EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY

La Silla Observatory

SCIENCE OPERATION DEPARTMENT

Revision History

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) till Dec.31, 2003 (end of WFI operation).
"Steady-state period" refers to the period after Jan.1, 2004, till 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 Equivallent
OpA: Operation Astronomer
NTTT: NTT Team
MET: MEdium size Telescope
LED: La Silla Engineering Department
TIO: Telescope and Instrument Operator
LRP: Long Range Plan
WFI: Wide Field Imager


2- CURRENT STAFFING SITUATION

SciOp will merge the 3 optical telescope teams, i.e. NTTT, 360Cat and MET. The current (as of 2002-Jul-01)  staff of these teams is composed as folowing (post numbers to the best of my knowledge, uniformised job titles 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 (ex Leisy)
• FDG103 Billeres, M. Fellow Astronomer
• FDG101 Willis, J. Fellow Astronomer (ex 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 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. (Repl. Araya, E.) Telescope and Instrument Operator
• LSO405 Gonzalez, A. Telescope and Instrument Operator
• LSO407 Matamoros, E. Telescope and Instrument Operator
• LSO412.N. 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. (Repl. Sanchez, F.) Telescope and Instrument Operator
• LSO511 NN. (Repl. Cortes, J.) Telescope and Instrument Operator
• 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 below, 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. impecable night operation (VLT requirement), impeccable day operation, and excellent "background" skill, in such 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                                                                             WP6333p6op      MKU     Kuerster, M.    CFT-LSO CSO402  Astro   0.5     0.5     0.5     0.5     0.5 WP6333p6op      STM     Sterzik, M.     CFT-LSO CSO401  Astro   0.5     0.5     0.5     0.5     0.5 WP634METop      MER     Mendez, R.      MET-LSO CSO502  Astro   0       0       0       0       0 WP637WFIop      MER     Mendez, R.      MET-LSO CSO502  Astro   0.5     0.5     0       0       0 WP642NTTMaint   OHA     Hainaut, O.     LNT-LSO CSO301  Astro   0.1     0.1     0.1     0.1     0.1 WP643NTTop      LVA     Vanzi, L.       LNT-LSO CSO302  Astro   0.5     0.5     0.5     0.5     0.5 WP643NTTop      OHA     Hainaut, O.     LNT-LSO CSO301  Astro   0.4     0.4     0.4     0.4     0.4 WP644METMaint   MER     Mendez, R.      MET-LSO CSO502  Astro   0       0       0       0       0 WP694NTTupgr    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                                                                         WP6333p6op      BRK     Brooks, K.      SCV-ODG FDG106  Fellow  0.5     0.5     0.5     0.5     0.5 WP6333p6op      RAT     Athreya, R.     SCV-ODG FDG101  Fellow  0.5     0.5     0.5     0.5     0.5 WP634METop      ISA     Saviane, I.     SCV-ODG FDG117  Fellow  0.5     0       0       0       0 WP637WFIop      HJO     Jones, H.       SCV-ODG FDG105  Fellow  0.5     0.5     0       0       0 WP637WFIop      LGE     Germany, L.     SCV-ODG FDG110  Fellow  0.5     0.5     0       0       0 WP643NTTop      MBI     Billeres, M.    SCV-ODG FDG103  Fellow  0.5     0.5     0.5     0.5     0.5 WP643NTTop      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                                                                            WP6333p6op      NAG     LoCurto G.      CFT-LSO PSO003  Astro   0.8     0.8     0.8     0.8     0.8 WP634METop      JPR     Pritchard, J.   MET-LSO PSO006  OpA     0.8     0       0       0       0 WP637WFIop      JSE     Selman, F.      MET-LSO PSO004  OpA     0.8     0.8     0       0       0 WP643NTTop      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                                                                            WP6333p6op      EAR     Araya, E.       CFT-LSO LSO404  TIO     1       1       1       1       1 WP6333p6op      EWE     Wenderoth, E.   CFT-LSO LSO414  TIO     1       1       1       1       1 WP6333p6op      GOA     Gonzalez, A.    CFT-LSO LSO405  TIO     1       1       1       1       1 WP6333p6op      GRO     Roman, G.       CFT-LSO LSO413  TIO     1       1       1       1       1 WP6333p6op      MAE     Matamoros, E.   CFT-LSO LSO407  TIO     1       1       1       1       1 WP6333p6op      N.N.    Replacement     CFT-LSO LSO412  TIO     1       1       1       1       1 WP634METop      ATO     Torrejon, A.    MET-LSO LSO508  TIO     1       0       0       0       0 WP634METop      RVE     Vega, R.        MET-LSO LSO513  TIO     1       0       0       0       0 WP637WFIop      FLA     Labraña, F.     MET-LSO LSO509  TIO     1       1       0       0       0 WP637WFIop      RCA     Castillo, R.    MET-LSO LSO507  TIO     1       1       0       0       0 WP637WFIop      COJ     Cortes, J.      LNT-LSO LSO511  TIO     1       1       0       0       0 WP637WFIop      FSA     Sanchez, F.     MET-LSO LSO510  TIO     1       1       0       0       0 WP637WFIop      MMR     Martinez, M.    LNT-LSO LSO512  TIO     1       1       0       0       0 WP637WFIop      JAR     Araya, J.       MET-LSO LSO506  TechEng 1       1       0       0       0 WP643NTTop      ASA     Sanchez, A.     LNT-LSO LSO314  TIO     1       1       1       1       1 WP643NTTop      DCA     Castex, D       LNT-LSO LSO310  TIO     1       1       1       1       1 WP643NTTop      JMI     Miranda, J.     LNT-LSO LSO308  TIO     1       1       1       1       1 WP643NTTop      KAU     Aubel, K.       LNT-LSO LSO309  TIO     1       1       1       1       1 WP643NTTop      MAP     Pizarro, M.     LNT-LSO LSO313  TIO     1       1       1       1       1 WP643NTTop      MOC     Castillo, M.    LNT-LSO LSO312  TIO     1       1       1       1       1 Total TIOs:                                                     20      18      12      12      12 Operation Engineers WP6333p6op      EBA     Barrios, E.     CFT-LSO LSO406  OpEng   1       1       1       1       1 WP642NTTMaint   PLS     Le Saux, P.     LNT-LSO CSO303  OpEng   0.2     0.2     0.2     0.2     0.2 WP643NTTop      PLS     Le Saux, P.     LNT-LSO CSO303  OpEng.  0.8     0.8     0.8     0.8     0.8 Total OpEngineers:






