EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY

La Silla Observatory

SCIENCE OPERATION DEPARTMENT

Re-Engineering Project:

Staffing Plan

LSO-PLA-ESO-9000-6/1.0

Prepared	Olivier Hainaut	2002-06-01
Released	Jorge Melnick	2002-06-13

Revision History

0.1	2002-06-01 first draft
0.9	2002-06-11 internal review version
1.0	2002-06-13 review comments included

CONTENT

1- Introduction
- 1.1- Purpose and Scope
- 1.2- General Comments
- 1.3- Stylistic Convention
- 1.4- Documents and References
- 1.5- Abbreviations and Acronyms
2- Current Staffing Situation
3- SciOp Staffing Plan

3.1- Introduction
3.2- Operation Engineers
3.3- Electronics
3.4- Astronomers
3.5- TIOs

3.5.1- Steady State
3.5.2- Transition period

3.6- Re-engineering Positions

3.6.1- Introduction
3.6.2- Documentation and Web Specialist
3.6.3- Data Handling Operation

1 - INTRODUCTION

1.1- PURPOSE AND SCOPE

This document discusses the staffing plan of the SciOp Department,

1.2- STYLISTIC CONVENTION AND DEFINITIONS

In this document, "he" and "his" refer to the position described. In practice, these position can be occupied by people of any gender.

"Transition period" refers to Jul. 1, 2002 (SciOp starts) until Dec.31, 2003 (end of WFI operation).
"Steady-state period" refers to the period after Jan.1, 2004, until the end of the current Long Range Plan.

1.4- DOCUMENTS AND REFERENCES

[1] LSO-SPE-ESO-90000-1 SciOp Job Titles and Job Descriptions
[2] LSO-PLA-ESO-90000-1 SciOp General Operation Plan
[3] LSO-PLA-ESO-90000-3 SciOp Astronomy Operation Plan
[4] LSO-PLA-ESO-90000-4 SciOp Documentation and Communication plan

1.5- ABBREVIATIONS and ACRONYMS

FTE: Full Time Univalent
LED: La Silla Engineering Department
LRP: Long Range Plan
MET: MEdium size Telescope
NTTT: NTT Team
OpA: Operation Astronomer
SciOp: La Silla Science Operation Department
TIO: Telescope and Instrument Operator
WFI: Wide Field Imager

2- CURRENT STAFFING SITUATION

SciOp will merge the 3 optical telescope teams, i.e. NTT T, 360Cat and MET. The current (as of 2002-Jul-01) staff of these teams are composed as following (post numbers to the best of my knowledge, job titles uniformised according to [1]).

NTT

Astronomers: 2 staffs, 1 Opa, 2 fellows:

CSO301 Hainaut, O. Astronomer, Head of Science Operations

CSO302 Vanzi, L. Astronomer

PSO005 Foellmi, C. Operation Astronomer (replacement P.Leisy)

FDG103 Billeres, M. Fellow Astronomer

FDG101 Willis, J. Fellow Astronomer (repl. S.Brillant)

TIOs: 6 TIOs

LSO308 Miranda, J. Telescope and Instrument Operator

LSO309 Aubel, K. Telescope and Instrument Operator

LSO310 Castex, D Telescope and Instrument Operator

LSO312 Castillo, M. Telescope and Instrument Operator

LSO313 Pizarro, M. Telescope and Instrument Operator

LSO314 Sanchez, A. Telescope and Instrument Operator

Electronics: 1 Eng, 1 Tech.

LSO306 Parra, R. Electronics Engineer

LSO307 Santana, J. Electronician

Operation Engineer: 1

CSO303 Le Saux, P. Operation Engineer

3.6m

Astronomers: 2 Staffs, 1 OpA, 2 Fellows:

CSO401 Sterzik, M. Astronomer

CSO402 Pompei, E. Astronomer (ex M.Kuerster)

PSO003 LoCurto, G. Operation Astronomer

FDG106 Brooks, K. Fellow Astronomer (to be replaced by Dahl)

FDG105 Hau, G. Fellow Astronomer

TIOs: 6

LSO404 Cortes J. Telescope and Instrument Operator (Repl. E. Araya)

LSO405 Gonzalez, A. Telescope and Instrument Operator

LSO407 Matamoros, E. Telescope and Instrument Operator

LSO412.LaFuente, C. Telescope and Instrument Operator

LSO413 Roman, G. Telescope and Instrument Operator

LSO414 Wenderoth, E. Telescope and Instrument Operator

Electronics: 1 Eng, 1 Tech.

