Management of the ITER Buildings Configuration for the Construction and Installation Phase

The ITER project consists of a wide range of complex systems and interfaces which needs to be configured and controlled over the lifetime of the project with a comprehensive configuration management in place. The different maturities of the systems and their schedule need to be integrated in the overall project schedule in order to allow the project to stay in planned cost and schedule. The interfaces have to be advanced for those systems that are still in conceptual design phase to have sufficient information to advance with the systems facing the manufacturing readiness review (MRR). In order to achieve the project objectives, the structure of the ITER Organization (IO) Central Team (CT) is being adapted toward the ongoing construction phase on site as well as in the domestic agencies (DA) with a streamlined organization. Area manager posts have been created for all buildings, the site and the tokamak machine in order to have a prompt decision-making in design and construction phase following project change requests, system deviation requests, and field change requests. Weekly meetings are held between the IO CT with the DA and their contractors to feed the proposed modifications in the project baseline documentation including the associated cost and schedule impact. In parallel the project is preparing the installation phase of the machine and the plant systems layout in identifying the systems required for the first plasma, but also those which are “captive” and need to be installed during the civil works of the building. The schedule for each building and level has been developed to review the required duration and manpower in each area. As the installation of the systems and components will start at the defined ready for equipment dates for each areas and levels, the co-activities among the contractors have to be agreed.