SKA Headquarters: Another Two-Stage Site Selection Tussle

Abstract

The International SKA Project Office (ISPO) was established in 2003 and hosted by ASTRON at its headquarters in Dwingeloo, The Netherlands, the home institute of the SKA Director at that time. As the global component of the project began to expand and substantial funding for coordination of this expansion (through PrepSKA and other initiatives) came into view in 2006–7, the International SKA Steering Committee (ISSC) held a competition in 2007 for the location of the central office. This led to the ISPO, which was renamed the SKA Program Development Office (SPDO), moving to the University of Manchester, initially for the period 2008 to 2011. Another competition was held in 2011 as the prospect of establishing a legal entity to manage the Pre-Construction Phase starting in 2012 emerged. Manchester was selected again. In this chapter we describe these two, at times contentious, selection rounds and the issues involved.

9.1 Introduction

Establishment of the International SKA Project Office (ISPO) in August 2003 followed the appointment earlier that year of the International SKA Director, Richard Schilizzi. The ISPO was located at the Dwingeloo Observatory in the Netherlands, home of ASTRON and the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE) , both institutes where Schilizzi had worked. The original intention of the International SKA Steering Committee (ISSC) was that the Director should not be located at their home institute to avoid any perception of bias. However, it was soon recognised that was not a feasible requirement since the contract was for 2 years with the prospect of annual extensions thereafter, and this did not provide sufficient job security for a major change in circumstances. The ISPO remained in Dwingeloo.

Its staff grew slowly. Peter Hall was appointed the International SKA Project Engineer in 2004 on secondment from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Australia Telescope National Facility in Sydney where he continued to spend part of his time. Astrid Marx was appointed Office Manager in Dwingeloo on secondment from ASTRON, also in 2004. By April 2006, it had become clear to the ISSC that with the site short-listing decision imminent (see Chap. 7) and the telescope system design phase (see Chaps. 3, 4, and 6) planned to follow from 2008 to 2010, the project was entering a new phase¹ and the time had come to increase the ISPO staff numbers substantially to meet the needs for global project coordination. To start the process, funds were identified for an Executive Officer in Dwingeloo to support the ISSC and International SKA Forum² Secretariats and a system engineer to work with Hall for 1 year in Sydney. Of the two, only the Executive Officer post was filled, by Colin Greenwood, in mid-2007. This began a long involvement with the SKA project by Greenwood which continues at the time of writing this book.

In parallel, the ISSC decided there should be a competitive selection round for the location of the ISPO and the larger number of staff members. The selection process took place in 2007 and was followed 4 years later with a second selection round in 2011 for the location of SKA Headquarters during the Pre-Construction Phase that was planned to start in 2012. We now describe the two competitions. Our primary source material has been SKA project documents and presentations^3,4 at the SKA History Conference in 2019.

9.2 The 2007 Selection

A Call for Expressions of Interest to host the ISPO⁵ and its projected staff complement of twenty-eight was issued in May 2006 by the ISSC Chair, Phil Diamond. A budget of about €20 million for the four-year period from 2007–2010 was foreseen to be needed to support ISPO Central Design and Integration Team (CDIT) and overall project management activities. This was to be contributed primarily by the national funding agencies backing the institutes represented in the ISSC.

Responses came in July from ASTRON (The Netherlands), Cornell University (USA), the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (USA), the University of Manchester (UK), and the SKA South Africa Project Office. In reality, however, there was no prospect of obtaining the hoped-for €20 million in 2006 and the ISPO consolidation idea lapsed until early in 2007 when the European Commission Framework Program 7 (FP7) funding opportunity emerged for an SKA “Preparatory Phase”, PrepSKA (see Sect. 4.4). This held out the prospect of funding for the CDIT activities for the expected 4 years of design and site characterisation.

The ISSC thought it essential to complete the selection of the headquarters location before the formal PrepSKA proposal was to be evaluated in late-June 2007. This prompted the new ISSC Chair, Brian Boyle, in March 2007, to invite proposals⁶ to host the International Headquarters of the SKA Project with a deadline 6 weeks later. This call was issued after consultation with the Director and the sites that were expected to bid.⁷ Box 9.1 sets out the selection criteria that were to be used.

Box 9.1 Selection criteria for the location of the SKA Headquarters, 2007

• 1. An outstanding astronomy and engineering research environment

• 2. Appropriate office space and infrastructure including laboratory space for the proposed staffing level

• 3. The ability to establish a cost-effective financial structure for the office, including the ability to receive monies from the proposed FP7 preparatory study

• 4. The ability to establish an appropriate employment status for ISPO staff

• 5. The ability to establish a clear and distinct status for the ISPO within the host institution; and

• 6. Proximity to international travel hubs.

