Transition to a Science Mega-Project, 2006–2012

Abstract

Following the “Grass-roots” astronomer-led phase of global collaboration in the SKA project described in the previous Chapter, the transition of SKA to a science mega-project (the “Transition Era”) began in 2006. Three governance entities operated in conjunction in this period (i) the International SKA Steering Committee, (ii) the funding agencies acting collectively in a group, and (iii) the European Commission-funded SKA Preparatory Phase (PrepSKA) Board. This culminated in an Agreement at the end of 2011 amongst the funding agencies and governments to establish a legal entity for the project, the SKA Organisation (SKAO), in the UK in the form of a Company Limited by Guarantee, with governance vested solely in the company. The third phase of governance, the “Pre-Construction Era”, followed until January 2021 when a new governance arrangement, an Inter-Governmental Organisation, came into force for the construction and operation of the SKA Observatory.

In this Chapter, we describe the Transition Era in terms of its evolving governance, the major activities carried out, bumps along the road including the US decision at the end of 2011 not to join the SKAO, and the first year of the Pre-Construction Era in 2012. The first major decision of the new SKAO, in mid-2012—where the SKA telescope would be located—is described in Chap. 8.

4.1 Introduction

The Hague meeting of funding agencies involved in the SKA in February 2006 (see preceding Chapter) signalled the start of the transition of the SKA from an astronomer-led semi-formal collaboration on a global scale to a fully-fledged inter-governmental organisation in 2021 capable of designing and constructing the world’s largest radio telescope. A journey of 15 years.

Following the Hague meeting, the SKA landscape was becoming clearer but the path to a working telescope was less so. The magnitude of the task was described at the time by the SKA Director as follows¹:

The Square Kilometre Array is a complex global project with many interacting players and parameters. The players involved are the global astronomical community, the International SKA Steering Committee, the design concept teams, the International SKA Project Office Working Groups and Task Forces, the independent Advisory Committees, Governments and Funding Agencies, and Industry. The parameters include the science drivers, engineering solutions versus practicality, cost, site constraints, available human resources, national and regional scientific interests, national and regional technical interests and prowess, positioning with respect to other major scientific infrastructures, diverse uncoordinated national and regional funding channels, and diverse national policies on involvement of industry in the development and procurement of major scientific infrastructure.

This chapter describes a time of great change in the project, a time when the governance was transformed from a Steering Committee to a new astronomy organisation and major decisions on the course of the project were made. Creating a new organisation to lead and manage the development and construction of a global astronomy mega-project had never been done before² and all parties involved, the astronomical community and the funding agencies, were working in uncharted territory.

The driving force for this change, globally, was the European Commission-funded Preparatory Study for SKA (PrepSKA) which began to be discussed in 2005 and was funded in 2008. It had as its top-level deliverable a “signature-ready” agreement for construction of the SKA. National SKA funds supported most of the human resources involved in PrepSKA and other SKA-related activities. It became the collaboration vehicle that dominated the global SKA landscape from 2008 to 2011.

To set the scene for PrepSKA, it is necessary to sketch the changing relationship between the project and funding agencies in the 2006–2007 period as well as the national and regional activities (such as the European SKA Design Studies, SKADS) and roadmaps for large astronomy projects in place or under development at that time. With this background, we enter the PrepSKA period. To deliver a “signature-ready” agreement for construction of the SKA, the SKA parties—the astronomy community represented by the International SKA Steering Committee (ISSC) and the funding agencies represented on the Funding Agencies Plenary Group—had to enhance their own governance roles in the project as well as the management structures to handle properly the tasks in PrepSKA. We describe that evolution in governance for the ISSC and Funding Agencies Group from the situation in 2006 to the creation of the Founding Board in March 2011, and finally to the establishment of the first legal entity (a UK Company Limited by Guarantee) for SKA in December 2011. Subsequently, the parallel path to an Implementation Plan and Agreement for the Pre-Construction Phase is described, and three important project-wide issues that arose on the way are analysed. The chapter concludes with a brief look at the governance and management structures implemented for the new legal entity for the Pre-Construction Phase.

To help the reader navigate through the many overlapping threads of activity, discussion and decision in this chapter, Fig. 4.1: provides a graphical view of the timeline for the different governance entities and activities in the 2006–2012 period. The accompanying Table 4.1: Major milestones, events and decisions in the 2006–2012 period provides a chronological overview of the major milestones, events and decisions in the same period.

Fig. 4.1

A timeline showing when the different SKA governance entities were in operation and when the major activities took place. Acronyms: FB—Founding Board; SKADS—SKA Design Studies (see Sect. 3.3.3.4.3); PrepSKA—Preparatory Phase for the SKA; AU—Australia; CA—Canada; CN—China; IN—India; RSA—Republic of South Africa; WPC—Work Package Consortia; GO-SKA—Governance Options for the SKA; PEP—Project Execution Plan; BP—Business Plan; OECD—Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development; ESFRI—European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures. Note that the terms “Pre-construction Phase” and “Pre-construction Era” are used interchangably in this chapter

Table 4.1 Major milestones, events and decisions in the 2006–2012 period

4.2 The Project-Funding Agency Relationship Develops, 2006–2007

There was little disagreement in the International SKA Steering Committee (ISSC) with the outcomes from the February 2006. Hague meeting described in Sect. 3.4.3. It was hard to argue that the funding agencies should not have a role in setting out the process for site selection—short-list followed by decision—since they would be paying for the consequences. And the very existence of the Plenary Funding Agencies Group was a victory for the ISSC, if not the complete victory envisaged with an SKA Board governed by an MoU among the agencies. The US remained involved, also a victory. Informal comments to ISSC Chair, Phil Diamond (Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK), by two participants in the closed agency session in the Hague revealed that informal statements of the relative priority of the Extremely Large (optical) Telescopes (ELTs) and SKA in various countries had changed substantially since the Heathrow meeting in mid-2005 (see Sect. 3.4.1), with SKA moving in the positive direction. The SKA was now on the map!

A discussion about possible organisational structures for the SKA on the longer term arose in the ISSC centred on two distinct alternatives for a legal entity—the ‘corporate model’ in the US, and the ‘foundation model’ in Europe.³ However, there was no obvious way to reconcile the two, especially with the distributed ‘rest of the world’ involved as well. This led Brian Boyle (CSIRO, Australia) to point out that the SKA was proud of being born global and that an international treaty should be the end goal, although this would not be straightforward.⁴ Prescient words that took 15 years to come to fruition.

Several ISSC members suggested that the scientists should stay ahead of the Funding Agencies Working Group (FAWG) and guide their governance ideas to make sure the perceived shortcomings⁵ that arose in setting up some other large international projects were not repeated. The ISSC should push the process, rather than be pulled along. To this end, a paper “Considerations on policy issues for the SKA”⁶ was approved by the ISSC with the intention to set the direction of funding agency-ISSC discussions for a considerable time (see Box 4.1). In particular, it contended that once the site and cost-sharing decisions had been made, governance of the project during final design and construction, and possibly operations, should be consolidated in one body responsible for the project as a whole, e.g. an SKA Council. This would have executive authority under appropriate oversight. Members would be policy makers and astronomers appointed by the governments, and it would operate its own technical and scientific organisation or contract the technical and scientific organisation to a management organisation.

Among other issues raised in the policy paper was the desirability of an “open skies” access policy (see Box 4.1). This was a pre-emptive “shot across the bows” of the funding agencies who were expected to favour SKA access based on contribution levels to telescope construction, as was the case for optical facilities in general. At its first meeting a month after the Hague meeting, the FAWG agreed to use the “Considerations” document to guide Funding Agency thinking.⁷ On the other hand, it took 18 months before the funding agencies reacted to the open skies issue, in the negative. While the open skies policy continued to be advocated by the scientific community throughout the Transition Era,⁸ it was not adopted by the funding agencies and that has remained the case to the present day.

Clearly, there was no shortage of confidence on the part of ISSC members that they knew how to govern the project. However, at the end of 2006 the funding agencies fired their own shot across the bows of the ISSC, warning that many obstacles remained in the way of funding approval for the SKA.

Box 4.1 Considerations on Policy Issues for the SKA, Post-Hague Meeting, February 2006, a Summary

[Reference: hba.skao.int/SKAHB-49 Considerations on policy issues for the SKA, February 2006, Supporting paper for the 15th ISSC meeting].

Governance

The global SKA project expects to develop in several well-defined phases, requiring an evolving governance structure to succeed the MoA in place until the end of 2006.

In the 2007–2009 period, decisions on the site, cost-sharing, and governance are expected to be taken by an inter-governmental entity. The governance of the project is likely to be shared between the ISSC, responsible for the scientific and technical progress of the project, and the intergovernmental body.

A process leading to agreement on which governments are to be involved in the [site] decision process needs development by the FAWG.

The major concern is the role in the decision process of the USA in the likely absence of any formal commitment to the project before 2012.

Following the site and cost-sharing decisions, governance of the project during final design and construction, and possibly operations, should be consolidated in one body responsible for the project as a whole, e.g. an SKA Council. This would have executive authority under appropriate oversight. Members are policy makers and astronomers appointed by the governments and it operates its own technical and scientific organisation, or contracts the technical and scientific organisation to a management organisation.

Timeline for site decision and start of Phase 1 construction

Funding opportunities exist in Europe and Australia. If it transpires that other interested parties are unable to contribute to the Phase 1 construction funding in the 2007–2009 timeframe, we may assume Europe will take the lead in funding construction of Phase 1, supported by at least Australia. In that case, the time scales for final design and start of Phase 1 construction appear to be reasonably well-matched to the funding opportunities.

Negotiation phase leading to site selection

The decision on the SKA site will not be taken in isolation; it will be part of inter-governmental discussions on cost-sharing for the design and construction phase of the telescope, its governance structure, and the procurement rules to be adopted.

The financial consequences of selecting one of the scientifically acceptable sites over another will be an integral part of the decision process.

Open Skies policy

Radio astronomy has a tradition of a completely open competition for observing time to ensure that the best science is carried out on the facilities, and that different facilities constructed and operated by different entities can be shared by a larger scientific community.

Following a meeting of the FAWG in December, again at Heathrow, Richard Wade briefed Brian Boyle, Ken Kellermann (NRAO, USA) and Wim Brouw (CSIRO, Australia) - ISSC Chair, vice-Chair and Secretary respectively - and Richard Schilizzi (SKA Director) by telephone conference^9,10 on the results of discussions on the SKA. On the positive side, the science case for the SKA was making an impact and there was appreciation for the momentum and enthusiasm building up in the candidate host countries. This was tempered by Wade’s description of the project as racing towards a “brick wall” as far as funding on the timescales foreseen by the project was concerned. It would be best to focus on the stepwise Phase 1-Phase 2 approach to get a broader community involved and hold off on major decisions until the project was ready globally. According to Wade, this looked like being 2020 from the financial point of view, a decade later than being planned (ambitiously) by the ISSC and International SKA Project Office (ISPO). However, less than a year after the Heathrow meeting, the brick wall began to crumble in Europe following the positive outcomes for the SKA from the ESFRI and ASTRONET road-mapping exercises described in Sect. 4.3.2.2. The ASTRONET road-map defined a trajectory for co-funding the European ELT (E-ELT) and a phased roll-out of the SKA.

ISSC and ISPO confidence that they had all the necessary management expertise continued to be put to the test when the “Transition Era” of governance got into full swing from 2008 to 2011 and the funding agencies assumed an increasingly dominant role, as we will see later in this chapter.

4.2.1 Governance Concepts for SKA, 2006–2007: International SKA Forum

It took until the end of 2007 to come up with proposed governance arrangements for the next stage of SKA development. Additional factors came into play in the interim that steered the project in specific directions. Chief among these were new initiatives to stimulate European scientific collaboration in the European Research Area in the European Commission’s 7th Framework Program (FP7). This led to funding for the SKA Preparatory Phase project (PrepSKA), as well as new road-mapping exercises carried out under the auspices of the European Council by the newly established European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) and, for astronomy and astrophysics as a discipline, by ASTRONET, a consortium of European funding agencies and research organisations. We will deal with each of these factors in turn after a short discussion of the interim governance arrangements for the project and funding agencies.

The short-term remit of the Funding Agencies Working Group (FAWG) defined at its meeting in August 2006 in Prague¹¹ was: (i) to develop an understanding of the time imperative and schedule for SKA construction and understand the constraints on phasing of participation and commitment; (ii) to define the boundary conditions for governance; and (iii) to define the site selection process, post-bid qualification stage. The Secretariat of the FAWG comprised Richard Wade as Chair of the Plenary Group of Funding Agencies interested in the SKA, Colin Vincent as FAWG Chair, and Michelle Cooper as Secretary, all from STFC in the UK.

The FAWG also agreed in principle in Prague to form an International SKA Forum to facilitate engagement between scientists and representatives from departments and funding agencies. The first Forum meeting took place a year later in Manchester and continued annually until the final meeting in Banff, Canada, in 2011. The original Forum concept foresaw it being part of the governance structure to actively provide momentum and focus for project development in addition to information exchange. However, after the first Forum meeting in 2007, the FAWG dispensed with the umbrella function for the Forum, and the format thereafter focussed on information exchange, project promotion and public outreach, with the FAWG and its successors, the Informal Funding Agencies Group (IFAG, 2007–2008) and the Agencies SKA Group (ASG, 2009–2011) continuing to function as the top-level governance body on the Agency side. Later Forum meetings also included representatives from potential industry partners.

To provide time to establish the Forum and develop a new governance structure for the design phase of the SKA, the FAWG recommended continuing the 2004 ISSC MoA for an additional year to the end of 2007.¹² This was consistent with the FAWG’s view that there was no prospect of the final site selection occurring in 2008, a long-held ISSC goal. 2009 or 2010 was regarded as a more sensible timescale (see Sect. 8.3.1).

4.3 Large-Science-Project Roadmaps and SKA

This section sketches the larger context within which the SKA was attempting to manoeuver on its way to recognition as a large science project.

4.3.1 Setting the Scene: The OECD Global Science Forum Workshops 2003–2004

In September 2001, the OECD Global Science Forum (GSF, see Sect. 3.2.5.2) convened the first in a series of discipline-focused workshops, in Copenhagen, to review scientific priorities and challenges in condensed matter research, and match these requirements to future large facilities such as neutron and photon sources. This was followed up a year later by a similar workshop in high-energy physics. This prompted the German delegation to the OECD in late 2002 to propose a workshop to study future large-scale international programmes and projects in astronomy and astrophysics with a view to establishing an OECD-wide consultation to assist national administrations in their strategic planning. The lack of any process to coordinate planning on priorities and cost sharing between countries was a key issue, as was the need for a mechanism to compare the processes in different countries and adopt best practices.

Two astronomy workshops were held, in Munich in December 2003 and Washington in April 2004, chaired by Ian Corbett from the European Southern Observatory (and later a member of the SKA Site Advisory Committee in 2011–2012, see Sect. 8.3.6). Ron Ekers was a member of the Workshop Steering Committee. Specific outcomes expected at the outset were a roadmap of potential large facilities and projects for the next 10–15 years, and an enumeration and analysis of issues relevant for long-term priority setting by government officials and scientific organisations interested in international coordination and cooperation. The roadmap did not materialise, but the analysis did.

In a comment on defining a long-term strategic view, the OECD report¹³ (OECD Global Science Forum, July 2004) noted that “The selection and phasing of big future projects increases in difficulty as costs go up and timescales stretch out… . The workshops considered whether, in an era… where most large projects intersect with the plans of many countries, it would be valuable to develop a consensus global long-term vision of major long-term projects. A mechanism for achieving such a consensus vision has yet to be achieved. However, international collaboration has continued to take place on a case-by-case basis.”.

Behind the scenes, the Workshop Steering Committee explored the possibilities for an international body—the “mechanism for achieving a consensus vision”—to facilitate the global coordination of plans for large projects in astronomy. This was unsuccessful for a number of reasons. The leading Space Agencies did not attend the Workshops despite invitations to do so, while the US funding agencies argued that their decadal survey process was far more effective, and that the USA had little to gain from any proposed global coordination activities. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) was asked to act as “facilitator” but Ekers, as IAU President at the time, was unable to garner the required support from the Executive Committee with some members seeing this as inappropriate level of involvement in national activities.

In parallel with these workshops, the GSF convened related workshops on Best Practices in International Scientific Coordination in Tokyo in February 2003 and on Management Practices for Establishing Large International Scientific Research Projects at Fermilab near Chicago in October 2004. Science talks incorporating the SKA were given by Brian Boyle, Reinhard Genzel (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany) and Jill Tarter (SETI Institute) at the astronomy workshops and SKA-specific talks at the other two workshops by Schilizzi.

There is no question that this investment of effort raised the profile of the SKA as an exciting new large international project in the minds of other physicists and astronomers as well as governments, for example in Australia (see Sect. 3.2.6.3). The investment of effort eased SKA’s entry into more detailed consideration in Europe by ESFRI in 2005, the European Commission (PrepSKA, 2007) and ASTRONET (2005–2008) as described in the next section.

4.3.2 National and Regional Roadmaps

In 2005–2006, several of the countries involved in the SKA had national roadmaps or long-term plans in place for astronomy, including Australia, South Africa, Canada, and the USA. Europe was in the process of developing such a plan. The first three countries’ plans were mentioned in Sect. 3.3.3. Here, the US and European plans, and SKA’s place in them, are outlined in more detail as these were expected to provide at least two-thirds of the SKA construction funds. Table 4.2 lists the projects mentioned in the roadmaps. Achieving high priority recognition in both roadmaps was a pre-requisite for the funding, and the survival, of the SKA as a project in its then current form.

4.3.2.1 US Decadal Survey 2000, National Science Foundation Senior Review 2006

The 2000 Decadal Survey set the scene for astronomy developments in the USA, both ground- and space-based throughout the 2000–2010 decade (McKee & Taylor, 2001). The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded ground-based instruments as did the Department of Energy, while NASA funded space astronomy missions. As mentioned in Sect. 3.3.3.8, the 2000 Survey Committee recommended USD 22 million for SKA technical developments, of which USD 14.5 million eventually materialised in two NSF grants. SKA technical development was fifth priority among 12 moderate scale initiatives.¹⁴ Chief among the major initiatives were the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST, later renamed the James Webb Space Telescope), the Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT), the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA) and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). The NRAO MM Array which later became a US-Europe-Japan collaboration, Atacama Large Millimetre-submillimetre Array (ALMA)¹⁵ had already been approved in the previous decadal survey, and was under construction, as was the Spitzer Space Infra-Red Telescope Facility (launched in 2003), and Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA, operational in 2007).

Table 4.2 Large ground- and space- based astronomy projects in the US and European roadmaps in the 2005–2007 timeframe

International collaboration was seen as advantageous as it provided opportunities for U.S. astronomers to participate in major international projects for a fraction of the total cost. Examples from previous decades were the European Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), XMM-Newton, Planck Surveyor, and FIRST missions. The Survey Committee expected international collaboration to play a crucial role in several of their recommended initiatives, including the Next Generation Space Telescope, the Expanded Very Large Array, and the Square Kilometre Array technology development.

In 2005 the NSF established a Senior Review Committee, chaired by Roger Blandford (Stanford University), to examine its portfolio of astronomical facilities and other activities with the goal of redistributing roughly 15% of annual spending to find operating funds for the planned new instruments included in Table 4.2. In the light of a flat budget outcome for the rest of the decade this meant not operating some existing facilities.

The Senior Review’s recommendations in 2006 concerning the SKA were twofold¹⁶: (i) “US participation in the international Square Kilometre Array program, including precursor facilities, should remain community-driven until the US is in a position to commit to a major partnership in the project”. (ii) The strategic challenge for large facility design and construction was how to accommodate a number of potential projects to follow completion of the construction of the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope in 2014. “There is a strong scientific case for proceeding with the GSMT, the LSST and the SKA projects as soon as feasible thereafter. A realistic implementation plan for these projects involves other agencies and independent and international partners. Some choices need to be made soon; others can await the conclusions of the next decadal survey.”

The first recommendation led directly to the release of an additional USD 12M in 2007 for SKA in what became the Technology Development Program (TDP, see Sect. 6.4.7.2). As far as the second recommendation is concerned, SKA was among those that awaited the conclusions of the 2010 Decadal Survey, preparations for which were already being made in 2006. These we describe in more detail later in the chapter.

4.3.2.2 Europe

In 2006, no equivalent roadmap to the US Decadal Survey existed in Europe for ground- and space-based astronomy taken together. A separate roadmap existed for space science but not for ground-based astronomy. The European Space Agency (ESA) had initiated a long-term planning process in 1983 with the Horizon 2000 program that was extended in Horizon 2000 Plus. XMM-Newton (X-ray), Herschel (Infra-red) and Gaia (astrometry) emerged as the ESA-led “cornerstone” missions from those exercises. The Cosmic Vision program followed in 2004 and comprised a variety of astronomy missions to 2035 including Euclid (cosmology), Athena (X-Ray) and LISA (gravitational waves). Each of these programs was the result of a bottom-up process that began with a consultation of the broad scientific community.

For ground-based astronomy, four groupings had a stake in steering its future direction, the astronomers, the European Commission, the national funding agencies, and the European Southern Observatory.¹⁷ New in the mix, mid-2000s, were the European Commission and the national funding agencies. The European Commission was in the process of developing a European Research Area (ERA) and, for prioritising big science projects, was advised by the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), a committee formed of senior scientists representing the views of the member states. National funding agencies began to act collectively for the first time in ASTRONET, an ERA network initially funded by the European Commission, with the aim of developing a roadmap similar to the US Decadal Survey. The ESFRI roadmap was a top-down process set up by the national governments to look at requirements and timescales for infrastructures across science as a whole. ASTRONET was a bottom-up process to look at astronomy alone and driven by the funding agencies.

