The interface between operations and controls(brief summary of the lunchtime discussion)
R. Bailey, CERN, CH-1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland
1 INTRODUCTION

Following a session of talks devoted to operational aspects, participants were invited to stay on throughlunch for discussion on the interplay between controls and operations. A surprising 150 people felt it
worthwhile to make do with pizza in order to participate, and plenty of people had plenty to say. After
more than an hour we were obliged to stop for the conference program to continue, but there is clearlylots of interest in this area.
The discussions were based around four questions that had arisen either during earlier presentations orduring informal discussions throughout the conference. This summary is from memory several weeks
after the conference; no detailed record of the discussion was taken.

2 SUMMARY OF MAIN POINTS DISCUSSED

A. Is there really any difference between the needs of ‘operations’ and ‘accelerator
physicists’ ?
This question arose following the first two talks of the conference, where two different viewpoints werepresented. Everyone agreed that accelerator users fall mainly into three categories;• operators
who do the 24hr a day running of the machine for physics production• accelerator physicists who come to do machine development sessions• equipment specialists who come to debug and fix equipment
However, the definition of what an operator really does varied considerably from laboratory tolaboratory, and this difference of culture gives rise to quite a range of opinion on what the respective
requirements of the operator and the machine physicist are.
At one extreme, some labs felt that the operator should be given everything possible to help him
optimise the machine, with full access to all utilities available. Indeed in these labs physicists andengineers are recruited into operations, and participate in machine development activities. In this casethe needs of the operators and the machine physicists are clearly quite similar.
At the other extreme, there were labs which wanted to restrict the operator to a subset of facilities thatwere considered (by the accelerator physicists) to be ‘safe’ for the machine. In this case the needs of thetwo parties are rather different, and can well give rise to a conflict in terms of requirements.

B. How do we go from commissioning to routine operation ?
The applications software needed during the commissioning phase can be quite different from that
required for long-term operation of the machine. For example, the commissioning team wants
flexibility in order to change the way things are done as the understanding of the accelerator evolves,much in the same way as in machine development sessions. Furthermore the friendliness of theapplications is not SO important because the commissioning phase should be short and done byspecialists. Operations, on the other hand, want stability, reliability, uniformity etc. The question thatwas discussed was whether it is best to go from one to the other by the usual route of gradualevolution, or to undertake a major rewrite after a year or so of operation. No conclusion was reached,but it was felt that in either case the management should be well aware that software effort will beneeded and plan accordingly.

C. Why don’t controls get more involved ?

Well, from the discussion it was made clear that in at least one lab they do, and with impressiveresults. In this case the importance of establishing and maintaining good relations between controls andoperations was emphasised, as was a clear definition of responsibilities. It was felt essential that thecontrols group held overall responsibility for the software used to drive the machine, and any
developments made from outside controls were done according to clear guidelines.
However from several labs there were expressions from operations of a certain reluctance for controls to
get involved in applications programming. Many possible reasons, from both sides of the fence, weresuggested. Among these were;• ‘the operators never know what they want’• ‘the operators are never satisfied’• ‘the 3AM telephone call’
There was a lot of discussion on the first point, which is essentially concerned with the ability ofoperations to express their requirements, or conversely for controls to find them out, as discussed in thenext point.

D. How do controls find out what is needed ?
One of the participants, working in controls, had actually taken a year ‘out’, working shifts along withthe operations group in order to find out what the issues really were. While impressive, this was an
isolated case and is unlikely to catch on. More realistically, to recruit into controls from operations is away of putting hands-on experience in the right place. In some cases the movement has been the otherway round, with controls personnel moving into operations and acting as liaison between the groups.
Other than moves of this kind, establishing and maintaining good relations is of course again of great
importance here.
On the technical side, formal development methods should help in defining what is needed. However
the use of such techniques in accelerator labs is very limited. Why ? It is quite interesting to note thatin one lab where formal techniques have been applied, it was on the initiative of operations, notcontrols.

3 CONCLUSION

The way in which operations is performed varies considerably between the different laboratories, andthis has a profound impact on the way the operations and controls groups interact. Moving fromcommissioning to routine operation is a recognised problem area, and not just in the realm of controls.
Setting up the correct framework for controls to understand what applications are needed is often
underestimated, with the result that in many laboratories this is considered a neglected area. Formal
methods are generally not considered as a useful approach.
There was obviously considerable interest in these and other points, which continue to provide
controversy and difficulty for both operations and controls personnel. In the future, similar, workshopstyle discussion sessions can only do good.