This time, responses came from ASTRON, The Netherlands, the University of Manchester, and the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Centre (NAIC) at Cornell University. Although the PrepSKA project was not yet funded there was a general assumption among ISSC members that it would be funded and would cover a major fraction of the ISPO cost, provided the office was located in Europe. This led NRAO to decide not to submit a proposal, but did not deter Cornell University. SKA South Africa decided it was not appropriate to bid for the headquarters location.

The ISSC appointed a Review Committee comprising three ISSC members: Brian Boyle (chair), Justin Jonas, and Anton Zensus, and two external members: Michael Grewing, a senior European astronomer and former Director of the Institut de RadioAstronomie Millimétrique (IRAM), and Ethan Schreier, a senior US astronomer and President of Associated Universities Incorporated (AUI), to evaluate the proposals. The Review Committee unanimously ranked the University of Manchester marginally ahead of ASTRON.⁸ The Cornell proposal was ranked third mainly because of the financial risk relating to the uncertainty over PREPSKA funding for a non-European location for the ISPO.

The Review Committee report stressed that the Manchester and ASTRON proposals were very well matched, with the relative ranking strongly dependent on the weighting applied to the different selection criteria, estimated levels of risk associated with office construction activities, and to consideration of factors outside those listed under the essential selection criteria. They recommended that the ISSC open negotiations with the University of Manchester to host the ISPO but retain the option to open negotiations with ASTRON should issues emerge with the University of Manchester that would have influenced the relative rankings between ASTRON and Manchester.⁹

The ISSC teleconference to review the report and decide how to proceed was, unsurprisingly, contentious. Discussion centred on whether sufficient information had been supplied by the proposers on financial issues and infrastructure to be made available at the host location, as well as the relative weight of the selection criteria used and the potential political advantage in selecting one or the other of the top-ranked locations. The latter centred on the relative economic size of the UK and the Netherlands, and ability to lead funding efforts from a position of strength.

The ISSC voted on two motions, the first “The ISSC has sufficient information to make a decision on the host institute for the ISPO and to open negotiations with the first-ranked location”, and second “the ISSC accepts the Selection Committee’s ranking of potential host institutes for the ISPO and authorises the ISSC Chair to open negotiations with the University of Manchester. Both were carried by fifteen votes to two.¹⁰

In the event, a Memorandum of Understanding between the University of Manchester and the ISSC was agreed on 20 June 2007 and formally signed on 4 October 2007 (see Fig. 9.1). Two of the three ISPO officers¹¹ (Schilizzi and Greenwood) moved to the University of Manchester in early-2008 at the start of the new SSEC-SPDO era for the SKA.

Fig. 9.1

Signing ceremony on 4 October 2007 at Jodrell Bank Observatory for the Memorandum of Understanding between the International SKA Steering Committee and The University of Manchester on hosting the SKA Program Development Office. From left to right: Philip Diamond, Director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (standing), Alan Gilbert, President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Manchester, and Brian Boyle, Chair of the International SKA Steering Committee. (Credit: Martin George)

In parallel with this, two further agreements were finalised in November 2007. The first was an International Collaboration Agreement between the European SKA Consortium, the US SKA Consortium, and the “Rest of The World” (see Sect. 4.4.2.1) to establish the SKA Science and Engineering Committee (SSEC) that would replace the ISSC in the PrepSKA era 2008–2011. The second was a related Memorandum of Agreement to establish the SKA Program Development Office (SPDO) to replace the ISPO in the PrepSKA era, signed by the “parent” legal entities for the two Consortia and the individual ISSC institutes in the Rest of the World.¹² This set out the roles and responsibilities for the SPDO.

The change from “Project” to “Program” in the SPDO name came about on request from the US delegate on the Funding Agencies Working Group, Vernon Pankonin. The US view of the SKA was as a collection of activities under a common umbrella for which “Program” was a more appropriate descriptor rather than a clearly focussed “Project” led by one country or entity.¹³ In addition, a point was made about the spelling of “Program”. The US participants felt that European influence had been exerted in 1998 in the spelling of “Kilometre” in the name of the telescope, and now it was time for North American spelling of Program to be used. Such are the items of discussion occupying attention at the highest levels of international endeavours.