4.3.2.2.1 European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI)

The ESFRI mission statement¹⁸ is “to support a coherent and strategy-led approach to policy making on research infrastructures in Europe, and to facilitate multilateral initiatives leading to the better use and development of research infrastructures, at EU and international level.”

Delegates to ESFRI are “nominated by the Research Ministers of the Member and Associate Countries, and include a representative of the Commission, working together to develop a joint vision and a common strategy. This strategy aims at overcoming the limits due to fragmentation of individual policies and provides Europe with the most up-to-date Research Infrastructures, responding to the rapidly evolving Science frontiers, advancing also the knowledge-based technologies and their extended use.”¹⁹

ESFRI was formed in 2002 by the European Council of heads of state or government of the EU’s member states and published its first roadmap for pan-European research infrastructures in 2006. Updates followed in 2008, 2010, 2016 and 2021.

The SKA was proposed for ESFRI consideration as a European research infrastructure in 2005 by the Netherlands delegate in a strategic move instigated by Harvey Butcher from ASTRON in The Netherlands and Peter Wilkinson from Jodrell Bank Observatory in the UK. Both were European members of the International SKA Steering Committee. It was included in the first roadmap in 2006 (see Box 4.2), and in 2016 was designated one of 37 Landmark Projects. ESFRI Landmark Research Infrastructures were those that had been implemented, or had started implementation, under the ESFRI Roadmap and were already major elements in the European Research Area. Each project on the ESFRI Roadmap has been subject to regular review in order to stay on the roadmap.

Box 4.2 SKA in the ESFRI 2006 Roadmap

The entry in the ESFRI Roadmap read as follows:

In radio astronomy the next generation telescope should be the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The SKA will have a collecting area of 1 million square metres distributed over a distance of at least 3000 km. This area, necessary to collect the faint signals from the early universe, will result in a 100 times higher sensitivity compared to existing facilities. The radically new concept of an “electronic” telescope will allow very fast surveys. Thus it will be possible to tackle many important problems, e.g. tests of the theory of relativity or the formation and evolution of galaxies. The site for SKA will be outside Europe. [Reference: https://www.esfri.eu]

As we will discuss shortly, ESFRI recognition was a pre-requisite for inclusion in a “directed call” for proposals for Preparatory Studies by the European Commission.

4.3.2.2.2 ASTRONET

ASTRONET first started in 2005 as a consortium of European funding agencies and research organisations. The principal aim was to encourage a common science vision for all of European astronomy, and its key goals were to deliver a comprehensive strategic plan and an infrastructure roadmap.²⁰ The strategic plan should cover “the ambitions of all of astronomy, ground and space, including links with neighbouring fields, to establish the most effective approach towards answering the highest priority scientific questions”.

ASTRONET followed a two-step process: (i) establish an integrated science vision with strong community involvement to identify key astronomical questions to be answered in the next 20 years; and (ii) construct a roadmap which defines the required infrastructures and technological developments, leading to an implementation plan.

The key astronomical questions were: (i) What is the origin and evolution of stars and planets?; (ii) How do galaxies form and evolve?; (iii) Do we understand the extremes of the universe?; (iv) How do we (and the Solar System) fit in? A Science Vision Working Group and four supporting panels examined each of the key questions (one panel per question), and established the approach, experiment or new facility, needed to make progress. This work led to specific scientific recommendations that were incorporated in a draft version of the Science Vision, made available to the entire astronomical community in late 2006. The draft was discussed in-depth during a symposium in Poitiers, France, in January 2007. The final Science Vision report concluded SKA would make major contributions to the first three of the key questions.²¹

This was a significant step forward in wider community recognition.

Creating the ASTRONET Roadmap was the second step in the process. A similar review structure was put in place as for the Science Vision exercise, this time with a Coordinating Working Group and five thematic panels. Phil Diamond (UK) and Thijs van der Hulst (NL), as senior European radio astronomers, were members of the coordinating Working Group. The relevant panel for the SKA and the optical E-ELT covered ultraviolet, optical, infrared and radio/mm astronomy. The work of various panels was informed by the ASTRONET Science Vision and the responses from the 100 plus projects in contention to a Coordinating WG questionnaire, as well as five long-range plans developed by ESA and ESO, the Astro-particle ERA-NET, and the EC-funded infrastructure coordination networks, RadioNet (radio astronomy) and OPTICON (optical astronomy). The initial draft of the roadmap was released for community consultation at the Infrastructure Roadmap Symposium in Liverpool, UK in June 2008, and finalised a few months later.²²

For the SKA, the crucial recommendation was “The E-ELT (Extremely Large Telescope) and the SKA, are the two flagships for European ground-based astronomy in the future. Both of them are therefore included in the European Roadmap at the highest priority level.”

Based on the project plans provided by both projects in the questionnaire responses, the Roadmap Working Group judged it possible to establish a phasing plan with significant spending on the E-ELT through ESO starting in 2010 and SKA Phase 1 funding ramping up from 2012. At the end of the E-ELT construction peak in 2016, SKA Phase 2 construction would begin. This phased approach would maintain the necessary momentum and expertise to achieve successful European participation and leadership for both projects. The ability to build a radio interferometer like the SKA in stages allowed what appeared to be an elegant solution for the competition for European funds between the two “flagship” projects. However, the phased funding approach for E-ELT and SKA was only feasible if significant additional funds become available soon after 2010 in order for the E-ELT construction to proceed in a timely manner, and even more so when the construction phases of these two big projects overlapped.

This equal top priority ranking with E-ELT in the European Roadmap, and a plausible phased approach for both projects allowing them to be done at the same time financially, was a decisive moment for SKA’s progress in Europe and globally. It showed that there was wide community support for the SKA, and, together with PrepSKA funding, allowed most of the funding agencies in the FAWG to move off the fence and begin to take an active role in the SKA as we describe later in this chapter.

4.3.2.3 The Large Astronomy Project Landscape in 2006 in the USA and Europe

Table 4.2 lists the large astronomy projects mentioned in the preceding sections on the US and European space and ground-based astronomy roadmaps.

4.3.2.4 Other Roadmaps

A second Decadal Survey in Australia in 2005, “New Horizons: A Decadal Plan for Australian Astronomy 2006–2015”, was carried out by a sub-committee of the Australian Academy of Science’s National Committee for Astronomy chaired by Brian Boyle. The Survey report reaffirmed SKA’s pre-eminent place in the roadmap as the “highest priority new program for Australian radio astronomy” and equal top priority for the SKA and the ELT in the international category. This led to AUD 101M (about €60M) being allocated for the development of the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) in two stages in 2006 and 2007, as we discuss briefly in Sect. 4.3.3.1.

Likewise, in Canada, a mid-term review of their Long-Range Plan (see Sect. 3.3.3.2) in 2005 confirmed SKA’s place behind ALMA and the Thirty Metre Telescope project in the priority list. In 2008, Russ Taylor and his university colleagues obtained a $CA eight million grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation for SKA and ALMA development, and in 2009 Taylor was awarded at $CA 1.5 NSERC Strategic Research Opportunity (SRO) Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and an $CA 2.5M CANARIE Network Enabled Platform (NEP) grant from Canada’s national research and education network, CANARIE.

In China, provisional approval for the construction of FAST—the Five-hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (see Sects. 3.2.6.2, 3.3.3.3 and 7.3.5.4)—was forthcoming from the Central Government in 2007; the estimated costs were the equivalent of €70M.

No explicit roadmap was made in South Africa at this time, but the funding scenario was to provide top-down money to create an astronomy hub in the country. This eventually led to the equivalent of about €150–160 million being spent on the 7-element Karoo Array Telescope (KAT-7) and MeerKAT, the 64-element South African SKA Precursor array (see Sect. 4.3.3.2).

4.3.3 SKA Pathfinders and Precursors

In 2006, SKA Pathfinders had already made their way onto national roadmaps (LOFAR in the Netherlands, and MeerKAT in South Africa) or were funded to do so (ASKAP in Australia). Originally, these three instruments were designated Pathfinders, but after a surge of interest in 2008 in the designation from many existing telescopes, the small number located on the two candidate SKA sites were called Precursors to distinguish them from the others. This applied to MeerKAT and the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionisation Array (HERA) in South Africa, and ASKAP and the Murchison Wide-field Array (MWA) in Australia. Supplementary material SKASUP4-2²³ provides a compilation of the designated SKA Pathfinders. Both ASKAP and MeerKAT were much larger than needed for demonstration of potential SKA designs and became state-of-the-art scientific instruments that also demonstrated national prowess in support of their bids to host the SKA.

4.3.3.1 Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA)

Following the Australian Decadal Survey of Astronomy 2006–2015, the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) for Radio and Optical Astronomy²⁴ provided AUD 19 million funding for the extended New Technology Demonstrator (xNTD) in September 2006. The opportunity for NCRIS funding was made known to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) by the Australian Government Chief Scientist at the time, Jim Peacock and a funding proposal was submitted to the government. The proposal tapped into the reservoir of goodwill towards the SKA project already existing in the Government following Ekers’ presentation to the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council (PMSEIC) a few years earlier (see Sect. 3.2.6.3). An additional AUD 30 million came from the CSIRO.

The xNTD was envisaged as an array of 30 dishes equipped with phased array feeds (see Sect. 6.4.7.1.2) and was to be part of the Mileura International Radio Array (MIRA) together with the Low Frequency Demonstrator. There had been pressure from the astronomy community to build an astronomically useful facility not just a demonstrator. The goals were to deliver a major upgrade to Australian radio astronomy capability with a telescope on the proposed SKA site while maximising Australia’s prospects for playing a leading role in the technology development for the SKA as well as being selected as the site for this facility. There was also an expectation that eventual investment in the full SKA would mitigate the risks inherent in developing the new phased array feed technology.

The NCRIS funding was then expanded by a direct allocation of another $52M by the Department of Energy, Science and Technology (DEST) in May 2007, xNTD was renamed ASKAP (see Fig. 4.2) to make the alignment with SKA in Australia clear, and the number of antennas in the array increased to 36. This funding was directly driven by the international SKA partnership case. The Low Frequency Demonstrator also changed name to the Murchison Wide-field Array (MWA, see Fig. 4.3).²⁵

Phased array feeds were an obvious future technology direction for survey science with ASKAP, but they had yet to be demonstrated in an operational interferometer. There was a split in the community on whether it should be a modest ten antenna demonstration which was the preference of the engineers, or large enough to have science impact. The decision for a relatively large, 30-element array was driven by the funding available in DEST rather than by any specific science case.²⁶ Later, as the site competition became more intense, continued funding for ASKAP was seen, internally in government circles, as providing a fall-back major facility if the site outcome did not go Australia’s way.

Fig. 4.2

Some of the dishes in the 36-antenna Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope on Wajarri Yamaji Country. Credit: CSIRO/Red Empire Media

Fig. 4.3

Some of the 256 “tiles” of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) on Wajarri Yamaji Country (Credit: MWA/Dragonfly Media)

With the national importance attached to ASKAP in the context of the site decision as well as the amount of money committed, the project was, not surprisingly, accorded priority over the centralised SKA effort in terms of engineering resource allocation and any schedule clashes with SKA.²⁷

4.3.3.2 South African SKA Precursor (MeerKAT)

Following the decision to bid to host the SKA in Southern Africa in late-2002 and the choice of a candidate location in the Karoo desert for the core site, a plan for radio astronomy was developed to raise the profile of South Africa focusing on a series of ever larger radio telescopes on the site (see Sect. 3.3.3.7). A conventional approach to funding the early demonstrator telescopes was taken in 2003 with a proposal by Justin Jonas for a Research Technology Collaboration Centre (RTCC) at Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) to coordinate efforts between SKA South Africa, academia and industry. An initial budget of 30 million Rand (€3.3 million) was planned, to be sourced from an innovation fund operated by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the National Research Foundation (NRC). However, once a decision was taken to build a demonstrator, additional funds were needed and other sources, such as the National Lottery, were approached for a further 30 million Rand.

Ideas for demonstrators began with a science-capable version of the EMBRACE aperture array (see Sect. 6.5.5.2.2) under development by the European SKA Consortium²⁸ to be located at HRAO. This quickly changed in early-2004 into a 25-element array of 12 m diameter low-cost mesh reflectors in the Karoo desert, and then into a 20-element array of 15 m diameter solid surface reflectors capable of high-quality imaging. The latter concept was pursued via a prototype of the 15 m antenna called the eXperimental Design Model (XDM) and a seven-element array, the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT-7) now with 12 m diameter dishes, built as a testbed to develop the technology for the planned larger array called MeerKAT. By the time the demonstrator had evolved via the XDM single dish into KAT-7 in 2006, funding estimates had grown to 90 million Rand (€10 million), most of which was from unconventional sources within the government. This was facilitated by personal contacts between senior Department of Science and Technology (DST) individuals—Rob Adam (Director-General) and Adi Paterson and Bernie Fanaroff (SKA Project Manager)—with the Finance Ministry officials rather than any traditional proposal-review-funding process.

The progression to the 64 element MeerKAT was driven by increased availability of funding, rather than by a well thought out plan. The eventual total cost of MeerKAT (Fig. 4.4) was about 2 billion Rand (about €150 million) of which 1.1 billion Rand went into telescope design and construction and 0.9 billion Rand into the telescope infrastructure.

XDM and KAT-7 provided local instruments to support the growing radio astronomy community in South Africa until MeerKAT came into operation in 2017 (see Fig. 4.4). It also became a high-profile stimulus for science and technology education and training in the wider African context via a Bursary Program. The construction and successful operation of KAT-7 demonstrated that the Karoo area was a viable potential site for the SKA in the same way as ASKAP did for the Murchison area for Australia. KAT-7 was a sufficiently large interferometer to show South Africa had the required expertise and innovation to contribute to the SKA design and to support the construction of the SKA if it was to be built in southern Africa. This success relieved the internal pressure on MeerKAT to deliver results on the timescale foreseen for the SKA site decision. However, as with ASKAP, MeerKAT was a sufficiently large project that its national deadlines took priority over commitments to the international SKA project. Also, as with ASKAP, MeerKAT was to provide a fall-back major facility if the site outcome did not go South Africa’s way.

Fig. 4.4

Some of the dishes in the 64-element South African MeerKAT array (Credit: South African Radio Astronomy Observatory)

As noted earlier, the ASKAP development was constrained by early decisions that were taken before the design was completed. In South Africa it was possible to take a different approach that allowed the design to follow an evolutionary path for MeerKAT, making technology improvements at each stage and taking advantage of new developments in antenna design, receivers, signal processing and correlator. As noted by Nicolson, this flexibility was necessary because the design teams were constantly learning along the way and technology was advancing.

4.4 PrepSKA: The Driver for Global Collaboration, 2007–2012

At the August 2006 Funding Agency meeting in Prague, FAWG members plus SKA representatives, Diamond and Schilizzi, heard the first details of plans for a European Commission Seventh Framework Program (FP7)-funded program of Preparatory Phase Studies of infrastructures on the ESFRI Roadmap, from the Commission delegate, Elena Righi-Steele. Inclusion on the ESFRI short-list was to be the selection criterion for inclusion in a directed Call for Proposals for Preparatory Phase Studies. SKA was already in the process of being evaluated for inclusion on the ESFRI Roadmap following the initiative by the Netherlands Government instigated by Harvey Butcher and Peter Wilkinson earlier in 2006 (see Sect. 4.3.2.2.1) and was thought to have good prospects. A Preparatory Study was seen by the agencies as a likely trigger for significant national support in the future since the program was open to participation by non-European agencies and institutes on a self-funding basis. Righi-Steele noted that an FP7 bid for a preparatory study would not require, or imply, full commitment to the SKA.

From the European Commission point of view, it had a long track record in supporting European collaboration in radio astronomy, particularly Very Long Baseline Interferometry (see Sect. 2.3) starting in 1989 and had funded (€10.3M) a major SKA design study on Aperture Arrays, SKADS, in the previous Framework Program 6 (FP6) (see Sect. 3.3.3.4.3). Including SKA in the new FP7 Program was an obvious continuation of previous policy, and one with strong prospects of success.

Formal recognition by ESFRI was duly forthcoming in October 2006, paving the way for the ISSC, led by Diamond, to prepare a proposal, PrepSKA, for submission to the European Commission early in 2007. The final deliverable of each Preparatory Study, PrepSKA included, was to be a “signature-ready” Agreement to fund construction. On the way to that Agreement, it was expected that studies of detailed design, governance, project management, financial engineering, and industry engagement would take place. Most importantly, it was a requirement that interested agencies and governments were responsible for the “policy work-packages”—governance, funding, and industry engagement. Supplementary material SKASUP4-3²⁹ lists the organisations participating in the PrepSKA proposal and SKASUP4-4³⁰ describes the work-packages in more detail.

PrepSKA was approved in October 2007³¹ for a start in April 2008, and completion in 2011. It provided the focus for Steering Committee/Project Office activities on the SKA design, site characterisation, telescope operations and management, as well as Agency activities on resourcing, governance and legal frameworks, site selection, and procurement.

The specific questions to be answered during PrepSKA were: What is the design for the SKA, and where will it be located? What is the legal framework and governance structure under which SKA will operate? What is the most cost-effective mechanism for the procurement of the components of the SKA, and how will it be funded?

Note that the PrepSKA goals did not include the continued development of the original science case outlined in Chap. 5. This had already taken place under Large Telescope WG and ISSC leadership (see Chap. 3) and would continue to develop as dictated by new results in the field and engineering design requirements without additional funding.

European Commission (EC) funding amounted to €5.5 million. Nominal direct matching national funds for the design and site characterisation amounted to about €15 million. Additional matching funds for the Funding Agency activities on resourcing, governance and legal frameworks, site selection, and procurement had already been committed by the Agencies. Several other national and regional SKA-related projects with design funds already committed were included in the PrepSKA proposal, without EC funding, as contributors to the Preparatory Phase activities (see Table 4.3). Many were designated subsequently as SKA Pathfinders or Precursors.

Table 4.3 Contributors to PrepSKA activities included in the PrepSKA proposal but without direct PrepSKA funding

The original plan was to integrate the R&D work from around the globe in order to develop a fully costed design and deployment plan for the SKA and investigate the options for the policy-related questions with active collaboration between funding agencies and scientists. The Implementation plan would form the basis of funding proposals to governments to start the construction of the SKA. This aim was scaled back during the course of PrepSKA as it became apparent that 3 or 4 years was insufficient to progress the engineering design to the point where it was construction-ready, and the “signature-ready Agreement” for start of construction became a Joint Implementation Agreement for the SKA Pre-Construction Phase starting in 2012. This step-change in ambition impacted PrepSKA and the direction of the work-packages.³²

The key new elements in the FP7 EC Preparatory Phase funding mechanism compared to the FP6 funding mechanisms that underpinned the SKA Design Study (SKADS) were the initial link to ESFRI-recognised large infrastructures and the requirement of the EC “Strategy on emerging large research infrastructures” that the governance, funding model and industry engagement Work Packages, collectively the “policy WPs”, must be led by (European) funding agencies. In SKA’s case, this investment of time and resources by the Agencies brought co-ownership of the SKA project with it, to the benefit of the project.

In the remainder of this section, we review the PrepSKA Work Package aims briefly, and discuss the changing roles and responsibilities of the partners and the governance structures put in place to support the PrepSKA and associated national activities. Also discussed are the practical outcomes of the governance and funding model work packages. Other chapters discuss the PrepSKA outcomes for engineering design (Chap. 6), site characterisation (Chap. 8), industry engagement and procurement (Chap. 10), and the wider impact of the SKA (Chap. 11).

4.4.1 PrepSKA Work-Packages

The main PrepSKA activities were grouped into two technical and three policy work-packages, with additional work-packages for overall management of the program (WP1) and the final deliverable, the Implementation Plan (WP7).³³

The two technical work-packages were led by the SKA Program Development Office (SPDO), the successor to the ISPO (see Sect. 4.4.2.1). WP2 on SKA Design initially focused on producing a costed, top-level design for the SKA and a detailed system design for SKA Phase 1. As time progressed this was scaled back to focus on the pre-construction phase as we discuss in Sect. 4.6. A detailed analysis of the telescope design work and its management can be found in Chap. 6. Work-package 3 on Site Characterisation, on the other hand, concentrated on additional studies of the short-listed SKA sites in Southern Africa and Australia. Section 8.4 describes the results of this work and its impact on the site decision.

The policy work-packages, WP4-6, were led by the funding agencies in the Netherlands, Italy and the UK respectively, and involved developing options for viable models of governance and the legal framework for the SKA (WP4); developing options for the approach to procurement and the involvement of industry (WP5); and investigating potential financial models required to ensure the construction, operation and, ultimately, the decommissioning of the SKA (WP6). Sections 4.4.3.1 and 4.4.3.3 discuss the outcomes of Work-Packages 4 and 6, and Chap. 10 discusses the efforts to satisfy the goals of Work-Package 5.

In WP7 the activities, reports and outputs of the various working groups were to be integrated to form the SKA Implementation Plan³⁴ including the costed system design for the telescope³⁵ and a study of the Economic and Social Benefits of the SKA.³⁶ The Implementation Plan is discussed later in this chapter in Sect. 4.6 where the Business Plan and Project Execution Plan that underpinned the incorporation of the SKA Organisation at the end of 2011 are discussed. Together with the legal documentation (see Sect. 4.7) and a detailed Work Breakdown Structure for the pre-construction phase produced in 2012 by the Project Office, these documents formed the complete and costed strategy required for the revised main PrepSKA deliverable.

