First value engineering workshop

Reducing the costs without increasing the risks, while at the same time improving the performance and the quality of the ITER buildings, sounds like squaring the circle. "In a way it is", says Steve Kautz, one of two engineers from Jacobs Ltd. who acted as facilitator during last week's Value Engineering Workshop. "But simply taking off the top of the Tokamak building to save money is clearly not an option."

Two dozen representatives of the ITER Organization, most of them Department Heads and Responsible Officers, as well as 16 independent experts from the Nuclear Civil Engineering Industry, heavy lifting industry, civil engineers from CERN and the European Domestic Agency "Fusion for Energy" met last week in the Aquabella Hotel in Aix-en-Provence in order to validate the ITER building plans and to develop alternative methods of achieving them.

"ITER definitely is a big project", Kautz, an experienced Value Engineering analyst, summarized the meeting — "not only in its physical sense. Bringing all these different personalities together is surely a challenge of its own."

Special focus was put on the big issues such as the Tokamak complex, the Assembly Hall and the Hot Cell Building. Within the next two weeks a study report is to be issued including the detailed recommendations.

These recommendations will then be studied to see whether they can be taken forward for incorporation into the baseline without compromising the overall schedule — "a bit of a challenge" states Tim Watson from the Civil Engineering and Construction Office who was responsible for organizing the workshop.