3.2- OPERATION ENGINEERS

Two Operation Engineers are needed; their duties are described in [2].


3.3- ELECTRONICS

The 6 Electronics will not work on the SciOps staff, but will be integrated in 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 till October (the other ~50% in APEX). R.Olivares will complete the FEROS project before moving to APEX. H.Kastowsky will retire in 2002.


3.4- ASTRONOMERS STAFFING PLAN

The steady-state staffing level required to operate the 3 telescopes is constitued by 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 exention of the currently 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 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.


 

This plan is balanced (i.e. using the allocated number of FTEs) when considering entire 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, 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 automatized.
• 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) foresees 20 positions, 18 of which being actually manned.

For the transition period:

• 2 positions are needed to operate the two 1.5m telescopes till Sep.30, 2002.
• 15 positions are needed, i.e. 3 telescopes * [Day + Night] * 2.4 (full coverage factor) = 14.4,
i.e., a total of 17 positions till Sep.30, 2002, and 15 till Dec.31, 2003 (end of WFI operation). These positions are strictly for telescope/instrument operation, so their numer relies on

• the agreement with LED+APEX concerning the Electronics (cf Sect. 3.3), 
• the documentation and web restructuration 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 the man power 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 resource. These positions will be used in the framework of restructuration 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 currently fairly complete and in majority available as electronics documents. However, each Telescope Team has developped its own standards for archiving, so there is no unique repository. Moreover, all these standards have points in common: they all require lots of manual handling of files from one machine to another, and none have a decent version control system. This is addressed by the  SciOp Documentation and Communication Plan, which described a uniformized standard way to handle the documentation, based on the VLT Software Documentation System and the currently available Remedy Documentation Database. However, implementing that documentation repository will be an task important but well defined in scope and time.

Similarly, the Telescope Team's Web sites contain an enormous amount of information, fairly well organized. However, the unification of the teams in SciOps will require a large work of systematization and rationalization of the current pages, plus a significant development of common pages.

A Documentation and Web specialist will be hired for the re-structuration of the SciOp documentation and web. By 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

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

This is a time consuming and critical task. The Data Flow Back-End (Archive) software has  tools to prepare these packages; these are implemented and used at Paranal, where CDs/DVDs are routinely distributed to the visitor. We propose to implement these tools at La Silla. This would also ensure a better quality and reliability of the data packages, compared to the current situation.

We shall therefore hire a Data Handling Operator to prepare these Data Packages for visiting astronomers, and thereby remove a large workload from the TIOs. In order to provide complete coverage, the SciOp Data Handling Operator would work in close connection with the La Silla Archive specialists (Anton Schmerll and Saul Vidal), participating in the archiving of the data, while the Archive specilists would participate in the data package production. It is noted that the production of data packages for the NTT and 3.6m Service Observation would 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 the Archive tools over the past years, we expect that, by the end of the transition period, these will have progressed sufficiently so that the whole work of archiving the data and producing the data packages for visitors can be dealt with by the (ex-)SciOp data handling operator and Anton Schmerll.



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