Establishing a framework for coordination of the telescope design effort took considerably longer than anticipated. The proposal and its evaluation took the best part of a year, followed by staff recruitment over the next 2 years. Somewhat unexpectedly for a community that had a track-record of collaboration, learning how to work together on a global scale within a formal system engineering structure rather than a free exchange of ideas was not straightforward. The national, and regional in Europe’s case, SKA R&D programs had substantial funding (see Table 4.3) and high visibility locally with attendant responsibilities for delivering results on time for the funders. The result was that it took time for the international responsibilities to take centre stage. PrepSKA was under-resourced nationally and, consequently, squeezed for time for much of its life.

As already noted, PrepSKA was funded initially as a 3-year program. However, the engineering design was a four-year program, so there was pressure to move things along sometimes faster than was possible in such a distributed design effort. In the event, the engineering design passed the Conceptual Design Review stage by early 2011 (see Sect. 6.2.2.9), and that proved sufficient for the funding agencies and governments to agree to establish the SKA Project as a legal entity at the end of 2011 as we discuss later in this chapter. The additional year of design effort was funded as a no-cost extension to the PrepSKA contract with the European Commission.

4.4.2 Governance Structures to Support the PrepSKA Tasks

Figures 3.1 and 4.1 sketched the main elements of central SKA governance throughout the Transition Era. A tri-partite structure emerged to run the project: (1) the International SKA Steering Committee (ISSC) was replaced by the SKA Science and Engineering Committee (SSEC) in 2008, (2) the Working Group (FAWG) was replaced by the Informal Funding Agencies Group (IFAG) in late 2007. The IFAG was replaced by the Agencies SKA Group (ASG) in January 2009 which, in turn, was replaced by the SKA Organisation Founding Board (FB) in March 2011, and (3) the PrepSKA Board. Supplementary material SKASUP4-5³⁷ provides lists of the members who served on the various committees over the period we cover in this book. At the same time as the SSEC was being established, a parallel evolution of the central project office from the International SKA Project Office (ISPO) to SKA Program Development Office (SPDO) was taking place.

As will become clear, the role of the ISSC and its successor, the SSEC, changed in the course of the Transition Era from one of being in control of almost all aspects of the SKA project in 2006 to one in which, from 2008, responsibility was shared with the funding agencies and the PrepSKA Board. Together with the SPDO, the SSEC was responsible for the central project deliverables of a convincing, well-supported science case and a feasible engineering design, while lead responsibility for the post-PrepSKA governance and funding, procurement policy and the site selection process passed gradually to the funding agencies, as we describe in Sect. 4.4.3.1, and in Chap. 8.

The SSEC and SPDO partnered the ASG in its work on governance, procurement and site selection. The SKA Director and subsets of SSEC members were active members of the ASG Working Groups and Tiger Teams (special purpose, short term WGs created to resolve specific issues), and the SSEC as a whole spent considerable time in their own meetings debating issues that arose from those efforts as well as in joint meetings of the SSEC and ASG from 2009 onwards. The communication, comment, and diplomatic criticism at these joint meetings created a surprisingly strong spirit of collaboration and joint ownership of the project.

The transitions to the new governance structures as well as their roles and responsibilities are now described.

4.4.2.1 SKA Science and Engineering Committee (SSEC) and SKA Program Development Office (SPDO)

SSEC

As the details of the PrepSKA program became clearer, the ISSC began to work towards a new International Collaboration Agreement (ICA) for the radio astronomy partners in early 2007 to be ready for the PrepSKA era. It was already clear that the FAWG would continue as the agency equivalent of the successor to the ISSC, and the International SKA Forum would function as the meeting place for the two parties to discuss all aspects of the SKA project across the globe. But there would be an additional element of governance, the PrepSKA Board, with responsibility for the specific PrepSKA Program, and membership drawn from the participating institutes and agencies. The complications of this tri-partite governance were not lost on anyone involved, but in the absence of explicit funding agency endorsement of the SKA at that time, there was no obvious alternative.

The ISSC recognised that the initial SKA MoAs had been successful in establishing the current ISSC/ISPO structure which had delivered a comprehensive science case, reference design concept and site shortlist. But the project had matured to a stage where decisions went beyond those of a purely scientific and technical nature to include the increased investment in SKA-related precursors and pathfinders, further site characterisation and other preparatory work including governance, legal and procurement issues. We return to the tensions caused by the investment in pathfinders and precursors later in the chapter. In addition, there was the new dynamic caused by the interactions with funding agencies and the advice received from them. Taken together, it was clear that the central project office would need to expand, and such expansion would require more funding, particularly for a Central Design Integration Team (CDIT).

The ISSC Executive Committee’s initial concept for the International Collaboration Agreement foresaw the ISSC evolving to a structure called the SKA Steering Committee (SSC). This would be governed by an MoA endorsed by the plenary group of the funding agencies and signed by the SKA Consortia in Australia, Canada, China, Europe, India, South Africa and USA, and operate for the period 1 January 2008–31 December 2011. There would be 11 members, three each from Europe and the USA, and one each from Australia, Canada, China, India and South Africa. One of its primary responsibilities would be to provide funds for the SKA Program Development Office (see below).

The SKA Steering Committee idea did not survive the scrutiny of the full ISSC or FAWG entirely intact. The concept of a Steering Committee did not fit the new multi-levelled governance situation so a new name was required, the SKA Science and Engineering Committee (SSEC). The reduction in numbers did not sit well with current ISSC members either. Mike Garrett noted that the number of SSEC members from Europe must reflect the institutes involved since it looked probable that Europe would provide the first large tranche of money. So the total remained at 21 with equal representation from Europe, USA and the Rest of the World countries^38,39 (Fig. 4.5), and even increased in 2010 to 24 as the number of countries in the Rest of the World Group increased by one (Korea, via the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute). The ICA was signed in October 2007⁴⁰ (see Box 4.3).

Fig. 4.5

Delegates to the second meeting of the SKA Science and Engineering Committee (SSEC) in February 2009, held at Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK. Left to right: front row—Steve Rawlings (Europe), Thijs van der Hulst (Europe), Peter Dewdney (SPDO), Ken Kellermann (SSEC Chair, USA), Richard Schilizzi (SPDO), Sean Dougherty (Canada), Yervan Terzian (USA), Luigina Feretti (Europe). Second row—Bo Peng (China), Dayton Jones (USA), Bob Preston (USA), Colin Greenwood (SSEC Secretary, SPDO), Ethan Schreier (USA, Invited), Trish Henning (USA), Michael Garrett (SSEC vice-chair, Europe), Joe Lazio (SPDO), Roy Booth (South Africa), Ron Ekers (Australia, Invited), Geoff Bower (USA). Back row—Yashwant Gupta (India), Hiroyuki Nakanishi (Japan, Observer), Yuri Kovalev (Russia, Observer), Bong Won Sohn (South Korea, Observer), Jim Cordes (USA), Russ Taylor (Canada), Sergei Gulyaev (New Zealand, Observer), David DeBoer (Australia), Peter Quinn (Australia), Justin Jonas (South Africa), Arnold van Ardenne (Europe). Participants not present in the photo: Domingos Barbosa (Europe), Huib Jan van Langevelde (Europe). (Credit: Anthony Holloway, University of Manchester)

Box 4.3 Signatories to the 2007 International Collaboration Agreement for the SKA Program

The European SKA Consortium

The US SKA Consortium

The Rest-of-the-World Group:

The Australian SKA Coordination Committee, Australia

The Canadian SKA Consortium, Canada

The National Research Foundation, South Africa

The National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

The National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, TIFR, India

As with the ISSC, an SSEC Executive Committee (XC) was established, eventually comprising the SSEC Chair, vice-Chair, past-Chair, Secretary, and the Director, as well as representatives from Australia and South Africa. The XC met once per month, mostly by teleconference.

The principal roles of the SSEC set out in the 2007 International Collaboration Agreement were to provide scientific and technical guidance for the SKA Program while acting as the primary forum for interactions and decisions on scientific and technical matters for the SKA among the institutes. In addition, the SSEC would represent the SKA to the regional and national funding agencies.

Representation of SSEC views to the funding agencies became a much more active interaction as the PrepSKA goals became more focussed, and it became an SSEC and SPDO responsibility to help set the parameters of the policy work-packages with the Agencies SKA Group (ASG), as well as work together with the ASG to achieve the goals.

The SSEC also was responsible for the formal oversight of the SPDO and its activities and outcomes as well as ensuring its continued funding in the same way as the ISSC had been responsible for the International SKA Project Office (ISPO) in the past.

As it had done for the ISSC, the International Engineering Advisory Committee (see Sect. 6.2.2.3) continued to provide a much-valued sounding board for the SSEC on engineering matters.

SPDO and Its Funding

The PrepSKA proposal foreshadowed a major role for the central project office (still called the ISPO when the proposal was submitted) in leading WP2 on design and WP3 on site characterisation. To do this as well as carry out its broader mandate from ISPO days (see Sect. 3.3.2)—coordinate the institutions involved in SKA development to achieve a structured and efficient global effort and progress from technology development and system design towards construction of the SKA—the SSEC recognised that additional funds were required to staff the office appropriately. For that, a formal Memorandum of Agreement⁴¹ (see Box 4.4), a new organisational structure, and a new name, the SKA Program Development Office (SPDO), were required.

Box 4.4 Signatories to the 2007 Memorandum of Agreement to Establish the SKA Program Development Office (SPDO)

Cornell University, USA

Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe, The Netherlands

University of Calgary, Canada

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia

National Research Foundation, Republic of South Africa

These were all legal entities representing the interests of SKA in their respective countries or regions with the agreement of their national and regional SKA consortia. They had the responsibility of providing the agreed share of the Common Fund for SPDO operations. They also provided the necessary institutional backing for the SSEC in the future negotiations with the potential host institution for the SPDO (see Chap. 9). This formal approach harked back to that adopted by Harvey Butcher for the first MoA to Cooperate on Technology Development for a Very Large Radio Telescope, signed in 1996 (see Sect. 3.2.2).

The MoA was signed in October 2007 at the same time as the ICA establishing the SSEC and provided for a ‘Common Fund’ for the SPDO salaries and administration costs based on contributions from nominated lead institutions within each consortium. The MoA would take effect at the start of 2008. The Common Fund amounted to about €600 thousand per year, which together with some of the PrepSKA funding allocated for WP2 and WP3, allowed for a peak of 18 SPDO staff (Fig. 4.6) to be employed. At the time of signing of the SPDO MoA, the staff complement in the ISPO was four—the Director—Richard Schilizzi; the Project Engineer—Peter Hall; the Executive Officer—Colin Greenwood; and Office Manager—Lisa Bell. Greenwood also took on the task as ISSC Secretary in 2007, then SSEC Secretary in 2008, and Company Secretary following the establishment of the SKA legal entity in late 2011. Peter Dewdney succeeded Peter Hall as Project Engineer at the transition from ISPO to SPDO in 2008. Schilizzi continued as SPDO Director untl the end of 2011.

Fig. 4.6

SPDO staff in 2011. Standing—left to right: Georgina Harris, Rob Millenaar, Lisa Bell, Wallace Turner, Billy Adams, Duncan Hall, Tim Stevenson, Neil Roddis, Phil Crosby, Kobus Cloete, Andre Gunst, Roshene McCool, Colin Greenwood. Seated—left to right: Minh Huynh, Joseph Lazio, Richard Schilizzi, Peter Dewdney, Greta Collins. Not present: Johanna Bowler. (Credit: Anthony Holloway, University of Manchester)

With PrepSKA and matching national funding imminent, and a new governance structure and substantial expansion in staff at the central office (SPDO) on the way, the ISSC also decided in 2007 to carry out a competitive selection of a longer-term host for SKA Headquarters (see Chap. 9). The decision to select the University of Manchester as host led to the need for a separate MoU⁴² defining the roles and responsibilities of the University and the SSEC, one of which was that SPDO staff would be employees of the University.

The central element of the SP’O organisation was to be a Central Design Integration Team (CDIT) to coordinate the tasks in PrepSKA WP2 on SKA design and integrate the domain knowledge generated by national and regional teams into a costed SKA design (see Fig. 6.2). The Project Engineer would lead the overall SKA design effort and PrepSKA WP2 in particular. Domain Specialists in the various sub-domains—receptors, correlator, synchronisation and data transport, and software—were to provide global leadership in those areas during the SKA system design and associated prototyping and integration activities.

Recognising that good communication between the SPDO-CDIT and regional teams was crucial, national and regional liaison engineers were designated with responsibility for strategic and operational links to the ISPO-CDIT, particularly to the domain specialists and system engineer. They were also to manage prototyping contracts between the SPDO and collaborating groups and ensure that SPDO priorities were reflected in their engineering programs.

In fact, this approach did not prove as successful as hoped. Good communication in the “spoke and wheel” model of the CDIT was not easy to establish with this relatively hands-off approach, and the model of interaction quickly changed to one based on system engineering (see Sect. 6.2.2.2), with a System Engineer, Kobus Cloete, being appointed in 2009. The domain specialists were also appointed in 2008 and 2009. The system engineering approach at global level also took some time to establish due to the lack of experience in this approach in most radio astronomy centres and the resource disparity between the central office and the national and regional programs. Resourcing issues for PrepSKA WP2 continued throughout most of the life of PrepSKA (see Sect. 4.5.2).

The other key PrepSKA activity for the SPDO was the coordination of WP3 on Site Characterisation carried out by the Site Characterisation Working Group (previously the ISPO Site Evaluation WG) under the leadership of the SPDO Site Engineer, Rob Millenaar.

The SPDO also continued with the Working Groups formed during the ISPO era (see Sect. 3.3.1.3). The Engineering WG took on a new role. Led by Dewdney, its task evolved to one of coordinating activities in PrepSKA WP2 with membership comprising the SPDO engineers and the PrepSKA WP2 national and regional liaison engineers. The Science Working Group led by SKA Project Scientist, Joe Lazio, continued to develop the scientific goals of the project, including science simulations, both for SKA Phase 1 and the full SKA with the goal of generating requirements on the telescope design. The Simulations WG, led by Leonid Gurvits, continued to work on simulations of optimum array configurations for the SKA. Coordination of the industry engagement strategy re-emerged as a significant project theme when Phil Crosby joined the SPDO on secondment in 2009. The Operations WG, chaired by Ken Kellermann, continued to develop thinking on telescope operations strategies and their impact on telescope design (see Sect. 6.2.2.13). The Outreach Committee chaired by Ian Morison and later Jo Bowler continued to build up a considerable body of material (website, brochures, fact sheets, animations, newsletters etc) to stimulate outreach to the academic community and general public, as well as to industry and governments in the participating countries. Figure 4.7 shows a compilation of some of the diverse fact sheets produced by the Outreach Committee and national counterparts.

Fig. 4.7

A compilation of some of the fact sheets produced by the Outreach Committee and their national counterparts

4.4.2.2 Funding Agencies: From Working Group to SKA Organisation Founding Board

The funding agencies followed the SSEC-SPDO example a year later in 2009. With the advent of PrepSKA funding in April 2008, the Funding Agencies Working Group (FAWG) transitioned from a group offering informal advice to the SKA Steering Committee to an active participant in the realisation of the project as co-signatories (via STFC) on the PrepSKA contract with the European Commission. As noted in Sect. 4.4.1, they began work on several policy issues as well as the site selection process that continued throughout the Transition Era until the establishment of the SKA Organisation as a legal entity at the end of 2011. One of the other primary roles for the Agencies was to monitor progress in SKA telescope design in the international project and balance that against their own national efforts and funding opportunities. The project schedule and timeline became a focus of attention as did the Implementation Plan and Business Plan that would function as a “negotiating brief” for individual governments.

Related issues such as competition for resources both externally with other projects and internally between the international SKA project and the Precursor and Pathfinder projects were also on the table.

The Agencies’ own governance as an informal group also came under internal scrutiny and evolved several times as the project matured, and with those changes came a deeper relationship with the SSEC. As the new relationship was being defined in late 2007, it was agreed that the Agencies would advise the SSEC but not take any decisions formally itself, while the SSEC would take decisions on project and internal governance matters “with the concurrence of the funding agencies”.⁴³ This illustrates the creative language found to describe the power balance.

The advent of PrepSKA in April 2008 had introduced another layer of governance to the project, the PrepSKA Board, mandated by the contract with the European Commission. Membership of this board was drawn primarily from the FAWG and SSEC, so there was considerable overlap in subject matter during separate meetings of the three governing bodies. The PrepSKA Board reported to the Commission, but that was relatively “light touch” involving annual reports on progress and a mid-term review. Having three, independent, but overlapping elements of SKA governance (see Fig. 4.1) kept the Director busy.

The increasing complexity of SKA governance, and the multiple tasks ahead of the project as a whole were captured in a presentation on the SKA decision process by John Womersley in August 2008 at the SKA Forum meeting in Perth, Australia (see Fig. 4.8). Womersley, then Director of Programmes at the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council was speaking in his capacity as Chair of the Funding Agencies Working Group (see Fig. 4.9).

Fig. 4.8

The SKA players and complex interactions involved, as seen in mid-2008 at the start of PrepSKA (credit: John Womersley, UK Science and Technology Facilities Council)

Fig. 4.9

John Womersley (STFC, UK), Chair of the Agencies SKA Group, addressing the SKA Forum in Assen, The Netherlands in June 2010 (Credit: Hans Hordijk Fotografie, The Netherlands)

4.4.2.3 Agencies SKA Group (ASG), 2009–2011

This increasing complexity of governance, as well as the increasing recognition of the SKA by the community as shown in the ASTRONET roadmap and the increasing Funding Agency ownership of the project via the PrepSKA Work Packages, led Womersley to propose that the function and format of the Group should evolve to a more formal operation in which it could receive outputs from the SKA Program and act on them. On the apparent complexity, he concluded that was not necessarily a problem provided a balance between the scientist-driven aspects of the program and strong agency engagement was found. However, important for the funding agencies at this stage was to avoid any suggestion that their involvement in the SKA program was in any way a formal endorsement of the project. This was a dance that went on for quite some time.

Following preparatory work by the South African and Australian delegations in 2007 and 2008 respectively and by a working group led by Simon Berry (STFC, UK), the funding agencies agreed in February 2009^44,45,46 to establish the Agencies SKA Group (ASG, Fig. 4.10) with the aim of delivering a non-binding Joint Agreement on the Implementation of the SKA by the conclusion of PrepSKA in 2011–2012. The Joint Agreement would include details on the site, funding, governance, and procurement in order to present a complete proposal for submission to governments. Work towards a Joint Implementation Plan would take place via four work-streams: Joint Implementation Agreement, Post-Preparatory Phase funding and governance, site selection process, and schedule and timeline.

John Womersley expanded on the ASG aims a few months later,⁴⁷ as well as on the relationship with the SSEC. The ASG had “three primary aims: (i) Deliver a non-binding Joint Agreement on the Implementation of the SKA, with emphasis on Phase 1 and 2, to coincide with the conclusion of PrepSKA in 2011/12; (ii) Achieve sufficient consensus and provide decisions and recommendations on key policy areas of the SKA Project, where appropriate. Where not possible, recommend an appropriate framework for such decisions; and (iii) Prepare the groundwork for the subsequent establishment of a formally constituted SKA Steering Group at an appropriate time.’

On the relationship with the SSEC, Womersley had this to say: “(i) Consult and interact with the SSEC on cost, scientific and technical matters, and the PrepSKA project on policy and site issues, on an ongoing basis, in both cases receiving and providing advice as required to advance the overall SKA programme aims and enable decisions to be taken; and (ii) act as a destination for the outputs of the PrepSKA project.”

Fig. 4.10

Members of the Agencies SKA Group (ASG) and some of the other participants at the International SKA Forum meeting in June 2010 in Assen, The Netherlands. (See hba.skao.int/SKASUP4-5 for the ASG membership.) Left to right. Front row: David Luchetti (Australian Government), Michelle Cooper (STFC, UK), John Womersley (STFC, UK), Patricia Vogel (NWO, Netherlands), Tshepo Seekoe (South Africa). Second row: Michael Garrett (ASTRON, Netherlands), Sherrie-Lee Samuel (STFC, UK), Patricia Kelly (Australian Government), Giampaolo Vettolani (INAF, Italy), Miriam Roelofs (NWO, Netherlands), Maaike Damen (NWO, Netherlands), Third row: Elena Righi-Steele (European Commission), Kirsten Verkaik (NWO, Netherlands), Jan van der Donk (Dutch Government). Fourth row: Corrado Perna (INAF, Italy), Jim Ulvestad (NRAO. USA). Fifth row: Bernie Fanaroff (South Africa), Simon Berry (STFC, UK), Richard Schilizzi (SPDO), Colin Greenwood (SPDO), Ken Kellermann (NRAO, USA), Rowena Sirey (ESO), Vern Pankonin (NSF, USA). Sixth row: Franz-Josef Zickgraf (German Government), Markus Schleier (German Government). Back row: Rob Adam (Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa), David DeBoer (CSIRO Australia), Brian Boyle (Australian Government), Greg Fahlman (NRC, Canada). (Credit: Hans Hordijk Fotographie, The Netherlands)

As mode of operation, the ASG agreed it would make recommendations to Ministers rather than make decisions, as such, while ASG discussions on the issues should lead to sufficient consensus to allow the SKA program to move forward on a case-by-case basis without necessarily having all countries involved. The term “sufficient consensus”, proposed by Bernie Fanaroff,⁴⁸ was sufficiently vague that all delegations to the ASG could live with the formulation.

The final stage in governance evolution in the 2006–2011 period was the formation of the SKA Founding Board in April 2011 to supersede the ASG and prepare the way for the establishment of the SKA Organisation (SKAO) as a legal entity.