9.3 The 2011 Selection

As the end of PrepSKA came into view in mid-2010, the many parallel streams of activity described in Chap. 4 began to come together as the Agencies SKA group (ASG), SSEC and associated institutes focussed on the transition of the project into the Pre-Construction Phase planned at the end of 2011. The Project Execution Plan¹⁴ and related Business Plan¹⁵ set out the many aspects involved in resourcing and delivering the pre-construction phase work including the required structure and size of the central SKA Project Office to manage the project and its enormous engineering design task. At this point, there were eighteen staff in the SPDO and the projection in the PEP was that this would grow to sixty-two in the next phase of the project.

As was the case for the transition to new governance arrangements at the start of PrepSKA in 2008, the change to a legal entity in 2011 at the end of PrepSKA was seen by the ASG and SSEC to require another competition for the location of the central SKA Project Office (SPO). The form of the legal entity would follow the choice of location. Work led by Patricia Vogel (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), in PrepSKA Work Package 4 on the appropriate legal structure for the Pre-Construction Phase had concluded that an Inter-Governmental Organisation was not viable in the short-term and a not-for-profit limited liability company or equivalent was the most suitable option. With this in mind, it was recognised that the type of governance structure offered in the candidate country would be a factor in evaluating each candidate site.¹⁶

An initial Call for Expressions of Interest in September 2010 led to responses from ASTRON (The Netherlands), CSIRO (Australia), the Max-Planck Institut fϋr Radioastronomie (MPIfR, Germany), the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF, Italy) and the University of Manchester. The ASG and SSEC decided that bids for the SKA headquarters from the candidate telescope sites could be prejudicial to the telescope site selection and should not be accepted. There were also concerns, not voiced formally, that locating the headquarters in the same country as the telescope site ran the risk of the SKA being regarded more as a “national telescope” than a global facility. Australia’s offer to withdraw their bid if it was considered inappropriate was therefore accepted.

The ASG nominated Simon Berry from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)¹⁷ to set up the process for selecting the headquarters location.¹⁸ A formal Call for Proposals, open to any interested party outside the two SKA candidate host consortia, was issued in December 2010.¹⁹ Box 9.2 sets out the selection criteria.

Box 9.2 Selection criteria for the location of the SKA Headquarters, 2011

• 1. Location and physical infrastructure—geographical location of the proposed SPO, status of any developments, timescales, costs, accessibility and transport for staff and visitors, communication infrastructure.

• 2. Technical and scientific environment—local astronomical scientific and technical environment, research groups, local expertise.

• 3. Organisation and legal governance structure—nature of the organisation, legal framework, proposed timescales, and potential evolution of the legal governance moving forward to the construction phase.

• 4. Supporting services—local procurement arrangements, personnel services (i.e. pension arrangements, visas/work permits for overseas workers and visitors), administrative support.

• 5. Other factors—financial arrangements, capacity for local and international outreach, general desirability for families re-locating i.e. schools, employment opportunities.

Responses were received from (1) ASTRON on behalf of the Dutch radio astronomy community. The SPO was to be located in a new extension to be added to ASTRON’s headquarters in Dwingeloo; (2) the MPIfR and the University of Bonn. The SPO was to be located in central Bonn in a modern office building in close proximity to the host institutions; and (3) a UK collaboration between the Universities of Manchester, Cambridge and Oxford and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)). The SPO was to be located in a new building²⁰ to be constructed at the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory. See Fig. 9.2 for depictions of the ASTRON and Manchester proposals; no photo of the proposed office building in Bonn could be made available to the authors.

Fig. 9.2

Left: schematic of the proposed new SKAO HQ wing to be added to the existing building at ASTRON in Dwingeloo, The Netherlands (Credit: ASTRON). Right: A visualisation by Fielden Clegg Bradley Studios of a new building for the SKAO HQ at Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK, with the Lovell Telescope in the background (Credit: The University of Manchester)

A review of the proposals for the SKA headquarters²¹ took place at the European Commission in Brussels on 10 March, 2011 following the review of the SKA Project Execution Plan on 8 and 9 March. These reviews were timed to allow both review panel outcomes to be discussed and decided upon at the critical series of meetings in Rome 3 weeks later. These were the meetings at which the SKA Founding Board was established²² and preparations for the transition to a legal entity began in earnest.

The SKA headquarters review was carried out by Gary Sanders (Chair, Thirty Meter Telescope Corporation), Jim Crocker (Lockheed Martin Space Systems), Jean-Marie Hameury (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS, France, and a member of the ASG) and Russ Taylor (University of Calgary Centre for Radio Astronomy, Canada, and Vice-Chair of the SSEC). Elena Righi-Steele (Directorate-General Research, European Commission), Schilizzi (SKA Director) and Michelle Cooper (STFC, ASG Secretary) were in attendance.²³ Each of the proposing teams gave presentations to the panel.

