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FCCIS Project Organisation and Structure

Project governance structure

The project governance structure is shown in the figure below. It follows a vertical structure with the General Assembly (GA) being the highest decision-making body. The Executive Board (EB) coordinates the project and monitors the progress taking input from the Work Package Leaders (WPL) and the Project Coordinator (PC). The EB can also make recommendations for changes to the Description of Action (DoA) that have eventually to be authorised by GA. Day-to-day project management is performed by the WP1 team with the support of a project office.

The Project Coordinator (PC) is the intermediary between the consortium members and the EC (funding authority). The PC performs the tasks assigned in the Grant Agreement (GA) and in the Consortium Agreement (CA). The PC is the primary responsible entity for the administrative and financial elements of the project. The success of its mandate relies on the support from all beneficiary team members, CERN departments and services including those units that are attached to the director general and the availability project-dedicated administra-tion personnel for the following tasks:

• Monitoring of compliance of project participants with their obligations
• Record keeping (consortium contract persons and project team)
• Resource planning, control and reporting
• Financial management, administration of funds and accounting, distribution of pre-finance and payments
• Facilitation of IP management, knowledge and technology transfer
• Implementation of institutional and public communication as documented in the Description of Action
• Project-relevant legal advice
• Supply official documents, authenticate copies of project-relevant legal documents, letters of invitation
• Submit deliverables and milestones (also on behalf of other consortium members)
• Organise meetings, workshops, conferences beyond those planned for individual consortium members
• Prepare agendas, meeting minutes of consortium governance and management bodies
• Make information and communication infrastructures that are needed to effectively and efficiently implement the project available to the consortium (e.g. collaborative web space, event management site, videoconferencing, meeting rooms, hostel for short term stays, document management systems, etc.)

The Executive Board (EB) implements the decisions of the GA and proposes changes in the project and consortium plan to the GA, including changes to the CA and GA annexes. The EB meets on a monthly basis, with the possibility to participate via videoconferencing. The EB consists of the PC (PL and deputy), WPLs and their deputies. This EC funded project includes a subset of the topics that are required for the research infrastructure design. Therefore, further relevant experts are nominated by the PC to participate in the EB (e.g. implementation planning, finance, technologies, cryogenics, infrastructure and operation, theoretical physics, experimental physics). The GA may suggest the appointment of additional EB members. The composition of the EB will be reviewed annually at each GA. The PC chairs all meetings of the EB. The tasks of the EB include, but are not limited to:

• Coordination of the Work Package (WP) tasks
• Monitoring, review, analysis of the effective and efficient implementation of the project including technical and administrative topics
• Implementation of a project-wide decision-making process
• Preparation of meetings
• Monitoring of compliance with the project and consortium plan and development of mitigation actions
• Support of the PC in preparing meetings with the EC and in preparing required data and deliverables
• Consolidation of draft deliverables and quality management
• Preparing contents and timing of public announcements and joint publications by the consortium
• Advise the GA on project task and budget adjustments

The EB delegates day-to-day project management activities to the WP1 (Management) team.

Management principles

The reporting structure (see figure) is based on the concept that deviations to the planned work that can have an impact on the results or timely completion of milestones or deliverables are reported from the project team up through the task level to work package and executive board levels.

Implementing the subsidiarity principle, decisions are taken at the lowest levels at which the required expertise exists in order to ena-ble rapid decision making. Implementing the congruence principle, within a hierarchical level, the team is composed so that relevant expertise exists for the tasks and that responsibility for delivery of the required results can be accepted. Escalation only takes place if mitigation measures at a level do not seem sufficient or if the risk control probability is considered too low. If a potential deviation is unlikely to be controlled at co-ordinator level, the Coordinator develops an appropriate action together with the EC Project Officer (PO). The coordinator must inform the PO as early as possible about potential deviations if they are likely to impact the project plan. At project start and after the teams are composed, the organisation breakdown structure (OBS) is maintained on this page to keep all project members informed about the responsibility, expertise and allocation of tasks to the individual project members.

Subsidiarity principle

Considering the high maturity level, the seniority and the partially high hierarchical level of the team members in this project, the project organisation team has been confident to propose to the European Commission the implementation of the subsidiarity principle as the fundamental working approach in this project.

It means that decisions are taken at the lowest level where expertise exists in order to achieve a high degree of autonomy and rapidity of action.

This principle requests that the participants in the project put at each level adequate expertise and responsibilities in place for the defined work.

If a team member has a doubt about the a) work scope and contents, b) the availability of decision and work responsibility at its level or about c) the existence of adequate expertise for the work, the team member is requested to immediately raise this doubt at work package coordination level. It can then either be addressed ad work package level through a concertation action or the work package lead will raise it to the next higher level, the Executive Board, engaging the reporting and early warning system.

The subsidiarity principle will work, if the congruence principle is implemented.

Congruence principle

The congruence principle requests that for all work in the project, a) the work, b) the responsibility for the work and c) the expertise for the work are made available in a balanced way. If any of those three ingredients is unbalanced with respect to the other two, the subsidiarity principle will fail to work.

Watching out for balanced work, responsibility and expertise levels is the responsibility of each team member.

The work package leaders can remind to watch out, but considering the collaborative approach of an international consortium, the work package lead does not have the means to put balance in place. Balance can only be put in place within the participating organisation. The work package lead will, however, in case of early warning bring the issue to the executive board where it will be delt with at a wider scope and potentially be brought to consortium level.

Organisation breakdown structure

The following image shows the project's organisation breakdown structure (OBS), which is also available as a PDF file.

-- JulieHadre - 2021-06-15