4.4.2.3.1 SKA Founding Board, 2011

One of the main PrepSKA tasks for the funding agencies was to come up with a proposal for the long-term governance and legal framework for the SKA in its construction and operational phases (Work Package 4). As the PrepSKA engineering design work progressed and it became clear that the design would not be “construction-ready” at the end of PrepSKA in 2011, the funding agencies’ focus turned towards the governance and funding required for a four-year post-PrepSKA “Pre-Construction Phase” starting in 2012. To this end, the ASG formed a Pre-Construction Phase Resourcing and Governance Working Group (the Pre-Construction WG) in October 2009 led by Simon Berry to examine the policy issues and present viable recommendations to allow the project to progress to the next phase in time for implementation before 1 January 2012 when the then current governance arrangements would expire. Use of input from PrepSKA Work Packages 4 (Governance) and 6 (Funding) and from the ASG Schedule and Timeline Tiger Team (see later in this section) would be central to this effort.

A year later at the October 2010 ASG-SSEC meeting, the Pre-Construction WG was able to report progress on both fronts. A Project Execution Plan (PEP) had been developed including an estimate of resources required (see Sect. 4.5.2), and a pathway to the implementation of a legal entity-based governance structure including selection of a host for the SKA Project Office, had been outlined.

Two options were on the table to implement the new governance structure by mid-2011. The first, create a Founding Board governed by MoU to replace the ASG and manage the transition from the ASG and SSEC to the new legal entity. And second, on a short timescale, go straight to the creation of a legal entity, bypassing the Founding Board stage, to provide a decision-making body with the ability to approve and implement the PEP. The second option was not regarded as feasible in the time available, and not pursued by the ASG.

The Founding Board MoU became separate Letters of Intent (LoI) with a stronger mandate for action than the MoU. These were signed by nine countries (see Fig. 4.11) on 2 April 2011 in Rome following a landmark meeting of the SSEC and ASG in the final days of March 2011. The Founding Board was now a reality, with the tasks of “developing a legally constituted governance structure and an adequately resourced SKA Organisation for the pre-construction phase from 2012 to 2015”.⁴⁹

Each LoI signatory nominated two members to the Founding Board, a “scientist with relevant expertise” and a “representative of the signatory with appropriate financial authority”. John Womersley was elected Chair, and Patricia Vogel from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), vice-Chair. Neither Canada nor the USA signed an LoI, Canada because there were issues with the wording of the LoI, and the US because it was not likely they could participate in the SKA given the Decadal Survey report, and the then current economic climate. However, Canada along with India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the European Commission and ESO became non-voting “Observers” on the Founding Board while US delegates (Vernon Pankonin and successive US Consortium Chairs, Jim Cordes and Patricia Henning) were Invited Participants at Founding Board meetings. Supplementary material SKASUP4-5⁵⁰ lists the Financial Authority representatives and Science representatives on the Founding Board.

Fig. 4.11

Signatories to the Letters of Intent establishing the SKA Founding Board on 2 April 2011 at the Osservatorio e Museo Astronomico in Rome, Italy. Left to right: Jinxin Hao (China), Franz-Josef Zickgraf (Germany), Patricia Vogel (The Netherlands), Jean-Marie Hameury (France), Patricia Kelly (Australia), Jonathan Kings (New Zealand), John Womersley (UK), Gabriele Villa (Italy) and Valanathan Munsami (South Africa) (Credit: National Institute for Astrophysics, INAF, Italy)

Signing the LoI did not commit the signatories to any participation beyond the Founding Board, and to demonstrate their initial commitment, the signatories noted their intention to contribute up to € 50,000 per signatory to cover the cost of the Founding Board activities. As with the ASG, the Founding Board would make decisions by means of sufficient consensus but if that was not possible, decisions required a two-thirds majority vote.

How the Founding Board went about its business of completing the transition to a legal entity to take the project into the Pre-Construction Phase is described in Sect. 4.7.

4.4.2.4 PrepSKA Board and Officers

The third pillar of governance in the Transition Era was the PrepSKA Board, broadly charged with oversight of the project and reporting to the European Commission. Its membership included representatives of the organisations that signed the PrepSKA contract.⁵¹ These were the funding agencies able to formally participate in the PrepSKA project, and the astronomical research organisations and universities who played key technical, managerial or political roles within PrepSKA. Work-Package Leaders and Observers also attended Board meetings and attendance numbers at meetings grew to more than 30.

The principal responsibilities of the Board were to oversee the activities defined in the work programme, approve allocation of resources, and maintain control of the project contingency and allocate contingency funds when appropriate.

Colin Vincent (STFC, UK) chaired the Board throughout its existence from 2008 to 2012. Phil Diamond (University of Manchester) was the first PrepSKA Coordinator (2008–2010), followed by Steve Rawlings (University of Oxford, 2010–2012), and finally by Paul Alexander (University of Cambridge, 2012). Althea Wilkinson (University of Manchester) was PrepSKA Programme Manager throughout the whole period.

4.4.3 PrepSKA Outcomes: Post-2012 Governance and Funding Models

The original aim of PrepSKA WP7 was to provide the final consolidated implementation plan and signature-ready agreement for the next phase of the SKA project based on the work carried out in WPs 2 to 6. Multiple parallel work-streams were thus set in motion, as we have seen, to contribute to the plan, creating a complex enterprise with many interconnections and dependencies: SKA design, telescope operations, site selection process, HQ location, costs and funding model, procurement model and governance model. The work on resourcing, governance and legal structure carried out by the funding agencies created the framework into which the other activities found their place. Here we discuss the outcomes of WPs 4 and 6 on Governance and Funding models respectively. Outcomes of the other Work packages are discussed in Chap. 6 (WP 2 on Design), Sect. 8.4 (WP 3 on Site Selection), and Chap. 10 (WP5 on Industry Engagement and Procurement). The process of drawing the Implementation Plan (WP 7) together is discussed later in this chapter (Sect. 4.6).

4.4.3.1 Governance Options in the Pre-Construction Phase and on the Long-Term

PrepSKA Work Package 4 (WP4) was intended to study options for viable models of governance and a legal framework for the SKA project during its construction and operational phase. Detailed discussions on governance began in earnest during a PrepSKA Workshop in November 2008 in Washington DC and continued throughout the Transition Era with the focus changing in 2009 to the immediate post-PrepSKA period as part of the Joint Implementation Agreement. This would lead in December 2011 to the Articles of Association and Members Agreement for the UK Company Limited by Guarantee, the legal entity that would govern the SKA project for the next 9 years.

Crucial to the context for the Washington discussions was the equal top priority for ground-based astronomy given to SKA and the European ELT (E-ELT) in the European ASTRONET roadmap⁵² published a month earlier. The Washington workshop was remarkable for its breadth of discussion and innovative ideas on governance and the future legal framework.

Patricia Vogel and Miriam Roelofs, both from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), coordinated the WP4 work. A thorough multi-step process to collect information on the governance and legal frameworks of existing international mega-science facilities as well as their best practices and lessons learned,⁵³ led to a shortlist of possible models for the full SKA that included CERN, ESO, ITER, ESRF, XFEL and ALMA (see Box 4.5).

Box 4.5 Potential Models for the SKA Legal Entity

Treaty-based

CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, European Council for Nuclear Research)

ESO (European Southern Observatory)

ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor)

National legal entity governed by international Convention

ESRF (European Synchrotron Research Facility), Société civile (France)

National Legal Entity

XFEL (European Free Electron Laser), GmbH (Germany)

International Agreement (Europe-USA-Japan)

ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array) located in Chile

The initial conclusion^54,55 was that a treaty-based model for the SKA held many advantages for a facility that expected to operate for 50 years, but one significant disadvantage. The main advantages included a robust long-term structure supported by national commitments at governmental level that safeguarded the initial investments, a large degree of autonomy providing independence of the national law of SKA member states, and the capacity to operate in all member states of the SKA Organisation.

The clear disadvantage was the expected time to negotiate the Convention underlying the Treaty, typically 5 years.⁵⁶ Intergovernmental agreements are subject to parliamentary or other governmental control with lengthy formal steps to be taken before approval of the obligations on participating member states.

In contrast, the short timescale to establish a national legal entity like the German GmbH for XFEL was attractive, but such an entity would be subject to any changes in domestic legislation and therefore vulnerable with respect to long-term duration. A combination of the two models, a treaty-like Convention governing a national entity such as the ESRF, became the option of choice for the construction and operation of the SKA. The start-up process would still be lengthy, but it would create a flexible organisation with a guaranteed long-term commitment.

However, the more immediate problem in June 2010 was what legal structure could be put in place for the Pre-Construction Phase by the end of 2011 when the current MoUs governing the SSEC and SPDO expired. A national legal entity was the obvious short-term solution. Attention in the PrepSKA WP4 group turned to this question as part of the ASG Pre-Construction Resource and Governance WG and, with advice from legal consultants, Vogel and colleagues drew up a list of potential national legal entities to be considered. In addition, the WP4 group gave some thought to a new European legal entity construct, a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), but rejected this as being too European-centric to serve a global project like the SKA.⁵⁷

Three national legal entities were identified for further study: a UK Company Limited by Guarantee, a Dutch Scientific Foundation (Stichting), and a US not-for-profit Corporation. Choosing a host country for the SKA headquarters would automatically determine the form of the legal entity. That selection process was initiated at the June 2010 ASG meeting under the coordination of Simon Berry, as discussed in Sect. 9.2. The choice of the UK as host for the Headquarters is discussed in Sects. 4.7.1 and 9.2.

4.4.3.2 SKA and ESO, Part 2: 2008–2009

As we have seen, at the WP4 Washington meeting in November 2008, and with the ASTRONET roadmap outcomes in mind, the approach to SKA governance and procurement specifically in Europe came under scrutiny. It was obvious that the approach should be Europe-wide rather than a set of independent national voices.⁵⁸ One option was to return to the idea of ESO as the institutional home for SKA in Europe, first mooted in early 2006 (Sect. 3.4.2). A side discussion at the Washington meeting between Phil Diamond and Bruno Murano (Italian delegate in the Council of the European Southern Observatory, representing ESO) came to the conclusion that a new information exchange would be useful. Murano’s view of such a discussion was cautiously positive, as expressed in an email to Diamond⁵⁹:

Both EELT [European Extremely Large Telescope] and SKA are very ambitious programs, requiring the best use of our forces. ESO capabilities will be saturated in the next years by ALMA and EELT construction. At the same time it is felt that ESO shall act for the best positioning of ground based astronomy in Europe and of European astronomy in worldwide collaborations. Its institutional stability on the long term and international positioning can be a value for everybody, whatever the wavelength is.

In April 2009, Thijs van der Hulst, Steve Rawlings, and Wim van Driel (all members of the European SKA Consortium Executive Committee), Mike Garrett (SSEC, RadioNet Coordinator), and Diamond (SSEC, PrepSKA Coordinator) met a high-level delegation from ESO, including Tim de Zeeuw (Director General), members of the ESO Council and of the ESO Strategy Working Group chaired by Marano. The main discussion points⁶⁰ echoed those from the 2006 meeting (see Sect. 3.4.2). Did ESO Council have a view on how European SKA efforts should be organised? If ESO was to become involved in SKA efforts, what would be the status of SKA within ESO? And how could the current strong role of the European radio astronomy institutes be preserved within any new European organisation?

Both parties agreed to identify the most important issues in moving forward but no commitments were made. In fact, the idea did not gain traction and was dropped without further substantial discussion.⁶¹

4.4.3.3 PrepSKA Outcomes: Estimated Costs and Funding Models

4.4.3.3.1 Estimated Costs

From the earliest days of the SKA in the 1990s, estimates of the total cost for the SKA were made. It is fair to say these first estimates were naïve extrapolations of the cost of current state of the art radio telescopes scaled up for the much larger number of antennas and associated equipment and reduced by some factor to try to take account of innovation and economies of scale. As time went on, thoughts about “what the market would bear” came into play as well; what were equivalent astronomical projects under construction in other wavelength regimes expected to cost and what levels of funding were funding agencies prepared to contemplate.

It took many years before these estimates became reliable indicators of the true construction costs of Phase 1 of the SKA, let alone the full SKA. SKA experience shows that this occurred only when procurement processes were well underway. Along the way, the target construction costs served a useful function in setting bench-mark goals for the cost per sq. m of the telescope. This drove many design innovations, most of which were shown not to be feasible for an acceptable cost or on an acceptable timescale.

In these discussions on cost, the ISSC, and later the SSEC, assumed that the burden would fall equally on Europe, USA and the Rest of the World. This concept had been introduced by Ekers in an ISSC meeting in 2000 as a pragmatic way to avoid detailed cost sharing discussions at too early a stage. The “by-thirds” share assumption remained in place until 2009 when the PrepSKA WP6 studies on possible financial models began to examine share arrangements based on return on investment.

The first prediction of the cost of the full SKA, 300 million US dollars, or USD 300 per sq. m., was made by Peter Wilkinson in his 1991 paper on “The Hydrogen Array” (see Sect. 2.4.1.2). The cost per sq. m. was a factor ten or more less than the then state of the art.⁶² By the time the PrepSKA period began in 2008, the internal target for the capital cost had burgeoned to €1.5 billion as a result of (i) the intervening 15 years of engineering work in which the concept of using innovative technology to decrease costs slowly made way for lower risk, higher cost technologies with more predictable timescales, (ii) a substantial increase in scientific scope, (iii) the availability of far more detailed cost estimations such as the 2007 SKA cost study and (iv) comparisons with the Atacama Large Millimetre and sub-millimetre Array (ALMA) as an example of a comparably large radio astronomy telescope project. Table 4.4 provides the estimates of costs as “published” and Fig. 4.12 displays the same information with costs in 2021 Euros, corrected for inflation.

In 2007, the 10% Phase 1 was “guesstimated” to cost €250–300 million, the extra factor of two in cost per square metre compared with earlier estimates for the full SKA included start-up costs. Annual operations costs were taken as 10% of the capital costs, a standard number for modern radio telescopes that included a 2–3% allowance for upgrades to the telescope. By the time of the SKA1 de-scope (see Sect. 4.5.2) following the 2010 System Conceptual Design Review, the costs of SKA1 had increased to between €350 and 500M (2010 units) depending on the costs of the site infrastructure. At the start of construction of SKA1 10 years later in 2021, the costs had further escalated to €963M capital costs and an equivalent amount for the first 10 years of operation. The major factor in this increase in capital costs was a factor of four to five increase in the estimate of the cost of dishes, as discussed in detail in Sect. 6.4.6.

Table 4.4 Evolution of internal estimates of total design and construction costs as a function of time. Where both SKA1 and SKA2 capital costs are provided, the SKA2 costs include SKA1

Fig. 4.12

Evolution of SKA construction cost estimates by the SKA Project in millions of Euros as a function of year, from Table 4.4 and corrected for inflation to 2021 units. Where both SKA1 (orange) and SKA2 (blue) capital costs are provided, the SKA2 costs include SKA1. SKA Pre-Construction costs (grey) are also provided; the 2007 and 2010 numbers were estimates, the 2021 number is the money spent from 2012 to 2020. USD values in Table 4.4 have been converted to Euros at a nominal exchange rate of USD 1.1 = €1. Inflation correction factors for the years shown were the average of US, EU and UK values

Table 4.4 and Figure 4.12 show that, at the time when the Transition Era began in 2006, the SKA was already a potential “big-science” project in terms of its cost estimate, and the subsequent equal top priority with the European Extremely Large Telescope in the ASTRONET European roadmap in 2008 (see Sect. 4.3.2.2.2) cemented its position among the other contenders. In the USA, SKA’s status would be determined by the 2010 Decadal Survey on Astronomy.

The funding agencies and project representatives discussed the funding cycles of US and European funding agencies in a meeting on the PrepSKA policy work-packages in Washington in November 2008. It was noted there that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) would be unlikely to provide early funding for the SKA from its Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account even with a positive recommendation by the Decadal Survey Committee. There was general concurrence amongst funding agency members that Europe could perhaps fund about 60% of SKA Phase 1 construction, with little or no contribution by the USA until Phase 2. This would remove the need to prepare a detailed SKA Phase 1 science case for the US Decadal Survey, which would focus on the Phase 2 science case instead. The US would need to fund about 40% of SKA Phase 2 construction costs to maintain its overall one-third share of SKA construction costs.⁶³ However, the eventual lack of sufficient support from the Decadal Survey signalled the gradual end of direct US involvement in the SKA. The estimate for SKA2 costs made by Aerospace Corporation, USD 5.9 billion, as part of its evaluation of all large proposals to the Decadal Survey Committee was a major factor in the lack of support in the Committee report, as we discuss more fully in Sect. 4.5.3.

As the SKA design matured in the Pre-Construction Phase, more confidence could be placed in the cost estimates of the system elements, and the estimated total capital costs rose substantially. This was also the lesson from ALMA.

The difficulty of estimating costs for technically complex and sophisticated new instruments requires careful assessment of the level of technological readiness. Traditional cost estimating by scientists and engineers based on their previous experience, especially if based on smaller-scale projects, should be supplemented by professionals with cost estimating experience in comparable domains.⁶⁴

This increase in total capital costs led the SKAO Board to impose a cost-cap in 2013 of €650 million for SKA1. By 2021, the cost estimates had further increased to the point that in the formal SKA1 Construction Proposal the SKA1 capital costs were €963M (see Table 4.4).⁶⁵

4.4.3.3.2 Spend Profiles in 2007 and 2009

As part of the planning process, spending profiles for the construction phases were constructed on two occasions, the first in 2007 for the PrepSKA proposal to the European Commission,⁶⁶ and the second, in 2009, in one of the submissions on SKA-mid to the Radio-Millimetre-Sub-millimetre (RMS) Panel of the US Decadal Survey Committee.⁶⁷

Figure 4.13 shows the spending profile in the PrepSKA proposal for what was seen in 2007 as the pre-construction activities as well as Phase 1 and Phase 2 SKA activities. The peak in the construction spending was forecast in 2015.

Fig. 4.13

2007 estimates of expenditure on SKA design and construction. In early 2007, the PrepSKA proposal foresaw a total expenditure on SKA design and construction of €1350M from 2006 to 2021. This comprised €100M on Pathfinder R&D to be integrated into the final design, €200M on SKA Phase 1 (10%) construction, a further €850M to expand to the full array (SKA2), and €200M on infrastructure costs

Figure 4.14 shows the expected spending profile for the mid-frequency component of the SKA (300 MHz to 10 GHz, SKA-mid) 2 years later, in 2009, in the Decadal Survey submission based on the PrepSKA engineering work. The peak in SKA-mid construction spending was shown occurring in 2019, 4 years later than in the PrepSKA proposal.

Fig. 4.14

Total capital and operations expenditures for SKA-mid in FY2009 $million (from the submission by J. Cordes et al. in 2009 to the US Decadal Survey Committee). Estimated total spend on Phase 1 and Phase 2 construction of the SKA at mid-frequencies was USD 1670 million, peaking in 2019

At the start of the construction phase in 2021, the peak spend was expected in 2026.

4.4.3.3.3 Funding Models: PrepSKA WP6

The original goal of WP6 was to look into all aspects of the financial model required to ensure the construction, operation and, ultimately, the decommissioning of the SKA. However, as the overall project schedule developed to cope with the constraints that emerged during detailed studies of the design and site selection process, it became clear that the post-preparatory, pre-construction phase would play a more significant role than earlier thought. It was then that the focus of the Work Package 6 team led by Simon Berry (STFC, UK) moved from SKA construction and operations funding models to pre-construction funding and governance issues. It is instructive to follow the lines of argument made in this study⁶⁸ since it led to a funding model that is being applied for SKA Phase 1 construction.

SKA Construction and Operations

The initial funding model for construction and operations followed the original simple ‘by thirds’ split implied by the equal representation for Europe, USA, and the Rest-of-the-world in the Grass-roots Era governance structures. The model also incorporated funding-phasing assumptions for SKA that minimised conflict with the construction funding profile for the European Extremely Large Telescope project (see Sect. 4.3.2.2). Recognising the mismatch in European-USA funding cycles, the ASTRONET Infrastructure Roadmap process in 2008 had Europe contributing about 60% of the SKA Phase 1 funding and the remainder from the rest-of-world bloc. The US would then come in at the end of the 2010–2020 decade with funding for their one-third share of the construction costs of SKA Phase 2. However, in 2010, this was seen as an unrealistic model in terms of matching the known and likely engagement timelines from the major investor countries particularly as the potential for US engagement in the project diminished with the outcome of the ASTRO2010 review process.

Attention then shifted to other, non-fixed share arrangements, which in turn required more detailed discussion of questions of ‘return on investment’ than previously. Potential arrangements encompassed:

• Facility access and science return (for example, encompassing discussion of the continuation of an ‘open skies’ approach versus reserved access for contributors)

• Industrial and/or contractual return

• Operational participation (for example through allocation of regional data or science centres)

• Managerial or other governance influence.

The question of a ‘host premium’ contribution—the ‘value’ attached to a country’s hosting of a facility—was raised. However, with the site decision process going on throughout the PrepSKA era, it was not possible to consider this question in any adequate level of detail, except to note the presumption on all sides that some level of ‘premium’ would be in place in the project.⁶⁹

Two other potential models looked at using clearly defined metrics to determine contribution levels. One was national economic strength measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) such as underpinned contributions to ESA and ESO. The other was ‘community strength’, using the size of the astronomy community measured by membership levels in the International Astronomical Union. Neither were found to be concepts on which to base a viable and generally acceptable funding model.⁷⁰

Another original objective of the study was to investigate the possibility of obtaining a loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and other similar national and/or regional bodies to provide a smooth funding profile for the construction phase of the project. A meeting with EIB officials in 2012 led to an understanding that the EIB Risk Sharing Finance Facility mechanism could provide an important mechanism for supporting the SKA project, primarily through balancing shortfalls in funding due to inconsistent commitment timelines from Members. This would smooth the funding profile of the construction phases of the project, particularly SKA Phase 2. A requirement would be a legal structure for SKAO that maximised stability and certainty such as an International Organisation and backing at sovereign government level.^71,72 That was not the case in 2012 and the opportunity was not followed up in the Pre-Construction Phase.