LSO408 Fluxa, J. Electronics Engineer

LSO410 Vilaza, J. Electronician

Operation Engineer: 1

LSO406 Barrios, E. Operation Engineer

MET = 2.2 + 1.54 + 1.52

Astronomers: 1 staff, 2 OpA, 3 Fellow:

CSO502 Mendez, R. Astronomer

PSO004 Selman, F. Operation Astronomer

PSO006 Pritchard, J. Operation Astronomer

FDG105 Schmidtobreick, L Fellow Astronomer

FDG110 Germany, L. Fellow Astronomer

FDG117 Saviane, I. Fellow Astronomer

TIOs: 8

LSO506 Araya, J. Telescope and Instrument Operator

LSO507 Esparza, C. Telescope and Instrument Operator
LSO508 Torrejon, A. Telescope and Instrument Operator
LSO509 Labrana, Telescope and Instrument Operator

LSO510 NN. Telescope and Instrument Operator (Repl. Sanchez, F.)

LSO511 NN. Telescope and Instrument Operator (Repl. Cortes, J.)

LSO512 Martinez, M. Telescope and Instrument Operator

LSO513 Vega, R. Telescope and Instrument Operator

Electronics: 1 Eng, 1 Tech.

LSO503 Olivares, R. Electronics Engineer

LSO505 Kastowsky, H. Electronician

This totals to:

Astronomers: 5 staff, 4 OpAs, 7 fellows.
TIOs: 20 (2 positions not manned).
Op.Engineers: 2
Electronics: 3 Eng, 3 Tech.

3- SCIOP STAFFING PLAN

3.1- INTRODUCTION

The ESO Long Range Plan is the main constraint on the SciOp Staffing Plan. It dictates the following:

The positions attached to the operation of the 1.5m telescopes disappear at the end of 2002.
The positions attached to the operation of the 2.2m/WFI operation disappear at the end of 2003-Q4.

The LRP FTEs from the ESO budget are listed in Table 1, exactly as in the 2002 budget (i.e. some names are already obsolete).

The second constraint on the SciOp Staffing Plan is the optimization of available human resources, putting the emphasis on using the currently available resources to prepare the steady-state period.

Finally, Paranal will recruit 2 TIOs and 1 Astro for VST operation. SciOp will aim at training the TIOs to a level superior to the VLT requirements, i.e. impeccable night operation (VLT requirement), impeccable day operation, and excellent "background" skill, in such a way that SciOp TIOs would be by far superior to any external candidate.

