Focus on ITER Management

As the sun shone down onto the harbour of Cassis, inside a nearby meeting room the spotlight was on management as ITER senior management met over the weekend of 29 Feb — 2 March for the first Senior Management off-site meeting.

The first morning was spent concentrating on ITER's performance goals for 2008 and in the afternoon, Kaname Ikeda, Norbert Holtkamp and all the Deputy Director-Generals gave presentations, outlining what each of them wanted to achieve this year and how they can measure their success. This concentration on Management, the Organization, and a clear definition of objectives was extremely useful.

Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, the Chairman of ITER Council also attended the final session of the meeting and gave a presentation on how ITER can interact effectively with Council. He congratulated ITER on organizing the off-site meeting and underlined the global importance of the ITER project. Sir Chris emphasized how crucial it is to set up relationships of trust and confidence with Council Members, the Member Parties and Domestic Agencies, noting that it takes time. He also reminded ITER management how long it can take to build up effective systems and trust within a major international organization. A consistent goal for ITER is safety, emphasizing, reinforcing, and assuring the integration of safe and secure practices throughout the project is of the highest priority.

There were also presentations from Francois Gauché from Agence ITER France, Colin Miège from Mission ITER and the Communications Divison outlining the proposed communication strategy for the Organization.