A further line of enquiry was to investigate the potential for private or non-governmental funding for SKA. The WP 6 team consulted individuals experienced in the area but concluded that detailed discussion was premature at that stage. This was also not followed up in later years.

Pre-construction Phase

The funding model for the pre-construction phase used the detailed plan of activity with estimates of costs provided in the Project Execution Plan (PEP). This was more straightforward than for the later construction phase in that there was a clear understanding of the cost and scope of the planned programme, as well as the relationship with the chosen governance and ‘procurement’ arrangements, and the impact these would have on the overall structure of the project. In addition, there was an understanding of national positions and requirements from funders—what they expected to receive in return for their participation.

There was no willingness or desire among agencies and funders to move to an entirely centrally funded project structure. In contrast, there was strong support for maintaining local funding control over technical activities, albeit under the control of a strong central project office with overall design authority. This led to a two-part funding model for this phase: (i) an SKA Project Office (SPO) funded by contributions from member organisations to a centralised budget, and (ii) locally funded technical activities where a Member would through their own mechanisms provide support for work in their own country or to another country working in the same area through a consortium set up to deliver that work-package.⁷³

The general conclusion drawn by Simon Berry and the WP6 working group in 2012 was that the route forward for funding the pre-construction phase could stand as a model for SKA1 construction provided a reasonably well understood work program, scope and schedule could be developed.

In the event, SKA1 construction and operations funding in the Inter-Governmental Organisation Era from 2021 onwards was based on a negotiated funding contribution structure which saw the three “host” countries—Australia, South Africa, and the UK—each commit to 14% of the budget. The levels of commitment by other countries were roughly in line with scientific capacity in the community, with countries with well-established astronomical communities paying more than the less well-established. This funding key also governs the telescope access rights.

4.5 Bumps in the Road

Here three key project issues are described that caused a re-think of the approach being taken—the phased implementation of the SKA; defining the scope of SKA Phase 1; and the failure to achieve sufficient backing for the SKA in the US Decadal Survey, Astro2010. A fourth key issue, the so-called “mask issue” affecting the placement of antennas in South Africa, is described in Sect. 8.4.4.

4.5.1 Phased Implementation of the SKA: A Decision with Lasting Consequences

At the time of writing, the SKA Observatory has formally embarked on construction of the first phase of the SKA, nominally 10% of the expected full SKA capability. The question is: why 10% and not the full array?

In the earliest conception of a phased construction process, a relatively small proof-of-concept demonstrator was seen as a prudent first step on the way to the full SKA, to convince funding agencies and community alike that the large radio telescope idea was feasible in practice. At the time this was discussed at the ISSC meeting in Sydney in August 2003,⁷⁴ Schilizzi sounded a note of caution that large demonstrators in excess of what is required to demonstrate technology to carry out science programs would drain resources from the SKA project itself. This particular question returned in 2006 when each candidate hosting-site initiated large national SKA Pathfinder projects to optimise the chance of being selected to host the SKA and as a substantial fall-back instrument in case they were unsuccessful in their site bid.

The note of caution notwithstanding, a year later in 2004, at the 12th ISSC meeting in Penticton, Canada, opinion had moved on and a “scientifically”-sized demonstrator (5%), the International SKA Pathfinder (ISKAP), was deemed essential to be built between 2009 and 2012 at the SKA site (then to be chosen in 2006). This was to be the first phase of a three-phase continuous construction process, where Phase 2 was the full SKA at low and mid frequencies and Phase 3 was an extension to high frequencies (20+ GHz).

Following the first exchange of views with the funding agencies at Heathrow in June 2005, it was clear that the Agencies were enamoured of the phased approach to construction put forward by the Project since it allowed them to contemplate a smaller tranche of SKA construction funding in parallel with full ELT construction funding. SKA funding would ramp up as ELT funding wound down. The ability of an interferometer to be constructed in phases allowed different partners to contribute at different times depending on their funding circumstances. Taking the remarks of the US representative and co-chair, Wayne van Citters, at the Heathrow meeting at face value, the US was unlikely to contribute substantial funds earlier than 2015. But that would interface well with the start of Phase 2 construction following the first phase of construction for part of the frequency range, funded primarily by Europe, Australia and South Africa.⁷⁵

The Heathrow meeting, and the subsequent descope of the then current seven telescope designs to the Reference Design⁷⁶ (Sect. 3.4.1) at the end of 2005, led to the SKA project plan being updated. Now included was a Phase 1 that was not just a demonstrator but a 10% instrument with capabilities surpassing then current instruments by at least a factor of two. This was a “foot in the door” approach that took account of the reality that the ESO ELT project was viewed by the funding agencies and the wider astronomy community at that time as having considerably higher priority than the SKA. This was not because there was a scientific reason for the ELTs to be ahead of the SKA, rather the perception that it was the turn of the optical/IR community to build a large expensive project and its design was more advanced than SKA’s. Phasing the SKA design and construction also played to one of the strengths of an interferometer, that an extremely science-capable instrument can be built as a sub-set of the full instrument. The ISSC and subsequently the SSEC viewed the phasing concept as a funding convenience to enable resources to flow to both SKA and the European ELT. They continued to assume that funding for SKA Phase 2 would be approved before SKA phase 1 construction was completed despite a general warning from Vernon Pankonin (US National Science Foundation and member of the Agencies SKA Group) that Phase 1 funding might be all the SKA ever received. In fact, the funding agencies saw the phased approach as affording a “bail-out” opportunity after Phase 1, if so needed.

Another important factor, at least in the minds of the funding agencies, was the cost. SKA Phase 1 costs could be estimated using existing prices, or so it was thought, while SKA Phase 2 would require large reductions in unit costs if it was to be affordable. Going ahead with SKA Phase 1 allowed time for these assumed cost reductions to take place without holding the project hostage to whether they were real or not.⁷⁷

This led in March 2006 to the ISSC deciding to prepare an SKA-10% science case (see Sect. 5.9.5) for an instrument to operate with a limited frequency range from 0.3 to 10 GHz and baselines up to 50 km as proposed in the Reference Design.⁷⁸ This would address important but unanswered questions in physics, excite the broader public, and showcase the potential of the full SKA.⁷⁹

A year later in March 2007, the ISSC approved a resolution on a Phased Implementation of the SKA⁸⁰ based on the Reference Design and the Phase 1 science case developed by the Project Scientist, Bryan Gaensler, and the SPDO Science Working Group. Phase 1 was defined as 10% of the full SKA, covering a frequency range of 0.2–3 GHz, Phase 2 as the full SKA, covering 0.07–3 GHz, and Phase 3 as the full SKA, extending the high end of the frequency range to 25 GHz.⁸¹

More specifically, the ISSC resolution entailed (i) a phased development of the full SKA starting with regional pathfinders contributing design knowledge to SKA Phase 1 which would be constructed from 2012–2016 for 250 M€; (ii) a Phase 1 that focused on the low and mid-band frequencies (this required a change of the reference design); and (iii) using the Phase 1 results to guide the development and construction of the full SKA.

Further development of the phased approach during 2007 led to a concern in the ISSC Executive Committee that Phase 1 was receiving too much emphasis, particularly in the light of the equal top priority given to the science to be done with the full SKA at low and mid-frequencies and the E-ELT in the ASTRONET review (see Sect. 4.3.2.2.2). With Pankonin’s earlier warning still fresh in their minds, ISSC members at their meeting in October 2007 transformed the concept of the 10% Phase 1 instrument into a “technical readiness milestone” when 5–10% of the collecting area had been deployed. However, at the SKA Forum meeting a day later, the funding agencies did not agree with Phase 1 being downgraded in importance, and required it be restored. John Womersley (FAWG Chair) cautioned that it could prove difficult to ask governments for large amounts of funding without clear breakpoints like Phase 1 with its own science output. Martin Gallagher (Australia) and Phil Mjwara (South Africa) agreed that from a government perspective, it would be difficult to sell the SKA without the phased approach. This pragmatic view that timelines needed to be mapped and packaged for politicians prevailed.

The ASG and SSEC returned to the question of the timing of Phase 2 with respect to Phase 1 in July 2009 as part of a discussion of the Schedule-Timeline Tiger Team report (see the Sect. 4.6.1). Pankonin stated that the SSEC/SPDO must clearly define whether SKA Phase 1 was a prototype to be evaluated prior to Phase 2. If yes, then it should be less than 10% SKA, and should include evaluation of dishes, aperture arrays, phased array feeds. If no, then Phase 1 is the first phase of construction which proceeds seamlessly into Phase 2, and there should be a system prototyping phase prior to Phase 1. Ken Kellermann spoke for the SSEC in saying that SKA Phase 1—Phase 2 transition was a funding concept and that specific system components would be prototyped early in SKA Phase 1.

It was agreed by the ASG and SSEC that SKA Phase 1 would run seamlessly into Phase 2, with part of the prototyping being carried out by the SKA Precursors. The Precursor role remained until a few months later in 2009 when a revised approach to PrepSKA Work package 2 on SKA design was adopted (see Sect. 6.2.2.2) which replaced prototyping via the SKA Precursors to centrally managed Verification Programs. Active planning of the transition to Phase 2 diminished in 2014 in the face of the mounting costs of Phase 1 and corresponding increased cost estimates for Phase 2.

SKA Phase 3—extending the frequency range above 10 GHz—had always been seen as an integral part of the SKA program and was an important requirement for the site short-list in 2006 (see Sect. 7.3.4). It remained a scientific priority for the US SKA community, and this led to sporadic discussion in SSEC meetings about whether Phase 3 should be located in the USA since it was felt that the Australian and South African sites were not at sufficiently high altitudes for optimal high frequency operation. In the end, it did have sufficient priority globally that a program of tropospheric monitoring at both candidate sites was carried out as part of the site characterisation process (see Sect. 7.3.4), on the recommendation of the International Engineering Advisory Committee in 2009. However, the measurements were severely delayed, and the results had little impact on the site decision in 2012. In the meantime, as mentioned in Sect. 4.5.3, Steve Myers (NRAO) and colleagues submitted a proposal for a North American Array, effectively SKA Phase 3, to the Decadal Survey Committee in 2008, in competition with the SKA Phase 2 mid-frequency proposal by Cordes and colleagues.

4.5.2 Telescope-Design Resource Issues and the Scope of SKA1: Pizza and Beer Come to the Rescue

Resource issues dogged PrepSKA Work Package 2 on telescope design for the first 2 years as the national institutes juggled local and international SKA priorities. From the central project office perspective, substantial central funding for the design would have made the task easier. But as it was, €2.8M funding for PrepSKA WP2 was leveraging more than €130M of community expenditure on SKA-related R&D including the local Precursor and Pathfinder telescopes (see introductory paragraphs to Sect. 4.4). In addition, planning had already begun for the post-PrepSKA period⁸² which also gave rise to resource concerns on the longer term.

As 2009 progressed, it was clear that the Precursors, Pathfinders and Design Studies were making excellent progress in developing technologies for the SKA, but the challenge for the SKA as a whole was to capture the full benefit of the global R&D in a systematic way. In an attempt to highlight these issues for the SSEC and find a solution for the lack of sufficient manpower being provided specifically for WP2 SKA design activities in the institutes, Schilizzi summarised the roles of the SPDO and the lead institutes in March 2010 as follows.⁸³

The role of the SPDO is to lead the system engineering work and analysis, set out the boundary system constraints for work on the sub-systems, carry out an analysis of the risks throughout the project and initiate risk mitigation procedures where necessary, and integrate the sub-system design knowledge into the overall system.

The role of the lead institutes is to manage the execution of the tasks for which they are responsible under the PrepSKA contract for WP2, and to ensure that they are carried out in a timely manner in order to meet the review deadlines and the associated PrepSKA deliverables. The lead institutes are also responsible for self-organising the contributing institutes assigned to each individual task.

However, his personal notes earlier in the year⁸⁴ show the level of frustration felt about the lack of resources.

Late in 2009, the SKA design process had reached a point where the SPDO felt it would be prudent to have a high-level external panel review the system design (see Sect. 6.2.2.7). This was premature in the sense that the design was not at the usual level of detail for a conceptual design review. But not premature in the sense that there was real concern in the SPDO, supported by the SSEC Chair, Ken Kellermann, that some SSEC members were not prepared to take hard decisions on which elements of the design to retain as top priority in order to match project scope and technical readiness to the funding potentially available. A review with every prospect of failing to meet external approval appeared the only way to bring this message home.

The Review Panel was convened in February 2010. Membership comprised Wolfgang Wild, Chair (ALMA), Jim Yeck (IceCube Neutrino Observatory), John Webber (Head of the NRAO Central Development Laboratory), Robin Sharpe (ex-Philips Semiconductors) and Lyndon Evans (CERN), all with considerable experience in the design and construction of major scientific infrastructure and in engineering enterprises where mass production (and associated economies of scale) were involved. The latter expertise was particularly relevant to the SKA—a machine of thousands/millions of the same parts. The Panel had two main conclusions, the first that the SKA timeline was over-ambitious and unrealistic for the current scope and cost, and second that the science case was too broad and pushing the project into impossible parameter space. They pointed out that, with technology being pushed dramatically on almost all fronts, the schedule was bound to be unrealistic given the low readiness levels of the new or unproven technologies. One of their recommendations was to form science and technical advisory groups to aid decision-making in the science-technology-cost trade-offs for the SKA and SKA1, in particular.

It was hard to ignore this advice. The SSEC, on the first day of its next meeting a month later in March, decided there was sufficient independent science and engineering expertise in the SSEC to form an internal SKA Phase 1 Definition Sub-committee. The mandate was to produce an SKA1 Concept Design consisting of (i) high-level targeted science goals, and (ii) the required technology mix per frequency range and baseline length. The Sub-Committee members were: Mike Garrett, Chair (SSEC Vice-Chair), Richard Schilizzi (SPDO Director), Steve Rawlings (ESKAC Chair), Jim Cordes (USSKAC Chair), Dave DeBoer (Engineering/Site Advisor) and Justin Jonas (Engineering/Site Advisor).

Not wasting time, the Garrett Sub-Committee met the same evening in a small conference room in the Turing Building in the University of Manchester over pizza and beer, and came up with a draft plan (Fig. 4.15). The key scientific drivers were to be: (i) History of neutral hydrogen: Epoch of Re-ionisation (EoR) to now; (ii) Pulsars for Gravity (General Relativity and the detection of gravitational waves), and (iii) Transient Universe (new phenomena).

The technology mix was proposed to be (i) an Aperture Array (10⁵ m²; 70–450 MHz; baselines to about 100 km), and (ii) 200 single pixel feed dishes of 15 m diameter (0.45–3 GHz; (but with a surface accuracy capable of observing at 10 GHz as required for Phase 2; baseline lengths to about 100 km). The Aperture Array specification represented a ten-times increase in sensitivity over LOFAR, whilst the specification for dishes represented a three times improvement over the Extended VLA and GMRT. The innovative technologies including the Phased Array Feeds and the dense Aperture arrays were to be transferred to the upgrade path for Phase 2. Not all SSEC members agreed with the proposed restricted set of science goals. Russ Taylor noted that many in the radio astronomy community would feel disenfranchised from the SKA if continuum imaging and polarimetry were not listed as science goals.

As can be seen in Fig. 4.16, the Garrett Committee raised the estimated cost of SKA1 from €300M to €350M, including contingency but not operating costs.

Fig. 4.15

The SSEC Sub-Committee in the process of defining SKA Phase 1, University of Manchester, March 2010. Left panel: Michael Garrett (Sub-Committee Chair). Right panel: l-r David DeBoer, Richard Schilizzi, Steve Rawlings, Jim Cordes, Justin Jonas (Credit: Michael Garrett)

Fig. 4.16

Flip-over sheet in Fig. 4.15 depicting the various options for SKA Phase 1 and their estimated costs. The estimated total cost (€350 million) is shown at the bottom right. (Credit: Michael Garrett)

Further iteration and discussion with the SSEC in May led to a reformulation of the science goals to focus on those that drove the technical specifications:

• (i) understanding the history and role of neutral hydrogen in the Universe, and

• (ii) detecting and timing binary pulsars and spin-stable milli-second pulsars.

The SSEC formally recognised that other science would be possible with the technical solutions proposed and with that, the remaining dissenters in the SSEC came into line. The resulting SKA Memos 125⁸⁵ and 130⁸⁶ became pivotal SKA documents.

These two goals remained the drivers for SKA1 technology development for the next 5 years until the new SKAO Director of Science, Robert Braun, and his colleagues enlarged the scope of science for SKA1.

The speed and decisiveness of the SSEC action on SKA 1 had a positive effect on the funding agencies as it demonstrated the astronomical community could focus on the larger task in hand when required.

4.5.3 Why the US Is No Longer Directly Involved in the SKA

The US was a major partner in the SKA from the time of the establishment of the Large Telescope Working Group in 1993 (see Sect. 2.5) until the end of 2011 when the US SKA Consortium dissolved itself following the failure to obtain a positive recommendation for construction funding in the National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey in 2010 (Astro2010). This marked the end of active US involvement in the SKA at institutional level.

In this section, we summarise briefly the first decade and a half of US involvement in the SKA and follow with a description of the Astro2010 process, its outcome for SKA, and conclude with some reflections on this major bump in the road on the way to SKA.

4.5.3.1 The 1990s

The Very Large Array (VLA) had come into operation at the start of the 1980s and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) in the late 1980s. The Atacama Large Millimetre and sub-millimetre Array (ALMA) was the new radio astronomy project in prospect, and there was little enthusiasm in the National Radio Astronomy Observatory for a further large project like the SKA. But individual astronomers and engineers in the US including the NRAO made significant contributions to discussions of the science and potential engineering solutions for the large radio telescope concept in the 1990s. In October 1998, the US led the way in creating the first SKA Consortium in the world. Rick Fisher and Ken Kellermann (both NRAO) organised a meeting at Green Bank that led a few months later to an initiative from Yervant Terzian (Cornell University) and Jill Tarter (SETI Institute) to form a US Consortium for SKA (USSKAC). Jackie Hewitt (MIT) was elected Chair and Tarter vice-Chair. Tarter and colleagues coordinated the preparation of a position paper for the 2000 Decade Review, Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium (McKee & Taylor, 2001). This resulted in a recommendation for USD 22 million for SKA technology development in the Moderate Initiatives category (see also Sect. 3.3.3.8). The McKee and Taylor report lauded the significant nature of the international SKA collaboration (Kellermann et al., 2021).

4.5.3.2 First SKA Funding

A National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technology and Instrumentation grant of USD 1.5 million followed in 2002. This was used for developing the Large-N Small-D (LNSD) array concept that had grown out of a series of Workshops on the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) held between 1997 and 1999 (Ekers et al., 2002) (see also Sect. 3.2.6.5). This led to a plan driven by Jill Tarter (SETI Institute), Sandy Weinreb (Caltech-JPL) and Jack Welch (University of California, Berkeley) for the Allen Telescope Array—built for SETI and radio astronomy—to function as an LNSD SKA Pathfinder (Kellermann et al., 2021). LNSD arrays were adopted in late 2005 as part of the reference design for the mid-frequency SKA as described in Sect. 6.2.1.3.

As far as the science case and technical requirements were concerned, the US ISSC delegation also promoted extending the high frequency limit of the SKA to 25 GHz to meet the low frequency limit of ALMA, reflecting the widespread local community interest in these wavebands. This led to the high-frequency SKA concept as Phase 3 of the SKA, a concept accepted by the remainder of the ISSC as a quid pro quo for US support for the lower frequencies. Later in the decade, in 2008, the USSKAC with Jim Cordes as Principal Investigator, received a USD 12 million NSF Technology Development Program (TDP) grant to develop further the dish aspects of the Large N-Small D concept. Originally expected in 2005, the delay in the TDP grant award was caused by an NSF Senior Review into astronomy funding. The TDP became a significant contribution to the global SKA design effort coordinated via PrepSKA (see Sect. 6.4.5). In addition, as we have seen in earlier sections, the US led the way on several recognised SKA Precursors and Pathfinders including the Allen Telescope Array, Long Wavelength Array, EVLA, and PAPER and were involved in the Murchison Widefield Array and MeerKAT, as well as the early stages of LOFAR.

With the largest delegation of any single country in the International SKA Steering Committee from its inception in 1999, US radio astronomers were a strong science, technical and governance presence throughout the 2000s. However, following the June 2005 Heathrow meeting of funding agencies (see Sect. 3.4.1), it was clear to ISSC members that, despite some positive words of support for the SKA concept at Heathrow by the NSF Director of Astronomy, Wayne van Citters, nothing could be decided on substantial long-term construction and operations funding until after the 2010 Decadal Survey. The three-year delay in funding the Technology Development Program added to the general uncertainty surrounding long-term construction funding from the USA and put the US in a position of relative weakness in the ISSC in terms of project leadership compared with the European countries, Australia and South Africa⁸⁷. The latter were perceived to have prospects of significant funding in the near term and growing political will within their governments to move the SKA forward. Equivalent prospects in the US were seen as an essential element in funding the construction of the full SKA.

All eyes were therefore on the Decadal Survey.

