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MEC-U Controls has slowly begun ramping up in March and April , and we look forward to continue the trend as we will begin to shift focus to laser beam transport controls and infrastructure design. Some notable MEC-U topics from the past couple months can be found below. 

Rack Estimates and Tours:

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In March and April we revisited SLAC Controls Estimated control rack and rack power estimates in preparation for Facility's 90% DGPS. We estimated 21 full-sized racks and 14 shallow-depth racks at MEC-U's base scope. With NNSA's additional scope, we estimated an extra 19 full-sized racks and 18 shallow-depth racks. These are still preliminary quantities, but are needed for Facilities to estimate the approximate footprint needed for base scope and for future expansion.

The MEC-U team is also looking full scope. Looking forward to meeting with various rack vendors . Visits such as Rittal and Steven Engineering in May as well as future suppliers tbd. The rack visits with Rittal and Steven Engineering in May. will consist of an initial visit at SLAC where we will provide them a tour to see our current rack implementations and discuss the best path forward to improving this for future projects. The second visit will happen onsite at Steven Engineering in South San Francisco where we will be able to play/tinker with their Rittal rack hardware to obtain hands-on experience with their various solutions. They are encouraging SLAC visitors to bring any hardware we wish to test fit or use to spec out their solutions.  

NNSA and DMPL:

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Explain what NNSA is and what DMPL is. How is this different from base MECU scope. Controls giving cost estimate for additional scopeNNSA, National Nuclear Security Administration, are possible sponsors for additional scope under the MEC-U umbrella. Their project, DMPL, would add additional long pulse beamlines to the existing HE-LP laser, summing to four beamlines at 1.25kJ per beamline, 5kJ total. In April, Controls participated in a cost estimate for this additional scope which will be presented to NNSA in the coming months. 

FAC Review:

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The Facility Advisory Committee Review is not a critical path review, but it is an opportunity for each subsystem to present their progress, designs, challenges, and risks to experienced personnel who have background backgrounds in similar laser facilities and projects.  

Talk about charge question.

Organizing deliverable list

SQAP

Overall Architecture

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The review is set for mid-July, but our team has begun planning to present several items in order to answer their controls-specific charge question: "Are the deliverables for the Control Systems unified across the three laboratories to enable value engineering and efficient operations and maintenance?"

In order to prepare for this, we are collaborating with LLNL and LLE to compile a deliverables list to present to the FAC to sufficiently answer their question. Tangential to this list, Alex is actively working on an overall MEC-U controls architecture diagram so that we can present this to the FAC and to ensure each lab has a clear picture of the path forward. He will also be compiling a Software Quality Assurance Plan for MEC-U that will also prove to be useful in regular ECS development and operations.  

Jira:

We are currently organizing ECS and SLAC CosyLab work through Jira and an using the MEC-U Kanban board. So far, the board has proven to be effective at increasing visibility of the tasks to be completed at the SLAC Controls Level. Each tasks is organized under an epic, and (most) epics correspond to project activities within P6.  The team continues to compile tasks under each active epic and we meet weekly to track progress and identify bottlenecks.  

pcds_conda

Zachary L Lentz 

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