Table 1: LRP according to the Budget

WP PerID Personnel Name GRP-DIV Post ID Post 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Astronomers (50/50%) WP633 3p6op MKU Kuerster, M. CFT-LSO CSO402 Astro 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 WP633 3p6op STM Sterzik, M. CFT-LSO CSO401 Astro 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 WP634 METop MER Mendez, R. MET-LSO CSO502 Astro 0 0 0 0 0 WP637 WFIop MER Mendez, R. MET-LSO CSO502 Astro 0.5 0.5 0 0 0 WP642 NTTMaint OHA Hainaut, O. LNT-LSO CSO301 Astro 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 WP643 NTTop LVA Vanzi, L. LNT-LSO CSO302 Astro 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 WP643 NTTop OHA Hainaut, O. LNT-LSO CSO301 Astro 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 WP644 METMaint MER Mendez, R. MET-LSO CSO502 Astro 0 0 0 0 0 WP694 NTTupgr oha Hainaut, O. LNT-LSO CSO301 Astro 0 0 0 0 0 Total FTE Astro: 2.5 2.5 2 2 2 Total People Astro: (Conversion: 0.5FTE/Person) 5 5 4 4 4 Fellows (50/50%) WP633 3p6op BRK Brooks, K. SCV-ODG FDG106 Fellow 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 WP633 3p6op RAT Athreya, R. SCV-ODG FDG101 Fellow 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 WP634 METop ISA Saviane, I. SCV-ODG FDG117 Fellow 0.5 0 0 0 0 WP637 WFIop HJO Jones, H. SCV-ODG FDG105 Fellow 0.5 0.5 0 0 0 WP637 WFIop LGE Germany, L. SCV-ODG FDG110 Fellow 0.5 0.5 0 0 0 WP643 NTTop MBI Billeres, M. SCV-ODG FDG103 Fellow 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 WP643 NTTop MBI NN to be hired SCV-ODG FDG10x Fellow 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 Total FTE Fellows: 3.5 3 2 2 2 Total People Fellows: (Conversion: 0.5FTE/Person) 7 6 4 4 4 OpAs (80%/20%) WP633 3p6op NAG LoCurto G. CFT-LSO PSO003 Astro 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.8 WP634 METop JPR Pritchard, J. MET-LSO PSO006 OpA 0.8 0 0 0 0 WP637 WFIop JSE Selman, F. MET-LSO PSO004 OpA 0.8 0.8 0 0 0 WP643 NTTop PLE Leisy, P. CFT-LSO PSO005 OpA 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.8 Total FTE OpAs: 3.2 2.4 1.6 1.6 1.6 Total People OpAs: (Conversion: 0.8FTE/Person) 4 3 2 2 2 TIOs (100%) WP633 3p6op EAR Araya, E. CFT-LSO LSO404 TIO 1 1 1 1 1 WP633 3p6op EWE Wenderoth, E. CFT-LSO LSO414 TIO 1 1 1 1 1 WP633 3p6op GOA Gonzalez, A. CFT-LSO LSO405 TIO 1 1 1 1 1 WP633 3p6op GRO Roman, G. CFT-LSO LSO413 TIO 1 1 1 1 1 WP633 3p6op MAE Matamoros, E. CFT-LSO LSO407 TIO 1 1 1 1 1 WP633 3p6op N.N. Replacement CFT-LSO LSO412 TIO 1 1 1 1 1 WP634 METop ATO Torrejon, A. MET-LSO LSO508 TIO 1 0 0 0 0 WP634 METop RVE Vega, R. MET-LSO LSO513 TIO 1 0 0 0 0 WP637 WFIop FLA Labraña, F. MET-LSO LSO509 TIO 1 1 0 0 0 WP637 WFIop RCA Castillo, R. MET-LSO LSO507 TIO 1 1 0 0 0 WP637 WFIop COJ Cortes, J. LNT-LSO LSO511 TIO 1 1 0 0 0 WP637 WFIop FSA Sanchez, F. MET-LSO LSO510 TIO 1 1 0 0 0 WP637 WFIop MMR Martinez, M. LNT-LSO LSO512 TIO 1 1 0 0 0 WP637 WFIop JAR Araya, J. MET-LSO LSO506 TechEng 1 1 0 0 0 WP643 NTTop ASA Sanchez, A. LNT-LSO LSO314 TIO 1 1 1 1 1 WP643 NTTop DCA Castex, D LNT-LSO LSO310 TIO 1 1 1 1 1 WP643 NTTop JMI Miranda, J. LNT-LSO LSO308 TIO 1 1 1 1 1 WP643 NTTop KAU Aubel, K. LNT-LSO LSO309 TIO 1 1 1 1 1 WP643 NTTop MAP Pizarro, M. LNT-LSO LSO313 TIO 1 1 1 1 1 WP643 NTTop MOC Castillo, M. LNT-LSO LSO312 TIO 1 1 1 1 1 Total TIOs: 20 18 12 12 12 Operation Engineers (100%) WP633 3p6op EBA Barrios, E. CFT-LSO LSO406 OpEng 1 1 1 1 1 WP642 NTTMaint PLS Le Saux, P. LNT-LSO CSO303 OpEng 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 WP643 NTTop PLS Le Saux, P. LNT-LSO CSO303 OpEng. 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.8 Total OpEngineers: 2 2 2 2 2

3.2- OPERATION ENGINEERS

Two Operation Engineers are needed; their duties are described in the SciOp General Operation Plan [2].