4.5.3.3 Decadal Survey, Astro2010 New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics

In 2006 attention in the US was already turning to preparations for submission of position papers in 2008 for the 2010 Decadal Survey which was to be carried out under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences. An NSF Radio, Millimetre, Submillimetre (RMS) Planning Group chaired by Martha Haynes from Cornell University concluded in 2005 that “it is imperative for the future of meter to centimeter wave astronomy that the U.S. play a leadership role in the design and development of the SKA. To accomplish this, NSF must provide adequate support for the U.S. SKA technology development and demonstrator instrument programs” (Kellermann et al., 2021). In 2007, an Associated Universities Incorporated (AUI) committee on Future Prospects for US Radio, Millimetre, and Submillimetre Astronomy, chaired by Richard McCray from the University of Colorado, came to a similar but less US-centric conclusion to the Haynes RMS Planning Group: “Develop the technologies for the era of Square Kilometer Array science, Develop, test, prototype, and implement the technologies required to achieve SKA-class science, Review and assess the progress of the international SKA effort on a continuing basis.” (Kellermann et al., 2021). Several discussions on the future of radio astronomy in the US were also held under the banner of the “Chicago” meetings in 2006 and 2007 in which a number of initiatives were presented, including the international SKA. The USSKAC drew encouragement from these meetings that the SKA proposal was timely and strongly supported in the (radio) community.

By early 2008, the USSKAC had defined the two main principles to underpin the submission to the decadal committee⁸⁸: (i) the project was an international collaboration. This was a position supported by the NSF, evidenced by informal participation in international funding agency discussions and by funding of two very significant SKA Technology Development Programs intimately linked with the international preparatory program of SKA development (PrepSKA). (ii) Following advice from the NSF, the proposal should be for the full range of science, and for all three phases of SKA construction including the high frequencies. In other words, a proposal for the full SKA.⁸⁹

In the event, a single all-encompassing proposal was not submitted. SKA-mid (frequency range 300 MHz to 10 GHz) was singled out for the international SKA proposal submitted by Jim Cordes (Cornell University) on behalf of the USSKAC, while Don Backer at UC Berkeley submitted a separate proposal for development and construction funds for the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionisation Array (HERA) that was in effect SKA-Low, and Steve Myers at NRAO submitted a proposal for development funding for a North America Array (NAmA) that was in effect SKA-high (or SKA Phase 3, upper frequency limit 25 GHz). Of the three, the low and high frequency array concepts generated the greatest scientific enthusiasm in the US.⁹⁰ A fourth proposal was submitted by Geoff Bowers at UC Berkeley for the Radio Sky Surveys Project which had as its goal the sky surveys aspect of SKA-mid.

This multi-pronged approach did not adhere to the NSF advice and made it clear that there were separated SKA interests in the US that were not well coordinated. We comment further on this in Sect. 4.5.3.8.

4.5.3.4 Survey Structure

The mandate from the US Academy of Sciences for the 2010 Decadal Survey, New Worlds, New Horizons (Blandford, 2010) was to survey space and ground-based astronomy and astrophysics and recommend priorities for the most important scientific and technical activities of the decade 2010–2020. More specifically, the committee was to formulate a decadal research strategy with recommendations for initiatives in priority order within different categories related to the size of the activities and their home agencies. A new element of this survey compared to earlier ones was the inclusion of projects not yet out of the starting blocks despite recommendations in previous Surveys, together with new initiatives from the research community. The survey included analyses of the technical readiness and sources of risks of all projects, and independent estimates of the cost and schedule risks with help from an independent contractor, Aerospace Corporation. This was a major change in the Survey process and drove the preparation and execution of the Survey.

The Decadal Survey Committee was chaired by Roger Blandford from Stanford University. It was assisted by five Science Frontier Panels that defined the themes for the science case that underpinned the survey recommendations, and four Program Prioritisation Panels (PPP) that conducted in-depth studies of technical and programmatic issues in the different wavelength areas for the 100 or so proposals submitted. In the first phase of the Survey, the science panels identified themes that would define the research frontiers for the decade, and specific questions within each theme (see Blandford (2010) for details). In the second phase, the PPPs reviewed the proposed facilities, instruments and programs versus the key science questions and, using additional information from the Aerospace Corp analysis of technical readiness, cost and risk, drew conclusions that the Panel Chairs submitted to the Survey Committee. In the final phase of the Survey, the Survey Committee reviewed the PPP reports and drew up recommendations that took account of the PPP recommendations and the budgetary and schedule outlook for NASA, the Department of Energy, and NSF. As we discuss further in Sect. 4.5.3.8, the outlook in 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis was bleak and budgets were under very close scrutiny.

The specific questions for each of the science themes were not made known to the proposers to avoid tailoring of the responses to the questions.⁹¹

Following the call in late 2008 by the Decadal Review Committee for White Papers on Science and Technology, six SKA-relevant responses were submitted.^92,93 These included those mentioned earlier, SKA-mid, HERA, NAmA and the Radio Sky Surveys Project as well as papers by Fred Lo et al. on “The Impact of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory”, and Rick Fisher (NRAO) et al. on “Large Instrument Development for Radio Astronomy”.

Two Requests for Information were issued to selected proposers including Jim Cordes for the SKA-mid proposal. The first in February 2009 was for an overview of the science, engineering, costs, and programmatic issues, and the second in June 2009 to provide considerable additional detail for use primarily by Aerospace Corporation in its evaluation of technical readiness, costs and risks.

The relevant Program Prioritisation Panel for the SKA was the Radio, Millimetre, Submillimetre (RMS) panel chaired by Neal Evans from The University of Texas at Austin. One of the main considerations for the RMS Panel in each case was the scientific quality of the proposed facility and, in particular, its ability to address the key questions the Frontier Science Panels had formulated in a range of categories from being the only instrument to answer the question, to being of no help in answering the question. With this directed “key science” approach, an argument like “This instrument will open up new discovery space.” carried little or no weight.⁹⁴ The potential for discovery, or “Exploration of the Unknown” , had always been a strong component of the SKA science case (see Sects. 5.3.7 and 5.10.9) and was included in the SKA-mid science case for the Decadal Survey submission using the time domain as an example of parameter space ripe for the exploration of dynamic cosmic phenomena. The discovery in 2007 and general acceptance in 2013 of the reality of the Fast Radio Bursts became a textbook example.

The other important consideration for the RMS Panel was technical readiness combined with a reasonable cost estimate, driven largely by the desire on the part of the National Academy of Sciences and the US funding agencies to find ways to quantify potential schedule and cost over-runs before project approval and thus attempt to avoid the issues that befell several large space-based astronomy projects.⁹⁵

4.5.3.5 The SKA-Mid Proposal

Following an initial analysis of the SKA-mid response to the first RFI, the RMS Panel’s preliminary conclusions⁹⁶ were that it was hard to find a single scientific question established by the Frontier Science panels that could only be answered by SKA-mid. It was clear that it would contribute important information to many questions but there was no “killer app”. The Panel formulated a number of questions on the science, engineering and organisation to be answered before a face-to-face question and answer session between the SKA-mid proposal team and the Panel in Pasadena, California on 9 June 2009. As one of the questions they posed to Cordes et al. put it “In order to justify this amount of money, there’d better be some BIG (sic) science coming out of this.”

There were also concerns about technical readiness particularly the perceived optimistic timeframe and technical issues concerning the correlation of the very large data rates envisaged. According to one of the Panel members a decade later, they felt “underwhelmed” after the question-and-answer session in Pasadena.

The Aerospace Corporation analysis only added to the misery. Their estimate of the capital cost of the full SKA-mid was USD 5.9 billion, meaning a US contribution of USD 2 billion. This was well above the total of €1.67 billion (USD 670 million for the US) estimated by the international SKA project for the full SKA-mid telescope. No estimate was provided for Phase 1 of SKA-mid by the Aerospace Corporation. The primary cause of this much higher estimate came, apparently, from large contingency factors applied to design elements with perceived low technical readiness. Details of the Aerospace Corporation analysis have never been made public, presumably for proprietary reasons, and to avoid endless arguments over the details. The cost estimate was dismissed at the time by the SKA scientific community as being over-cautious over-estimates. However, with knowledge of the current (2022) approved capital costs for Phase 1 of the SKA, approximately USD 1 billion, it is hard to argue with the overall outcome of the analysis.

4.5.3.6 “Thumbs-Down” for SKA-Mid

In its report to Blandford’s Committee, the Radio-Millimetre-Sub-millimetre Panel gave top priority in the “radio” area to the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionisation Array (HERA) proposed by Don Backer and colleagues while noting its reservations about large scale funding for SKA-mid in the coming decade from the “killer app” science and technology readiness points of view. The Panel concluded SKA-mid was not ready for the construction funding proposed by the US SKA Consortium and the international community. It recommended a continuing US role in the development of concepts for the international SKA mid and high components. No funding was recommended for the North American Array or the Radio Sky Surveys project.

The Blandford Committee’s final report in 2010 noted the “enormous science potential and enthusiastic support [for SKA] around the globe” but concluded that “despite unqualified enthusiasm for the science the facility could deliver and the recognition that it represents the long-term future for radio astronomy, the Survey Committee encountered a major discrepancy between the schedule advertised by the international SKA community and the timescale on which the NSF could realistically make a significant contribution to SKA’s construction and operations costs”. Picking up on the Aerospace Corporation’s view that the SKA technical readiness was low, the Committee also noted that the detailed path to construction of any of the three SKA facilities (low, mid and high) was not clear, as was the case for some of the other major projects in other areas of astronomy. In contrast, HERA offered a development pathway for SKA-low while it would be primarily through continued technology development that the US could remain an active partner in the next generation metre/centimetre radio facilities through the SKA collaboration including also the precursors and pathfinders. The Committee did not make a formal recommendation for any funding for such continued US participation in SKA development in either SKA-mid or the North American Array.

Without a formal recommendation from Astro2010, there was no mechanism for the NSF to allocate any funds to international SKA development or construction.

In recognition of the global character of the SKA project, the Committee did suggest that every 5 years or so “the international science community should come together in a forum to share scientific directions and strategic plans, and to look for opportunities for further collaboration and cooperation, especially on large projects”. A mid-term review of US projects did take place in 2015, chaired by Jacqueline Hewitt from MIT, but this only discussed the status of approved projects and did not consider the SKA or any other new project.⁹⁷

4.5.3.7 Aftermath, 2010–2011

The SSEC meeting in October 2010 was a time of soul-searching for the global project.⁹⁸ Was the SKA vision too far out of line with reality? SSEC Chair, Mike Garrett, noted recent SKA developments, both positive and less so, including the European ASTRONET and US Astro2010 outcomes, the SKA1 Concept definition, and the Project Execution Plan (PEP, see Sect. 4.6.2), as well as the increasingly prominent role played by the Agencies SKA Group, and then raised questions about fundamental tenets of the SKA project. Should SKA1 focus on technology innovation or invest in one array/receptor technology? What was the role of SKA Precursors in SKA1? Was there a natural cycle of facility construction? Would it make sense to focus on low frequencies in SKA1 and dishes in SKA2? Should the Precursors be incorporated in SKA1 and 2? Was the project progressing too quickly? Should it wait for first science results from the Precursors?

In response, the Director pointed out that there were two courses of action: descope the project to SKA-low only or SKA-mid only or carry out the engineering work needed to design the SKA1 described in SKA Memo 125 and PEP before final costing. After lengthy discussion, the SSEC preferred to stay the course agreed in previous months, and not descope.

In their meeting held at the same time, the Agencies SKA Group noted⁹⁹ that “while the US Decadal Survey highlighted a view of the need for more technological development to be undertaken to enable viability of the program, the US would not substantially contribute towards this, and US construction funding would not be forthcoming during this decade. As a consequence, funding for the SKA project would essentially need to be provided within Europe and by the rest-of-world”.

Several post-Astro2010 meetings took place in the USA to discuss the RMS Panel report and possible strategies for the future. At the time of the SSEC and ASG meetings in October 2010, a generally held view in the US reported by Joe Lazio (JPL, Caltech; SKA Project Scientist) was that the international SKA was the “long-term future for radio astronomy” and that HERA was a potential avenue for contributions to SKA-low while keeping the flame burning for SKA-high.¹⁰⁰ A roadmap group chaired by Lazio was established. Alignment between the Astro2010 science goals, various on-going U.S. projects, and SKA science goals was clear, and there were interests in continuing relevant technology development. However, no obvious NSF funding path was available on the scale needed for significant contributions to international SKA activities. There was a perception in the US radio astronomy community voiced by Ken Kellermann that “the Astro2010 report damned the SKA project with faint praise”.¹⁰¹ An initial reaction from non-US members of the SSEC was to look for joint approaches to combine HERA and SKA-low, but there was also concern expressed about US commitment to the international projects.

The wind had gone out of the sails of the US SKA contingent by this time, but the US Consortium and Associated Universities Incorporated (AUI) President, Ethan Schreier (Fig. 4.17), mounted separate last-ditch attempts to alter the SKA course at the pivotal SSEC-ASG meeting in Rome at the end of March 2011. This was the meeting (Fig. 4.18) when the SKA Founding Board was established as a pre-cursor to the Pre-Construction Phase legal entity, the SKA Organisation (see Sect. 4.4.2.2), a clear indication that Europe and the rest of the world were prepared to move ahead without the USA, if necessary.

Fig. 4.17

Ethan Schreier, President of Associated Universities Incorporated (AUI) (Credit: Ethan Schreier)

Fig. 4.18

Two early proponents for the SKA exchange views on the path forward for the project at the SSEC-ASG meeting at INAF, Rome, March 2011. Left: Ken Kellermann, right: Ron Ekers. (Credit: Anton Zensus)

The US Consortium expressed the desire to remain involved in the SKA and to join the Founding Board but were concerned about the project schedule as well as the reality of the current funding situation with the NSF unable to fund any new direct SKA expenditure.¹⁰² Bob Preston voiced the Consortium’s concerns that the SKA was too ambitious and advocated a reorganisation of the project focused on Phase 1 to “attract whatever funding there may be”.¹⁰³

Associated Universities Incorporated (AUI) managed NRAO on behalf of the US Government. As AUI President, Ethan Schreier had long participated in ISSC and SSEC meetings as an Observer on the grounds that NRAO was not mandated by NSF to play a leading role in the SKA, but he could as AUI president since AUI was independent of the NSF. He also had long experience in large astronomy projects both space and ground. Schreier felt strongly that this gave him a mandate to find a way to allow US entry into the Founding Board provided the international project heeded the main messages from the Astro2010 report.

At the Rome meeting, Schreier presented his views to the ASG and SSEC on the relationship between the US radio astronomy priorities and international SKA planning. These views were not supported in a formal sense by the US SKA Consortium despite considerable similarities. He noted that, to many in the US, the current international process had overly optimistic funding expectations in view of higher funding priority for other facilities, and SKA design effort taking place prior to initial results from SKA Pathfinders. He questioned the underlying assumption that what was required to address the scientific goals was a single SKA facility too large for any single country to build. He also questioned whether SKA, especially Phase 1, needed to be one facility built at one site. And, bravely, he also questioned whether the proposed international project governance was appropriate to fiscal and programmatic reality, and was it cost effective. He proposed that the SKA should start with the existing Precursor and Pathfinder projects and the Astro2010 recommended HERA and NanoGrav (pulsar timing) projects, define or continue the necessary technology developments, and define science investigations needed to better specify the eventual full SKA. The requirements and path forward could be reevaluated as science discoveries and technology advances were achieved from investments already in hand.

Schreier’s views did not meet with universal approval in the ASG or SSEC. SSEC member, Peter Quinn urged that the vision for the SKA not be lost. Phil Diamond interpreted the USSKAC position paper as a “wait and see” message but he felt, as he did in January 2006 (see Sect. 3.4.3), that the project would lose momentum if current global activities stopped. This view was supported by John Womersley (ASG Chair) who felt that questions were being reopened that were long settled. On the other hand, Anton Zensus and Michael Garrett (SSEC Chair) felt it important for the project to continue to engage the US in the short and medium term.

This rearguard action by Schreier had the problem of not being backed by substantial funding in the US and was not sufficient to sway the international project, with the result that the US SKA Consortium dissolved itself, effective at the end of 2011.¹⁰⁴ There were some in Europe who were not unhappy that the US was not going to be so prominently involved, as it provided an opportunity for Europe to take the lead on a science mega-project.

The Technology Development Program limped on into 2012 with the aim of transferring the knowledge acquired to the Canadian arm of the SKA Dish Verification Program before its formal winding up later that year. However, the knowledge was not lost to the US community and was put to good use in the next generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) program started by Tony Beasley, Director of NRAO. This was effectively the SKA-high/Phase 3 concept (see Sect. 4.5.3.2), and it received a positive recommendation in the Astro2020 Decadal Survey report.^105,106

4.5.3.8 Why Did the SKA Fail to Tick All the Boxes in Astro2010?

The main factors in SKA’s demise in the US were the political context of the Decadal Survey, the low state of readiness of the SKA as a project in 2009 resulting in the very high-cost estimate by the Aerospace Corporation, and the perceived lack of a science “killer app”.

At the end of 2008 when the Survey Committee began its work, the Global Financial Crisis was in full swing. In the years prior to 2008, the US Agencies funding astronomy and astrophysics (National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Department of Energy) had received budget increases well above inflation, then the global financial crisis hit and funds available to science were much more tightly constrained than before. Agency briefings took place with the Survey Committee late in 2008 in which the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and the Department of Energy described their ongoing projects, what senior reviews were in progress, and their extrapolated budgets. All these briefings emphasised that there was “no money”.

There was also a widespread feeling, in the proverbial corridors, that with ALMA and NRAO still absorbing large amounts of funding following the 2000 Survey, it was the “turn” of the Optical/Infra-Red community for major funding. It would be very hard to sell another major radio facility in the 2010–2020 decade and, in that sense, the deck was stacked against a positive recommendation for SKA construction funds even before the Decadal Survey began. As far as the NSF was concerned, ALMA construction was well underway and was regarded as a project success and evidence that the formal processes followed by NSF were similar to those followed by NASA for their projects. NSF wanted guidance on whether operations funding for US community users of the two big optical projects (TMT and GMT) should be high priority. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) was already the top priority for NSF internally and was seen to be much further along than other projects, despite concerns about the data analysis.

Other factors in play were noted by Ethan Schreier in his reflections in 2019.¹⁰⁷ These included the different research culture in the USA compared with other countries (see Sect. 1.5 on the complexities of global science projects), the lack of an adequate coordinated US astronomy community strategy in general, the lack of effective radio community strategy for Astro2010 in particular, and the lack of a comprehensive long-range NSF strategy in astronomy. On the final point, he noted that it was a traditional NSF position to react to community pressure rather than develop its own long-range strategy.

Schreier pointed out that there was no US ground-based astronomy culture of capitalising on economic drivers, and no political necessity of engaging industry, as there was in Europe, Australia and South Africa. He also contended that the international SKA project’s attention to governance issues and political considerations affected and delayed program decisions, and this “turned off” many in the US community. While this may be true, the different approval and funding cycles around the world all had different local requirements and the USA was no exception, for example the increased sensitivity in Astro2010 to full and verifiable cost accounting following the James Webb Space Telescope experience, among others. This was less evident in science cultures where the funding agencies became “partners” in the project at an earlier stage of project development than in the USA. There was also an underlying concern in the US astronomy community that international projects were time-consuming and to be avoided unless funding exigencies demanded it. In 2008, it was still the NSF view that international projects were encouraged, but others in the astronomy community pointed to the Gemini and ALMA projects as not being happy experiences for the US.

The other points raised by Schreier all played a role in the outcome of the Decadal Survey, but the primary issue, not mentioned by Schreier, was that the SKA project was, with hindsight, insufficiently mature to match the requirements of the new era in which large projects had to have a solid design and firm cost estimates at an earlier stage in the project cycle in order to avoid cost over-runs. The SKA could not withstand the scrutiny of the Aerospace Corporation. In essence, the SKA project development cycle did not match the US approval and funding cycle. Although the SKA was not in the construction phase, it was evaluated as such for the Astro2010 review because the schedule, in 2009 when the proposal was written, was to complete SKA Phase 2 by 2021. Hence, the cost of mitigating the risks to complete the project within this timescale were estimated by Aerospace Corporation to be USD 5.9 billion. Had this project maturity issue been recognised as sufficiently important, a different strategy could have been followed. The SKA had not even reached the Conceptual Design Review (CoDR) stage in 2009. These Design Reviews took place in 2010 and 2011, and the Preliminary Design Reviews in 2014 and 2015. As noted in Sect. 4.5.2, the System Conceptual Design Review in early 2010 led to a selection of technologies for Phase 1 and an Advanced Instrumentation Program (SKA Memo 125) which then formed the basis of the Project Execution Plan including schedule, timeline and cost estimates published later that year. It is possible that the SKA would have received a more favourable review in the ASTRO2010 report had the Phase 1 concept definition paper (SKA Memo 125) been completed a year earlier in time for review by the Radio-Millimetre-Sub-millimetre Panel and the main Decadal Survey Committee.^108,109

Europe was 3 years ahead of the USA in the proposal/approval/funding cycle and followed a different approach in which the funding agencies were more engaged in the SKA than was possible with the carefully proscribed hands-off approach in the US. With the EC-funded SKA Design Study (SKADS) successfully underway in 2005,¹¹⁰ inclusion of the SKA in the ESFRI roadmap in 2006 and equal top priority in the ASTRONET Survey in 2007–2008, there was sufficient community and political support for the SKA to allow the European Commission and other funding agencies and government departments around the world to participate in the PrepSKA policy work-packages and work towards the establishment of SKAO as a legal entity in 2011. However, the NSF could not be engaged in the SKA in any formal way before completion of the Decadal review process although Vernon Pankonin was a leading figure in the FAWG and the ASG, chairing the SKA Siting Group and a Tiger Team on Scheduling and Timeline.

In both Australia and South Africa, the governments were fully committed in the battle to win the right to host the SKA. In Australia, a mid-term review of the 2006–2015 Decadal Plan (see Sect. 4.3.2.4) in 2011 prepared by a sub-committee of the National Committee for Astronomy chaired by Elaine Sadler (University of Sydney), listed SKA as highest priority, followed by ELT access. Noteworthy was that participation in the SKA should not be conditional on hosting the telescope even though this was a major selling point to government.

