Regional and National Events 2010

Wondering about the CERN's Huge project which is scheduled to find the God's particles that created man?

CERN's LHC is a Mega-project. And Mega-projects are key drivers of economic, social and environmental progress. They are usually characterized by huge budgets, long durations and a large number of consultants, contractors and subcontractors.

This exclusive presentation explores the role of managing and completing the installation activities of the LHC at CERN as a Mega Project. The LHC, with its 27 kms, is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was approved by the CERN Council in December 1994 and it provides the first collisions on 30th March 2010. From the beginning of the project, the CERN management opted for a very aggressive installation planning based on a just-in-time sequencing of all activities.

The presentation describes the schedule evolution through the lifetime of the project. It includes the analysis on how different factors (i.e. technical development, procurement, logistics and organization) have caused the major rescheduling and the role of control and follow up of the installation activities. It concludes by summarizing the important lessons learned from the strategy implemented which is potentially applicable to other mega-projects.

Our speaker

Mrs Katy Foraz

The speaker is Mrs Katy Foraz, one of the project managers working with CERN on this project. She is a member of PMI Switzerland, and is the schedule officer for the LHC project from 2003 and she is working at CERN since 1993. She is also the coach for the CERN training program in Operational Project Planning and she is author of approximately 30 publications at international level on Project Management.

Swiss Labour Contractors Sàrl (www.swisslabourcontractors.com), an organization based in Geneva/Zürich for helping independent professionals/contractors to do business in and outside Switzerland, has kindly agreed to sponsor the event.