3.3- ELECTRONICS

The 6 Electronics will not work on the SciOps staff, but will be integrated into other teams and departments. This section is therefore only for information, and is not formally part of the SciOp staffing plan. The current agreement with LED is that it will include a "Telescope Support" sub-department, lead by R.Parra, and including J.Vilaza on a long term (> 1yr) bases, and other Electronics technician to be trained and certified by the current Teams' Electronics. This training and certification process is critical in the concept of the ISO-9001 documentation and training, in order to ensure that their in-depth knowledge is not dispersed. In that framework, J.Santana will remain full time in LED/Telescope Support till October, and J.Fluxa ~50% in LED/Telesc.Support until October (the other ~50% in APEX). R.Olivares will move to APEX project, but he shall complete his job on the FEROS project. H.Kastowsky will retire in 2002.

3.4- ASTRONOMERS STAFFING PLAN

The steady-state staffing level required to operate the 3 telescopes is 4 staff astronomers, 3 OpAs and 3 Fellows, implying the transfer of one of the Fellow FTEs to an OpA FTE (i.e., instead of 4 Fellows and 2 OpAs as planned in the original La Silla 2000+ long range plan).

This ensures that SciOp will operate with an average of 2.7 astronomers per night, including training, which is considered to be the minimum to provide support to the 3 remaining telescopes, provided that the schedule recommendations outlined in the Astronomy Operation Plan [3] can be implemented (in summary, an increase of the mean length of the "Visiting Astronomer" observing runs to >3n, a more strict control of the programs that are accepted in Service Mode for the NTT and 3.6m, and, as often as possible mount instruments of the same instrument force simultaneously on the different telescopes). If these recommendations cannot be implemented, the staffing level will have to increase, or the services provided decreased.

For the transition period, the strategy is not to cut any contract and to reach the number of FTEs available by renewing only selected contracts. As of today, all the SciOp-to-be astronomers have fixed term contracts.

The table below summarizes the current contract situation, as well as the staffing plan.

Colored boxes represent the extension of the existing contracts:

2F is a fellow on a 2+1 yr contract (2yrs with 80n+35d duties, +1 yr in a Chilean institution OR 1yr with 40n+17d duties).
3F is a fellow on a 3+1 yr contract (3yrs with 80n+35d duties, +1 yr in a European institution OR 1yr with 40n+17d duties). The contract extensions of M.Billeres, L.Germany and L.Schmidtobreick (from 2F to 3F, cf Memo from B.Leibundgut) are taken into account in this table.
fl is a Fellow during his last year (3dr or 4th, depending upon whether he is a 2F or 3F). During that year, the FTE of the Fellow is not charged to SciOp budget, but to Science.
O is an OpA, considering that their basic 1yr contract is to be renewed for a total of 3yr.
A is an Astronomer, considering a 3yr contract.

Boxes with a letter but no color background corresponds to the replacement of the person listed after the end of his contract.
Empty box means that that position is closed.

The section "Actual Nr" counts the positions of each type, and "FTEs from LRP" is the LRP budget.

Table 2: Astronomer staffing plan, transition period and beyond

This plan is balanced (i.e. using the allocated number of FTEs) when considering complete years. For instance, in 2003, there is an excess of OpAs during the first half of the year, which is compensated by a deficit of Fellows during the 2d half.

3.5- TELESCOPE & INSTRUMENT OPERATORS

3.5.1- Steady State

The Long Range Plan considers 12 TIOs for steady state SciOps. Considering that full coverage of a position corresponds to 2.4 FTE, this ensures 5 fully covered positions. Following the Operation Plan [2], these will be distributed among day, night and background operation. The actual distribution will depend on the daily operation needs, with 2 day TIOs, 2 night TIOs and 1 background TIO being the typical distribution.