Despite this engagement with funding agencies and governments in Europe and the rest of the world apart from the US, it remained a fragile time for the project. It was uncharted territory, building a global project from scratch without the backing of an already existing institution. The international project was intent on riding the European wave and maintaining the momentum generated earlier by ASTRONET recognition and the mobilisation of European technical and scientific effort via the SKADS project. The SKA project felt it could not afford to slow down to match the US cycle and run the risk of losing momentum. The European and other agencies were content that they had mitigated the major risks by focusing on the phased approach and leaving the details of the construction to the post-PrepSKA Pre-Construction Phase from 2012 onwards. The estimated Phase 1 construction costs (€350M) appeared manageable.

What could the international project including the US partners have done to keep the US involved?

A more successful approach in the Decadal Survey submission may have been to seek US technology development funds in the 2010–2016 period and propose Europe and the Rest of the World fund Phase 1 construction starting in 2017. During Phase 2 construction, the USA would bear a larger share of the Phase 2 construction costs so that the funding share was equalised. Technology development funding for SKA was in fact the RMS panel recommendation and mentioned by the Blandford Committee, but not as a formal Recommendation. This particular approach had been extensively discussed at the Washington meeting of the Funding Agencies Working Group in November 2008 (see Sect. 4.4.3.3.1) but was not followed up in the SKA submission. The reasons for this have not been recorded.

This pragmatic approach would have accommodated Schreier’s point that insufficient account was taken of the priority for the LSST and GSMT. There is no doubt that a point of concern in the Radio-Millimetre-Sub-millimetre Panel was the advice from NSF to the US SKA Consortium in the early 2000s that SKA activities in the US should be community driven with the universities in charge, not the NRAO in view of the latter’s responsibilities in ALMA and the Expanded Very Large Array. The SKA was seen by the Panel as too large a project for the universities—the required project management experience and resources, as well as experience in coordinating design effort across the country, were not readily available in the university environment. In reality, only NRAO could have provided this.

Another likely contributing factor was that the USSKAC did not think it had the ability to significantly affect the SKA program. Individual members like Ken Kellermann regularly voiced concerns about timescales and costs but not in a way to change the course of the project. The US SKA Consortium was not a monolithic entity; different groups pursued or advocated different segments of the science case. In some ways, it resembled the European SKA Consortium without the over-riding sociological-scientific driver of the European Research Area with its focus on the value of regional collaboration.

Long-term US participation in the SKA would have required NRAO leadership, but not only that. The NSF would have been the only funding agency to fund the SKA, but it already had major projects on its books for construction and operations in the 2010–2020 decade in the form of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST). There was no room for a major investment in the SKA in the decade.

4.6 SKA Implementation Plan

The first discussion on the implementation plan was initiated by Martin Gallagher on behalf of the Australian Government, at the meeting in Washington of the funding agencies representatives involved in the PrepSKA policy work-packages in November 2008. A draft discussion paper on a possible SKA Phase 1 decision process to the Funding Agencies Group proposed the establishment of a high-level negotiation group to co-ordinate the detailed arrangements for the implementation of SKA Phase 1. This was the start of a concerted effort by both the funding agencies and project to develop the signature-ready implementation agreement required by the PrepSKA contract, and the subject of Work Package 7 (see Sect. 4.4.1). And as has already been mentioned, this culminated in the establishment in November 2011 of a UK legal entity, the SKA Organisation (SKAO), to govern the SKA project in the post-PrepSKA pre-construction phase rather than Phase 1 construction itself.

Key elements supporting the Implementation Plan were a Project Timeline, Project Execution Plan, and Business Plan for the new SKAO, as well as a Work Breakdown structure for the Pre-Construction Phase. The trajectory towards the site decision was managed separately, as described in Chaps. 7 and 8. In the following pages, we outline two of the key elements—the Project Timeline and Project Execution Plan, the former a key component of the latter. The Business Plan and Work Package Consortia formed in response to the Work Breakdown Structure are covered briefly in Sect. 4.7.

4.6.1 Telescope Design and Construction: Schedules, Timelines, and Project Plans

One of the key roles of the ISSC and SSEC as steering committees was to create and maintain a “vision” of the SKA that would provide a cohering force internally in the project and a stimulus for the greater involvement of the wider astronomy community, as well as funding agencies and governments.

This vision matured with time as opportunities and constraints came into better focus. Underpinning the vision was a series of multi-year project plans initially created by ISSC members, and the SPDO from 2004 onwards, which drove the project forward at the practical level. These plans were based on schedules and timelines. Forward planning became a recurring theme in ISSC and SSEC meetings, and in meetings with the funding agencies from 2005 onwards.

Estimating the time to completion for a large project like the SKA is not an exact science, especially one that breaks new ground in size and project management experience for the community as well as in the scale of international collaboration. Success-oriented thinking and sociology played a substantial role in the SKA project for much longer than might be expected. This is a cautionary but instructive tale and provides an example of the difficulties of generating an accurate timeline until late in the project development cycle. The first project plan in 1999 foresaw start of construction 11 years later in 2010; reality proved this was an underestimation by factor of two.

In the following, we use definitions of “schedule” and “timeline” described by Vernon Pankonin (US delegate to the SKA funding agencies groups from 2007 to 2011, National Science Foundation) in 2009 at the start of work by a Funding Agency-SPDO/SSEC “Timeline Tiger Team”.¹¹¹ A “schedule” is a procedural plan that indicates the time and sequence of a series of operations and events, and that accounts for interdependencies of the operations and events. A “timeline” is a visual presentation of a series of operations and events. The goal of the Timeline Tiger Team was to prepare a credible overall SKA timeline, but for the timeline to be credible it must be built on a viable schedule.

For the SKA, four stages of “reality” can be discerned regarding the schedule and timeline to start of construction and completion.

• 1. Early science and engineering stage 1993–1998

In the initial discussions of the science and engineering of the SKA in the early 1990s described in Sect. 3.2.1, there was no explicit international project plan. The individuals and institutes represented in the Large Telescope Working Group (LTWG) were more concerned with assembling the science case and pursuing technical solutions and funds via national sources.

The first mention of a timeline for the SKA was in August 1996 by Robert Braun (then at ASTRON, The Netherlands) in an International Union of Radio Science (URSI) Commission J (Radio Astronomy) session on Next Generation Centimetre/Decimetre Radio Telescopes held at the URSI General Assembly in Lille, France. Braun spoke of the expectation that a proposal for the SKA would be submitted by 1998. The abstract of the talk is all that survives, and no further details were given.

Harvey Butcher spoke about organisational issues at the fifth meeting of the LTWG in Sydney in December 1997 and set out the first milestones for the SKA. These were: a broader and deeper science case by 2000, technical R&D completed by 2000/2001, and a possible funding window for SKA from 2005/2006 between ALMA and the next optical telescopes. In 1997, there was a substantial feeling of optimism about the SKA generated by the first grants for SKA innovative technologies in The Netherlands, Australia and Canada (see Sect. 3.2.6), and recognition of SKA as a potential large project in a number of countries. The timescales put forward reflected this optimism but were no more than “guesstimates” or aspirations based on previous experience in proposing funding for national radio telescopes. However, a broader/deeper science case was generated in May 1998 2 years earlier than Butcher’s 2000 milestone by the LTWG under the leadership of Robert Braun.¹¹² This was refined and expanded in an international SKA science meeting in Calgary, Canada in 1998 and the resulting publication¹¹³ is now recognised as the first SKA Science Book (see Chap. 5 for a discussion of the science case and its evolution).

It is worth commenting that a relatively short projected time to potential funding and, beyond that, to start of construction is almost universally found embedded in large project plans and is a well-known sociological phenomenon.¹¹⁴ In astronomy, an initial timescale with a distant milestone for funding approval runs the risk of the wider community turning its attention to shorter-term projects with more immediate scientific and reputational returns. A shorter projected timescale to funding approval gives institutes and individual colleagues the feeling it would be useful to engage with the project sooner rather than later in order to get an inside edge on technology development and a seat at the table when design decisions are being made as well as decisions on access rights to the telescope when operational.

In 1999, the nearest project in scale to SKA, ALMA had just signed a Memorandum of Understanding between ESO and NRAO to carry out a joint project. Japan joined the collaboration in 2001. All three partners had their own separate advanced plans for a millimetre array but given the scale of these ambitious projects there was pressure on them to join forces.¹¹⁵ Unlike SKA, ALMA was not born global. In view of the lead-time of ALMA over SKA, it is somewhat surprising in hindsight that the SKA Director and ISSC members did not seek advice from ALMA on expected timescales in projects of this size and complexity until 2006.¹¹⁶

• 2. Schedules take shape but timescales are still optimistic, 1999–2005

Shortly after the ISSC was created in 1999, a Long-Term Planning Committee jointly chaired by Harvey Butcher and Bob Preston (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA) was formed, and rolling five-year plans became a regular agenda point for the Steering Committee.¹¹⁷ In the years to 2004, Preston led these discussions until Schilizzi as the new Director took over that responsibility.

At the inaugural meeting of the ISSC in April 1999, a “tentative sequence of the events for the international project” was set out. These events or activities included: (i) refine specifications; (ii) reduce choice of technology to one or two options; (iii) construct one or two prototypes; (iv) operate and refine prototypes, make a selection and write proposal; and (v) full construction.¹¹⁸

The final sentence on this topic in the meeting Minutes provided the only project milestone: “Full construction should begin around 2010”. This was taken up as the project mantra to the extent that the password for ISSC members to access on-line meeting documents was “SKA2010”. As mentioned in the introduction to this section, this reflected the optimism and lack of experience in the ISSC regarding the amount of time and effort preparation for a mega-project like the SKA would demand. Interestingly, the password was maintained for several years after the goal for start of construction had moved beyond 2010 for inertia reasons more than anything else.

At the second meeting of the ISSC later in 1999, Dewdney led a discussion on the goals and timeline for the international project taking plans for prototypes by 2005 in several countries into account.¹¹⁹ The rudimentary timeline and schedule elements were as set out in Table 4.5.

Table 4.5 Initial timeline and schedule elements (1999)

The decision on the SKA technology in 2005 was to be informed by the national prototypes then under development or discussion.¹²⁰ These included the 1 hT (one-hectare Telescope)/Allen Telescope Array, USA), a multi-beaming telescope operating at 21 cm (Australia), FAST (Five hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope, China), THEA++ (Thousand Element Array, NL), LAR (Large Adaptive Reflector, Canada), and LOFAR (Low Frequency Array, NL).

As time went on, the ISSC added site selection in 2005 to the timeline and more detailed milestones on the way to the decisions on technology and site with the result that by the Heathrow meeting of funding agencies in mid-2005, the timeline to start of construction had slipped by 2 years to 2012. This was mostly the result of reviews of the national prototyping activities coordinated by the International Engineering Management Team and the ISPO Engineering Working Group, both led by the Project Engineer, Peter Hall. These showed that a down-selection of technology would be feasible in 2007 rather than 2005. Despite this, the funding agencies regarded the timeline as unrealistic in view of the lack of focus in receptor technology development, and they regarded the project as a whole not yet mature enough for adoption into national or regional roadmaps (see further discussion in Sect. 3.4.1).

After the second meeting of the funding agencies in February 2006, the ISPO put forward the first more detailed schedule.¹²¹ For the first time, this included a phased implementation for the SKA with construction of Phase 1 (10%) starting in 2011 (see Table 4.6).

Table 4.6 Timeline and Schedule elements (2006)

• 3. A formal approach to schedule and timescale is taken, 2006–2012: the Pre-Construction Phase is born

As the funding agencies became more involved in the SKA from February 2006 onwards, it became regular practice for the ISSC and its successor, the SSEC, to inform the Funding Agencies Working Group and its successor, the Agencies SKA Group (ASG), of changes in SKA schedule elements and project timelines. These emerged as details of the engineering design and site characterisation matured.

In July 2009, the ASG became concerned that the political and financial aspects of the timeline for a project as complex as SKA were not yet being taken into account appropriately and, as noted earlier, it formed a Timeline Tiger Team¹²² to jointly develop the timeline together with the Project. It was already clear at the outset of the Tiger Team’s work that the telescope design would not have progressed sufficiently far by the end of PrepSKA in March 2012 to enable SKA1 construction to commence. This meant that a post-PrepSKA phase needed to be included in the schedule with attendant thought given to interim governance and funding issues in that period. Not only was additional funding needed for the continuation of the engineering design, but funding of the SPDO to pay for staff costs was a concern, as well as extending the MoU with the University of Manchester on hosting the SPDO which also expired at the end of 2011. The post-PrepSKA phase became known as the Pre-Construction Phase.

For several SSEC members, the Tiger Team formation raised the fear that the ASG had begun the long-feared “takeover” of the project.¹²³ However, the Director¹²⁴ interpreted the ASG’s request to take ownership of the SKA schedule as evidence of a long-term commitment to the project. In the event, it was agreed that the SSEC would approve changes to scientific and technical components of the schedule, while the ASG would approve programmatic changes.

The primary goal of the Tiger Team was to prepare a “credible overall SKA timeline that incorporated siting, funding, and governance considerations”. The starting points were to identify a clear technical readiness baseline as input into the technical component of the schedule of activities, and the ‘political/resource’ risks and issues. The Tiger Team was not “mandated to validate any schedules or timelines, and any experts consulted would not be asked to validate or critically review any of the schedules or timelines”. In hindsight, this latter statement made it less likely that the output would be “credible”.

Table 4.7 Technical and Programmatic Timeline—June 2010

The resulting technical and programmatic timeline shown in Table 4.7¹²⁵ was presented at the Agencies SKA Group meeting in Assen in June 2010.¹²⁶ The work of the Tiger Team was deemed finished at that point, and ownership handed back to SPDO. Any further changes in the project schedule timeline were to be approved by the SSEC with the concurrence of the ASG. The initial findings of the Tiger team suggested that “the technical systems schedule would define the critical path. Having a credible overall timeline would be dependent on having a credible technical system timeline. The credible technical system timeline would be dependent on having a credible schedule with the interdependencies shown.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the timeline presented. Box 4.6 notes some of the authors’ thoughts on the complexities and caveats in generating a timeline for a project like the SKA.

Box 4.6 SKA Challenges and Risks, and Timeline

The SKA challenge was to establish a new global organisation at the same time as designing a telescope on a scale never before attempted by the radio astronomy community. Not only was the scale well beyond the experience of the community at that time but the starting premise was that as much innovation as possible, both self-developed and external, would be utilised to create unique astronomical capabilities, reduce cost, and maximise Return on Investment for national governments. In addition, the site choice had strong political overtones, involving as it did a choice between a first-world country with a long history of leadership in radio astronomy, and a country emerging from a long period of political darkness and cultural oppression, with great ambitions in radio astronomy but little experience.

The schedule risks of this enterprise were hard to fully comprehend, and no meaningful analysis was carried out. It was no wonder that a “credible timeline” was not forthcoming.

A more detailed timeline¹²⁷ was published in the Project Execution Plan (PEP) later in 2010. The related SKAO Business Plan (see Sect. 4.7.3) prepared for the new legal entity in 2011, included the visualisation of the technical timeline shown in Fig. 4.19.

Fig. 4.19

Technical timeline for the SKA included in the 2011 Business Plan (Credit: Kobus Cloete)

In March 2011, the external PEP Review Panel recommended a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) basis for planning rather than the Work-package approach taken in the PEP (see next section). The Panel expected that developing the WBS approach would take 18 months and would delay the start of SKA1 construction by a year to 2017. This was reflected in the timeline noted in the final PrepSKA reports in 2012.

• 4. What actually happened between 2012 and start of construction in 2021

Although formally outside the scope of the book, it is worthwhile to briefly review the timeline from 2012 to the start of construction in 2021. As we have noted, the timeline in the final PrepSKA report had Phase 1 construction starting in 2017. Even the entry for SKA in the 2016 ESFRI roadmap had Phase 1 construction taking place from 2018 to 2023 with early science starting in 2020.

What actually happened in the project between 2012 and 2021 is shown in Table 4.8 without going into any detail.

Table 4.8 The SKA project timeline in reality, 2012–2020

What caused the additional delay to construction start in 2021?

There were three separate periods when project momentum slowed considerably and delays were incurred. The latter were caused by: (i) the reduced level of engineering development in 2012 caused by difficulties in acquiring additional SKA Project Office staff, (ii) the re-baselining process in 2014–15 when it became clear that the cost of Phase 1 exceeded projected funding by a considerable margin, and (iii) an additional cost control process in 2016 that took the best part of a year. In addition, the differing levels of system engineering rigour across the design consortia caused tension and delay.¹²⁸

It is fair to say that in the light of the long delays that have eventuated in the SKA and in ESO’s Extremely Large (optical) Telescope (ELT),¹²⁹ funding agencies as well as the projects themselves could benefit from independent estimates of timescales and costs or, in their absence, include substantial time and cost contingencies in their planning.¹³⁰

4.6.2 Project Execution Plan for the Pre-Construction Phase

As mentioned earlier in Sect. 4.4.3.1, the funding agencies began to discuss the ramifications of a phased implementation plan in the PrepSKA Work Package 4 Washington meeting in November 2008, and the necessity to plan for a post-PrepSKA Phase starting in 2012 in more detail. A Discussion Paper on “Post-PrepSKA Phase: detailed engineering, production engineering and tooling, and Phase 1 construction, 2012-2017” from the SPDO in early 2009 began this process.

During the course of 2009 and 2010, the project matured substantially in the eyes of the ASG members. Before this, the radio astronomy community was somewhat of an unknown quantity on the world stage (see Box 4.7). The change came about as a result of (i) work done together with the SSEC and SPDO on the Joint Implementation Plan and the policy work-packages in PrepSKA, (ii) the growing ownership of the site selection process by the ASG (Chap. 8), (iii) the development of the Precursors in Australia and South Africa and the financial commitment involved in the site infrastructure and telescope design, prototyping and construction, (iv) the buildup of organised global collaboration on the telescope design (Chap. 6), and (v) the ability of the SSEC and SPDO to respond rapidly to the criticisms in the System Conceptual Design Review report (see Sect. 4.5.2).

Box 4.7 The View of the SKA Project from the Perspective of the Funding Agencies Early in the Transition Era

Initial strong support for the SKA project came from the candidate host countries, Australia and South Africa, as they had invested time, energy and money in the site short-listing process in 2006 and were committed to the final stage of the competition. In Europe, the SKA star began to rise with the inclusion of the project in the ESFRI Roadmap (1996) and the subsequent European Commission Call for Preparatory Phase studies (2007), as well the equal highest scientific priority for ground-based astronomy in the ASTRONET Roadmap (2007–2008).

Despite this support, in 2008 the radio astronomy community was an unknown quantity for the funding agencies in terms of its capacity to carry out the telescope design and site selection processes on a global stage. There was doubt that the radio astronomers really knew what they were doing at this level and industry-led project management for the SKA project was discussed privately by the Agencies SKA Group (ASG), but never recommended. The view of the ASG Secretariat was that they should “keep the faith, hold their nerve, and drive the momentum where possible”.

The SKA’s growing maturity was reflected in an upbeat speech on the project and the Agencies SKA Group activities by John Womersley at the International SKA Forum meeting in Assen, The Netherlands, in June 2010. He concluded by saying:

I strongly believe that projects like SKA are needed if we are to address the problems facing our society and our planet. Nonetheless, to successfully convey this message, in a time of great pressure on public finances across the world, will be a challenge for all of us. It will require that we combine our visionary thinking about the future with a more rigorous approach to the realities of strategic planning, setting priorities, implementation of projects and good practice in project governance. Yesterday’s agreement by the agencies group to move to set up a new legal entity to manage the next phase of SKA is an important step in this direction.

However, considerable scepticism about the details of the SKA1 definition and costing was voiced by the US and Canadian representatives in the ASG (Vernon Pankonin and Greg Fahlman (National Research Council, Canada) respectively). As a way forward, the ASG initiated a discussion of the funding needed in the post-PrepSKA Pre-Construction Phase, with the intention of determining the detailed costing for the construction phase post-2011. What was needed was a Project Execution Plan (PEP) that set out a budget and a resource-loaded schedule for the Pre-Construction Phase.

The inevitable Tiger Team to generate the PEP was formed in August 2010, led by the Director with senior engineers and astronomers from the SPDO, SSEC and the wider community as members. The PEP¹³¹ duly appeared in time for the October 2010 ASG meeting, much to the surprise of some of the ASG members. It became the blueprint document of the tasks required to deliver the pre-construction phase of the SKA project, and one of the fundamental pillars underpinning the future development of the SKA. It influenced the project’s progress for much of the following decade.

The top-level goals of the Pre-Construction Phase foreseen in the PEP were to: (i) progress the SKA design to completion of Production Readiness Reviews and the letting of contracts for construction of major sub-systems; (ii) advance the infrastructure rollout on the selected site to the point where sub-systems could be deployed; and (iii) mature the SKA legal entity into an organisation capable of carrying out the construction, verification and operation of the telescope.¹³²

A key part of the PEP was to implement the Memo 125 recommendation on a reduced astronomical scope for Phase 1 into the engineering part of the project plan. An accompanying major decision was to select known technologies for SKA-mid (dishes) and SKA-low (dipole arrays) on the grounds that these were well-tried concepts and could be costed accurately, in principle. The innovative technologies (phased array feeds, PAFs, see Sect. 6.4.7) for dishes and dense aperture arrays (AAs, see Sect. 6.5) were transferred to an “Advanced Instrumentation Program” to be matured in time for the SKA Phase 2 technology decision in 2016.

