design and in developing coherent quality assurance and quality control criteria are less evident.

• Although the existence of a Risk Register was mentioned in the proposal, there was no

discussion of the main project risks.

• The group has set aside 30% of the total project cost as contingency. This seems to be a

reasonable amount given the project status. However, it would be good to see how this compares to the estimate of needed contingency from an analysis of project risk and uncertainty.

• Schedule float was not discussed at all in the proposal. A clear statement of how much float is

available in the current schedule and an analysis of how that float compares with estimated needs based on project risks and uncertainties should be added.

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DUNE TDR

• The DUNE TDR is a very important document for us
• Also due end of July (26th to the LBNC)
• It will be submitted as a supplementary document to
• ur NSF proposal
• It will provide the bulk of the technical details about

what we are building

• It must match the production plan and schedule

presented in our proposal

• So please help by also reviewing this document

carefully when the final draft is made available in early July.

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Monday, June 10 9:00 NSF proposal elements and planning - Ed/Dave 9:45 APA production planning and schedule - Alberto 10:30 BREAK 11:00 Wis/PSL - APA production, CR boards, APA frames, CE support hardware, lessons learned 12:00 LUNCH 13:00 Yale - APA production 14:00 Chicago - APA production 15:00 BREAK 15:30 The Data Selection Proposal and supply of mini-DAQ systems for APA testing - Georgia 16:00 Harvard - QA/AC 16:30 Iowa - APA frames 17:15 END Tuesday, June 11 9:00 Syracuse - G bias boards 9:40 NIU - adapter boards 10:20 BREAK 10:50 William & Mary - U/V boards, shipping containers 11:50 UTA - X boards 12:30 LUNCH 13:30 Houston - G boards 14:10 Mississippi - mesh panels 14:55 BREAK 15:25 CSU - CE support hardware 15:55 Otterbein - software tools, databases 16:15 Discussion - From here to Aug. 2 17:30 END

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