This implies that

the maintenance is performed by LED,
as many as possible of the operation and daily maintenance (monitoring) tasks are highly optimized and automated.
the telescope scheduling constraints described in [3] --more specifically, fraction of service observing on the 3 telescopes and average run length > 3night (to minimize the set-up changes)-- can be implemented.
telescope operation from the Common Control Center is fully implemented

3.5.2- Transition period

The current staff (as of Jul.1, 2002) consists of 20 positions, 18 of which being actually manned.

For the transition period:

2 positions are needed to operate the two 1.5m telescopes until Dec. 31, 2002.
15 positions are needed, i.e. 3 telescopes * [Day + Night] * 2.4 (full coverage factor) = 14.4,

Therefore, a total of 17 positions until Sep.30, 2002, and 15 till Dec.31, 2003 (end of WFI operation). These positions are strictly for telescope/instrument operation, so their number relies on

the agreement with LED+APEX concerning the Electronics (cf Sect. 3.3),
the documentation and web restructuring not being performed by TIOs (documentation and web operation can still be performed by TIOs, as described in the General Operation Plan [2])
the data packaging (preparation of CDs for visiting astronomers) is not performed anymore by the TIOs.

3.6- RE-ENGINEERING POSITIONS

3.6.1- Introduction

In order to optimize human resources use during the transition period, the vacant TIO positions will not be filled with TIOs, as hiring and training a TIO for a period of 1.5yr would be a waste of resources. These positions will be used in the framework of restructuring as a Documentation and Web specialist, and a Data Handling Operator, in order to enable the optimal use of the TIOs as described in 3.5.2.

3.6.2- Documentation and web specialist

SciOp's documentation is largely complete, the majority of which in electronic form. However, each Telescope Team has developed its own standards for archiving, leaving no unique repository. All these standards have two points in common: they all require considerable manual handling of files from one machine to another and none have acceptable version control system. These points are addressed by the SciOp Documentation and Communication Plan [4], which describes a uniform standard to handle documentation based on the VLT Software Documentation System and the currently available Remedy Documentation Database. Creating that documentation repository will be a time consuming task, but, when completed, it will stand alone without further support.

Similarly, each Telescope Team's Web site contains an enormous amount of well organized information. However, the unification of the teams in SciOps will require a large amount of systematization and rationalization of the current pages to bring them into a common framework.

A Documentation and Web specialist will be hired for the restructuring of the SciOp documentation and web system. At the end of the transition period, this work will be fully completed, leaving SciOp with a uniform documentation and web system that will be maintainable during the Steady State period.

3.6.3- Data Handling Operator

The Telescope Teams currently prepare all the "Data Packages" for the visiting astronomers, and all programs in Service Mode (except WFI SM programs, which are dealt with by the Archive/Garching). For Visitor Mode programs, data packaging is done entirely by the TIOs, while for service mode, the data selection is performed by the staff astronomers, with the actual packaging (CD production) is performed by the TIOs.

Data packaging is a time consuming and critical task. At Paranal, the Data Flow Back-End (Archive) software has tools to prepare these data packages, with CDs and DVDs routinely distributed to the visitor. We propose to implement these tools at La Silla. ensuring an improved quality and reliability of data packages compared to the current situation.

We shall therefore hire a Data Handling Operator to prepare these Data Packages for visiting astronomers, thereby removing a large workload from the TIOs. In order to provide continuous data packaging services, the SciOp Data Handling Operator will work closely with the La Silla Archive specialists (Anton Schmerll and Saul Vidal), participating in the archiving of the data, while the Archive specialists will also participate in data package production. It is noted that the production of data packages for the NTT and 3.6m Service Observation will still be performed by SciOp, as an astronomer is needed to assemble and check the completeness of these packages.

Considering the rate of development of Archive tools over recent years, we expect that, by the end of the transition period, these will have progressed sufficiently so that data archiving and data package production for visitors can be dealt with by the Archive Specialists alone.

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