The ASG had instructed the review panel to provide a motivated recommendation on the ranking of the three possible locations. That did not prove straightforward, partly due to the high quality of the proposals but also because of a lack of guidance from the ASG on the weighting of the selection criteria.²⁴ In the event, the panel decided to give all criteria equal weight.

After a difficult discussion on the ranking, the review panel concluded²⁵ that all three proposals identified viable sites for the SKA headquarters in the Pre-construction Phase with the Manchester/Cambridge/Oxford/STFC proposal ranked higher than the ASTRON proposal and the MPIfR/Bonn proposal in third place.

This outcome led to another difficult discussion at the sixth SSEC meeting in Rome later in March where concerns were voiced by the German and Dutch delegates about some elements of the evaluation process, as well as the communication of the review panel’s recommendation on the headquarters location to the proposers. These concerns were passed on to the newly established Founding Board at their first meeting a few days later, together with the consensus view of the SSEC that the panel’s ranking was accepted.

The Founding Board formally accepted the recommendation to locate the SKA headquarters at Jodrell Bank Observatory and summarised the grounds for that decision²⁶ as set out in Box 9.3.

Box 9.3 Grounds for the Founding Board decision on Jodrell Bank Observatory (JBO) as the location for the SKA Project Office in the Pre-Construction Phase

“Physical infrastructure: The UK proposal is completely flexible in that the interior is not finalised, allowing optimum use of space in terms of meeting rooms and technical setup.

Access for staff and visitors: JBO is in close proximity to an international airport offering direct connections with many European countries, the US and South Africa. For the other destinations, all three sites were considered equivalent, as they would require one transfer from a large international airport.

Nature of the organisation: the UK proposal offered the best combination between independence and support from local, national organisations. This advantage is partly offset by a somewhat less comprehensive technical expertise available compared to the other two sites.

Capacity for national and international outreach: the UK proposal had a clear advantage given the JBO experience in this area.

General desirability for family re-locating: JBO, being close to a major city in an English-speaking country, was ranked highest.

These more than compensate the weak points of the UK proposal:

Salary tax exemption: the Dutch proposal is very clearly superior in offering a 30% tax exemption to non-Dutch citizens.

Research groups: The Astron and Bonn proposals are very strong in terms of the local scientific and technical expertise.

Immigration/visa process: The UK not being a “Schengen” country is disadvantaged, even though it was noted that under the new immigration rules recently adopted, PhD-level personnel will be considered favourably.”

The consequence of this decision was that the legal entity for the SKA project would be a UK Company Limited by Guarantee called the SKA Organisation (SKAO, see Sect. 4.7.1). Two years later in 2013, the new SKAO building (see Fig. 9.3) was inaugurated at the start of the Pre-Construction Phase.

Fig. 9.3

Left: The inauguration ceremony for the new purpose-built SKA Headquarters building at Jodrell Bank Observatory on 7 May 2013. Left to right—John Womersley (STFC, SKA Organisation Board of Directors Chair), Nancy Rothwell (Vice-Chancellor and President of The University of Manchester), David Willetts (UK Minister of State for Universities and Science), and Philip Diamond (Director-General, SKA Organisation) (Credit: SKA Observatory). Right: The SKA Headquarters building with the 76 m diameter Lovell Telescope in the background (Credit: R.P. Millenaar, SKAO, 2013)

9.4 Postscript

As noted in previous chapters, the formal scope of this book covers the period from 1990 to the telescope site selection in 2012. However, we briefly mention here a third competition for the SKAO Headquarters location held in 2015 when it was thought that the project would be entering the construction phase within 2 or 3 years. In this case, the SKA Organisation Board of Directors had already decided that the desired governance structure in the construction and subsequent observatory operations phases would be a Inter-Governmental Organisation (see Sect. 4.7.4.3). The UK and Italy entered the competition with the current SKA Headquarters site at Jodrell Bank Observatory and a site in Padua in Italy as candidate locations. After another contentious selection round, the UK site at Jodrell Bank Observatory was chosen as the permanent location for the SKA Observatory Inter-Governmental Organisation (see Fig. 9.4). That story will have to await a further instalment of the history of the SKA.

Fig. 9.4

The SKA Headquarters building after a major extension completed in 2018. The Jodrell Bank Observatory (JBO) 76 m diameter Lovell Telescope is in the background left of centre. Another JBO telescope (14 m diameter) can be seen in the background right of centre. The original SKA Headquarters building shown in Fig. 9.3 right is on the left of this photo. (Credit: Juande Santander-Vela, SKA Observatory)