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Controls and Power Electronics Department Reorganized

The Controls and Power Electronics (CPE) Department is being reorganized to create a more effective team and to integrate the needs of LCLS Project with the ongoing support of the PEP, SPEAR and ILC programs. Many members of CPE are already supporting the LCLS project while others have transferred and have a full-time role. The main features of the reorganization are as follows:

- CPE will be split into two separate departments within the Operations Directorate, Controls and Power Conversion.

- Controls will be headed by Hamid Shoaee, replacing Rusty Humphrey who has just retired. Ron Chestnut will serve as Deputy Department Head, his current position in CPE.

- Power Conversion will be headed by Paul Bellomo, currently Deputy Head of CPE. Paul's new Deputy will be Craig Burkhart, currently in R. Cassel's Pulse Power Engineering Group.

- Members of LCLS Controls currently hired into the LCLS Division will be transferred to the new Controls Department headed by Hamid Shoaee in order to make the lines of communication and authority as clean as possible. Others in the LCLS Controls project engineering group on loan from other Departments or Divisions of course will remain with their current home groups.

- The LCLS Controls Project will continue as a separate organizational unit headed by Hamid Shoaee, who continues to report directly to John Galayda.

- The PEP, SPEAR and ILC programs will continue to be supported by existing home department units providing engineering, programming, maintenance, upgrades and sustaining engineering.

- Administratively, both new departments will report to John Cornuelle, Director of the Operations Directorate, through me as Assistant Director. I will be assisting Hamid Shoaee and Paul Bellomo in organizing and managing the LCLS Controls Project.

The immediate mission of both new Departments is to fully staff the technical positions in LCLS, to fill critical middle-management project positions and to maintain the strongest possible team performance across the board to complete the project on cost and on schedule.

Details of the new organizations are a work in progress and new organization charts will be issued shortly for both the home departments and the LCLS controls project. New focus will be brought to forming technically specialized hardware-software project-capable teams within each department that can more efficiently respond to future project assignments for LCLS, other ongoing programs and future projects. The teams will stress individual growth to stretch our capabilities in all project areas, from planning concepts to designing, prototyping, manufacturing, installing and commissioning systems. Given the added workload, we expect to make some new hires at both the design and system project manager levels.

In addition to continuing their dedicated support of projects and experimental machine operations and maintenance, the teams must meet the demanding goals of the very busy downtime schedule now in progress. These expanded assignments for both Departments will take the full talents and energies of all staff members. Please give Hamid and Ron, Paul and Craig, and all members of their respective staffs your full support and cooperation.

—Ray Larsen
    SLAC Today, October 18, 2006