This decision was not made without internal debates in the PEP Tiger Team led by Phil Diamond (then Director of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science in Australia) on behalf of Phased Array Feeds and Arnold van Ardenne (ASTRON, The Netheralnds)on behalf of Aperture Arrays. Eventually, the argument that carried the day was that the funding agencies and governments were more likely to buy into a project plan whose technical costs were bounded by practical experience than into one with innovative technologies as yet unproven.

A prominent role was foreseen for the SKA Project Office. It would have management and design authority, something that had taken time to be accepted by the institutes in the PrepSKA period. It would have responsibility for contracting the work on major sub-systems to a small number of work package contractors comprising consortia of participating organisations and industrial partners but could also be individual companies or participating organisations. The Project Office would also be the executive arm of the SKA Organisation and report to the governing Board of Directors.

The PEP team had access to the work being done in PrepSKA WP4 described Sect. 4.4.3.1, in particular the emerging conclusion that the most suitable legal entity in the Pre-Construction Phase would be some form of not-for-profit company dependent on where the host institute for the SPO was located. The Board of the new legal entity would replace the tri-partite governance provided by the SSEC, ASG and PrepSKA Board. The PEP work would be carried out under formal contracts under the overall authority of the SPO instead of the current “best-efforts” basis.

The estimated resources required for this work totaled €90.1M for the four-year period covering 2012 to 2016. This entailed €62.6M for work package contracts and €27.5M for the costs of the central project Office. Staff costs dominated the Project Office costs with 92 staff proposed at the end of the 4 years, up from 18 in 2011.

An early version of the staffing plan in the PEP foresaw growth to 120 staff members by 2015, but this was beaten back to 62, primarily by Diamond and Justin Jonas (South Africa), to reduce SKA HQ project office costs. Interesting to note is that staff numbers grew to 130 in the Pre-Construction Phase that ended in 2020 under the leadership of Diamond who had become SKAO Director-General in late 2012. This reflected the growing maturity of the project and its need for staff to handle the many pre-construction activities in parallel.

The Pre-Construction Working Group organised a formal review of the PEP in March 2011 by a high-level international panel¹³³ chaired by Gary Sanders, Project Manager of the optical Thirty-Meter Telescope project and a well-respected expert in managing large scientific projects. This resulted in overall endorsement of the SKA PEP.¹³⁴ In particular, the Panel stated that the SKA project was ‘ripe to transition from a “science project” into a “big project”’. But to achieve this transition in a complex global project with multiple interested parties, it would be important that the Project Office and its related governing bodies were afforded financial and operational management autonomy.

The two main practical recommendations from the Panel were taken up by the SPO in subsequent years. The first was that the work of the Pre-Construction and Construction phases should be reorganised into a product tree/deliverable-oriented Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and all subsequent work should be managed according to this WBS, rather than the PEP-proposed organisation by work packages. Work packages could be redefined later under the deliverable-oriented WBS.

The second recommendation was that suitable cost estimation tools be acquired with the aim of reviewing and redefining the scope of the construction project and the pre-construction phase, if necessary, to create realistic, affordable phases for SKA.

It is beyond the scope of this book to enter into further detail here.

4.7 Transition to the Pre-Construction Phase, 2011–2012

Four tasks awaited the Founding Board after its establishment on 2 April 2011 (see Sect. 4.4.2.3.1) as it moved to complete the Joint Implementation Plan and create the SKA legal entity. The first was to work towards a legally constituted governance structure and an adequately resourced SKA Organisation for the Pre-Construction Phase. The second to decide on the location of the SPO for the Pre-Construction Phase after considering the recommendation of the ASG at the Rome meeting at the end of March 2011. The third to finalise a commonly agreed resourced execution plan for the pre-construction phase of the SKA. And finally, to oversee the preparation of the recruitment process for the Director of the SKA Project Office in consultation with the SSEC.

With these four tasks completed, the Founding Board would cease to exist and the SKAO Board of Directors would take over as the governing body of the SKA pre-construction legal entity. At the time of its establishment, the Founding Board only expected a four-month existence since the choice of legal entity had been made and the existing PEP and Business Plan were well on the way to being able to serve as a “resourced execution plan” for the Pre-Construction Phase. However, it took until November, 8 months after starting, to complete all the preparations for the new legal entity.

4.7.1 UK Company Limited by Guarantee

As described in Sect. 9.3, the ASG decided in late-2010 to call for proposals for hosting the SKAO Headquarters during the Pre-Construction Phase. The final set of candidates for hosting were: ASTRON in Dwingeloo, The Netherlands, the Max-Planck-Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn, Germany, and the University of Manchester, UK (then the current location for the SPDO). A review of the proposals by an external panel led to a recommendation that Manchester would be the location for the SKAO HQ. A fuller discussion of the selection process and outcome is given in Sect. 9.3.

The Founding Board accepted the Review Panel recommendation that Manchester host the new SKAO headquarters operation at its first meeting on 2 April 2011. This carried with it the decision that the legal entity for SKAO would be a UK Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG). That left 9 months to establish the new organisation including the administrative transfer of SPDO staff from the University of Manchester to the new SKA Organisation, a task that was accomplished with a month to spare.

We now discuss the legal requirements for establishing the “SKA Organisation” as a CLG in the UK, the accompanying Business Plan, and then elaborate briefly on its management structure and the convoluted recruitment process of the new Director-General which included the appointment of an Interim Director-General for a nine-month bridging period.

4.7.2 SKA Organisation (SKAO): Articles of Association and Members Agreement

Establishing the Company Limited by Guarantee required Articles of Association (AoA) and a Members (of the Company) Agreement to be lodged with Companies House in the UK. The Founding Board Legal Working Group worked with a consulting legal company, Clifford Chance LLP, on the detailed aspects of the AoA and Members Agreement for SKA and used the Project Execution Plan and Business Plan as the working documents underpinning the resourced execution plan.

Under UK law, the Articles are a public document that set out the detailed administrative and governing clauses governing day-to-day management of the SKAO Company.¹³⁵ The “objects” for which the SKA Organisation was established were to carry out the Business Plan; select a preferred site for the SKA Facility in accordance with the Articles; and to develop an organisational framework for the construction and operation of the SKA Facility. Interesting to note is the word “preferred” referring to the site selection. This was added at the very last minute as a recognition that the Board of Directors were only empowered to make a recommendation of the preferred site since the Members of the Company, in their Agreement, had reserved the right to actually make the site decision.

A Members Agreement for a Company Limited by Guarantee, on the other hand, is a private document setting out a simple contract between all or some of the members and therefore can deal with all or some of the aspects of the relationship between the parties, if required.

4.7.3 Business Plan

The Business Plan¹³⁶ set out the work to be undertaken in the pre-construction era of the SKA project in order to achieve construction readiness. It described the operation of a new, stronger SKA Project Office, the governance of that Office within the wider technical project, and the relationship of the Office with global efforts towards a common aim. The Plan also presented two investment plans, one for a conservative starting position, the other for an expanded partnership in the future. The Business Plan and the Project Execution Plan were seen by the SKA community (funding Agencies and scientists and engineers) as the two most important project documents underpinning the work to be done by the new legal entity.

The overall goals for the pre-construction phase set out in the Business Plan, updating those in the Project Execution Plan, were fivefold: (i) progress the SKA design and prototyping to the point of completion of production readiness reviews; (ii) establish industry participation strategies, procurement processes, and protocols governing the work package consortia; (iii) work towards identifying funding commitments for SKA1 construction and operations; (iv) prepare the long term SKA organisational structure and arrangements for the construction, verification and operation of the SKA; and (v) build relationships with relevant national and international astronomy organisations to ensure SKA 1 science and opportunities were fully integrated into a global astronomy perspective.

The Business Plan also set out the organisation structure to be adopted by the SKAO as a UK Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG):

Members of the Company—oversight of the overall strategic direction, governance and progress of the project.

The Members are the ultimate “governing body” of the CLG and can decide upon crucial matters involving the CLG which relate to member-specific issues such as any increase in minimum membership dues, amending the Articles of the Members Agreement etc. It is up to the Members to decide which matters are to be decided by Members and which by the Board of Directors. Members can in this manner exercise control over the CLG in matters that could potentially affect their rights. For the SKA, the Members reserved the right to make the site decision.

Board of Directors—The Board represents the Members; and is responsible for the project and the activities of the company, with various areas of responsibility delegated to the Director General. It has oversight of the technical activities being undertaken globally via nationally- and regionally- funded Work Package Consortia (WPCs). Board members are appointed by the Company Members.

The Board of Directors is the main operational body for the CLG which is by UK Company law responsible for day-to-day management for the CLG. The Articles of Association govern its composition, the procedures for its meetings and the rules on decision-making including the voting procedure.¹³⁷

Director-General—reports to the Board; provides overall leadership of the SKA project and its progress through the pre-construction phase; leads the SPO; and exercises management and system design authority for the whole project.

SKA Project Office (SPO) —executes those work packages within the Project Execution Plan for which it is directly responsible; defines and manages all interactions with WPCs; receives and integrates work done by WPCs and other sub-contractors; and coordinates the wider SKA project.

Work Package Consortia (WPC)—are self-organised consortia of Participating Organisations and Industry that have been assigned by the Board of Directors to deliver the sub-system work packages. Funded directly from (multiple) national sources but report to the SPO, and have the responsibility to deliver production-ready subsystems according to requirements defined by the SPO.

The specific tasks of the SPO and WPC foreseen for the pre-construction phase in the Business Plan are listed in Box 4.8.

Box 4.8 Proposed Specific Tasks of the SKA Project Office and Work Package Consortia in the Pre-construction Phase

SKA Project Office	Work Package Consortia
Overall technical development and procurement management	Dish Array
Science drivers and science breadth	Aperture Arrays
System design, and system engineering	Signal Transport & Networks
Maintenance & support and operations	Central Signal Processing
Site engineering	Software & Computing
	Power
	Telescope Monitoring and Control (added in 2013)

The Business Plan also laid out the resources required for the pre-construction phase and a potential resourcing plan for SPO and WPC activities on a per-country basis. The resources required were estimated to be a total of €90.9 million over the four-year period, comprising €63.4 million for Work Package Consortia and €27.5 million for SPO costs. In November 2011 just before the legal entity was established, pledges from eight countries had been made for €69M of the €91 million required (€16.7 million for the SPO and €52.5 million for the WPC). The eight countries were Australia, Canada, China, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK. Scenarios were developed for a reduced version of the work plan if no further funds were forthcoming, but the total pledged was deemed sufficient to go ahead and establish the legal entity. By the end of the Pre-construction phase in early 2021, €82 million had been spent on SPO activities and more than €250 million on the national efforts on all aspects of the project (see Table 4.4).

With completion of these preparatory activities, the pre-construction phase governed by the new legal entity began on 23 November 2011.

4.7.4 SKAO Established at Last

The SKA Organisation (SKAO) formally came into being as a UK Company Limited by Guarantee when the Articles of Association were signed at a ceremony held in conjunction with the first Board of Directors meeting at Heathrow Airport on 23 November 2011. This marked the start of the Pre-Construction Phase and was a major milestone in the transition of the SKA to a science mega-project. It also marks the end of the period of SKA history that we deal with in this book, apart from the telescope site decision in 2012 which we describe in Chap. 8.

Seven national parties signed the Articles of Association and Membership Agreement to establish the SKA Organisation and became Full Members of the company (Fig. 4.20 and SKASUP4-9¹³⁸). These parties were: Australia (the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research), China, (National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences), Italy (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica), The Netherlands (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek), New Zealand (the Ministry of Economic Development), South Africa (National Research Foundation), and the United Kingdom (Science and Technology Facilities Council). In March 2012, Canada (National Research Council of Canada) joined as Full Member of the SKA Organisation, and in April 2012 India (National Centre for Radio Astrophysics) joined as Associate Member.

John Womersley (UK) was elected Chair of the Board (and of the Company Members), and Colin Greenwood was appointed Company Secretary. Subsequent Chairs of the Board were Giovanni Bignami (2015–2017) and Catherine Cesarsky (2017–2021) who played equally active roles in the SKA project as Womersley had. Cesarsky was subsequently appointed the first chair of the SKAO Observatory Council in 2021.

The SSEC formally dissolved itself at the end of 2011 with several of its members being invited to take up Scientific Director non-voting positions on the Board of Directors (see hba.skao.int/SKASUP4-9). The Agencies SKA Group had dissolved itself on the establishment of the Founding Board earlier in the year, in April.

Fig. 4.20

The signatories to the Articles of Association of the SKA Organisation as a UK Company Limited by Guarantee at the first meeting of the SKAO Board of Directors at Heathrow airport on 23 November 2011. Left to right: John Womersley (UK, Chair), Bernie Fanaroff (South Africa), Belinda Brown (New Zealand), Jos Engelen (The Netherlands), Corrado Perna (Italy), Patricia Kelly (Australia). Jun Yan (China) was unable to attend in person. (Credit: SKA Observatory)

4.7.4.1 SKAO Management

The initial management structure for the SKA Organisation is shown in Fig. 4.21. Once the site decision had been made formally in November 2012, the management structure evolved into a more simplified form in which the Policy Advisory Committee and the Industry Participation Advisory Committee were combined into the Strategy and Business Development Committee, and the separate Science and Engineering Advisory Committees were combined into one. This remained so until the transition into an inter-governmental organisation in 2021.

Fig. 4.21

Initial management structure of the SKA Organisation in 2012 (Credit: SKA Observatory)

4.7.4.2 Director-General Recruitment

As mentioned earlier, the decision in mid-2010¹³⁹ to focus on the pre-construction phase in the Joint Implementation Agreement was strongly influenced by the fact that the Memorandum of Agreement with the University of Manchester on SPDO employment arrangements would come to a close by the end of 2011. To ensure that the SPDO activities and staff conditions would continue smoothly into the pre-construction phase and to maintain the momentum that was built up during PrepSKA, a legal entity for the project was needed before the end of 2011.

While it proved possible to establish the legal entity on that timescale, it was not possible to appoint a new Director of the SKA Project to succeed Schilizzi immediately after he stepped down from the position at the end of 2011 after 9 years in the job. This was despite the ASG/Founding Board having more than a year’s notice of his decision to do so. Two reasons emerged for this. The first was the concern on the part of the South African delegation that at least two of the potential candidates for the position were located in Australia and, if either were appointed, this might lead to an unconscious bias in advice given to the various entities involved in the site decision process. The second was rather more concrete. It became clear in discussions held in mid-2011 by Patricia Vogel and her team working on the legal aspects of the Joint Implementation Agreement with the consultant legal firm, Clifford Chance LLP, that the new Director-General could only be appointed by the new legal entity once it was formally in place. An earlier appointment would have had to be, initially, as a University of Manchester employee, with a transfer some months later to the UK Company Limited by Guarantee. A potentially time-consuming and uncertain (for the candidate) process.

This led to the appointment of an Interim Director-General (IDG) until the new Director-General was in post.

4.7.4.2.1 Interim Director-General, December 2011–October 2012

The choice for Interim Director-General fell on Michiel van Haarlem from ASTRON in The Netherlands (see Fig. 4.22). He had been appointed as Founding Board Executive Secretary in August 2011 and took over as Interim Director-General 4 months later in December. He had been a member of the Dutch SKA team in the late-1990s and organised the Amsterdam and Dwingeloo “Perspectives in Radio Astronomy” conferences in 1999 (see Sect. 3.2.4.2) before moving to LOFAR in 1999 soon after that project began to ramp up. Prior to his appointment as Founding Board Executive Secretary and SKA Interim D-G, van Haarlem had been the Managing Director of LOFAR.

The main tasks for van Haarlem were establishing the SPO as the new operational arm of the SKA and, in particular, completion of the staff transition formalities from the University of Manchester to the new company and, in addition, managing the continuing activities of the project in accordance with the PEP. Chief among the latter were completion of the detailed WBS for the pre-construction phase required for the Business Plan and the final PrepSKA deliverable, as well as making preparations for establishing work package consortia to carry out the pre-construction design work.

Fig. 4.22

The three Directors of the SKA at the ASKAP site in 2014. From left to right: Michiel van Haarlem (Interim SKAO Director-General, 2011–2012), Phil Diamond (SKAO Director-General, 2012–ongoing), and Richard Schilizzi (International SKA Director, 2003–2011) (credit: Michiel van Haarlem)

The newly formed Board of Directors of the SKA Organisation had one major decision on its plate in the initial 6 months—the site decision—which we cover in detail in Sect. 8.6. However, the Interim Director-General had little involvement in this decision process in the final stages, apart from being an ex-officio member of the Site Options Working Group formed by the Board in April 2012 to generate options for a dual site solution (see Sect. 8.6.3.2). It is not obvious why the Board did not ask van Haarlem and the SPO for comments on the SKA Site Advisory Committee (SSAC) recommendation in view of the considerable technical expertise among SPO staff (previously SPDO staff) on many aspects of the site process. They were also not asked to help assess the feasibility of the dual site solution prior to the decision and it was only after the site decision had been taken that the SPO staff were asked to examine how it might all be done and how MeerKAT and ASKAP could be integrated into the SKA. Box 4.9 touches on the lessons to be learned about appointing an Interim Director-General.

Van Haarlem did not put himself forward as a candidate for SKA Director-General and returned to ASTRON in October 2012 becoming Head of the Netherlands SKA Office in March 2013. He continued his involvement in international SKA affairs for several years on the invitation of the newly appointed Director-General leading discussions with Australia and South Africa on SKA hosting agreements.

Box 4.9 The Timing of Director-General Appointments

A lesson to be learned here is to avoid the situation where a long-serving Director plans to step down at the same time as a new legal entity is established. In SKA’s case, the transition from a collaboration-based governance structure to a legal entity caused a substantial discontinuity. In addition, even for a transition from one legal entity to another, it is usually the case that only the new legal entity will have the power to appoint a new Director.

Any interim Director appointed to fill the gap before the new Director is in place will have little power to do anything other than manage the transition situation as the new legal entity is brought up to speed, while keeping the show on the road and not taking any far-reaching decisions. It is almost inevitable that a hiatus is created, and project momentum suffers.

If this is a likely event in the life of a project, it represents a project risk, and deserves to be included as a schedule element, and time allocated in any project timeline. There are parallels, but on a much grander scale, with the political hiatus following elections in some countries where it takes time to form a coalition of parties to govern the country.

It should be said for the SKA that lessons were learned such that, 10 years later in 2021, the transition from the UK Company Limited by Guarantee to an Inter-Governmental Organisation went far more smoothly than the earlier experience, partly because the Director-General remained in post.

4.7.4.2.2 Director-General

Phil Diamond (see Fig. 4.22) was appointed Director-General in May 2012 and took up his position a few months later in October. As related in these pages, he had a long involvement in the global SKA endeavour as a member of the ISSC and SSEC from 1999 to 2011 and as ISSC chair at a critical time in 2005 and 2006 during the first formal interactions with the Funding Agencies Plenary Group and the 2006 site short-listing decision. In parallel, he had held senior management positions in the University of Manchester (Director of MERLIN,¹⁴⁰ and the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics) and in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia as Chief of what is now the Astronomy and Space Science Division.

At the time of writing, Diamond continues as Director-General of the SKA Observatory, and has led the project through some turbulent times including the re-baselining (de-scope) of the design, a substantial cost control exercise, and the choice to continue with Manchester as location of SKAO headquarters in the construction and operations phases. He, and the Chairs of the Board of Directors, have also guided SKA towards its transition to an Inter-Governmental Organisation (IGO) and the start of construction. Relating the stories of the turbulent times is beyond the scope of this book, but we will spend a few words on the transition to an IGO.

4.7.4.3 Transition to an Inter-Governmental Organisation

It had always been recognised that a UK Company Limited by Guarantee was a temporary solution for the SKA legal entity during the pre-construction phase. For a global project, a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) was regarded¹⁴¹ as too Europe-centric, and as the pre-construction phase gathered pace, attention focused on an Inter-Governmental Organisation (IGO).

This was stimulated by the successor project to PrepSKA called GO-SKA¹⁴² (see Fig. 4.1), also funded by the European Commission from December 2011 to January 2015. Led by Patricia Vogel (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), GO-SKA’s primary aim was to provide guidance at policy-level to the SKA Organisation in the pre-construction phase. Specifically, this involved broadening and strengthening the engagement of funding agencies and governments around the globe and preparing the establishment of global governance for SKA. It is credited with being instrumental in enabling the decision to start the process of establishing SKAO as an IGO.

Discussions towards this end began in earnest in 2015 led by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the aim of negotiating the core texts of agreements and supporting concepts relevant to the agreements or supporting policies. All SKAO members (Australia, China, India, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, and UK) were involved, with the majority as ‘negotiating parties’. A year later, a Convention Task Force was formed to finalise the text of the Convention, Privileges & Immunities and Financial Protocols, and in 2018 government representatives initialled the documents in Rome. The formal Convention Signing Ceremony took place on 12 March 2019 in the magnificent Ministers’ Hall in the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (see Fig. 4.23). During the process of ratification of the Convention by individual governments, a Council Preparatory Task Force of government representatives worked closely with the SKAO Board of Directors to prepare the transition to the IGO.

Fig. 4.23

Signatories to the SKA Convention in Rome on 12 March 2019. From left to right: Jill Morris, UK Ambassador to Italy; Zhang Jianguo, Vice-Minister of Science and Technology, China; Manuel Heitor, Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education, Portugal; Marco Bussetti, Minister of Education Universities and Research, Italy; Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane, Minister of Science and Technology, South Africa; Oscar Delnooz, Deputy Director, Department for Science and Research Policy at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, The Netherlands; Gregory French, Australian Ambassador to Italy (Credit: SKA Observatory)

The SKA IGO Treaty finally came into force on 21 January 2021 after five nations had ratified the Convention (Australia, Italy, The Netherlands, South Africa and the United Kingdom), and the SKA Observatory was born, 28 years after the first global SKA Working Group had been formed in 1993.