ERA-40 Project Plan

9. PROJECT MANAGEMENT

ERA-40 can be divided into a number of branches of activity:

1. Co-ordination (WP 1000)

2. Preparation (WP 2000, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2400, 2500, 2600)

3. Production (WP 3000, 3100, 3200)

4. Validation and exploitation (WP 4000, 4100, 4200, 4300, 4400, 4500, 4600, 4700, 4800)

5. Dissemination, documentation and clean-up (WP 5000, 6000, 6100)

Tables showing the milestones and the scheduling of the workpackages have been presented in section 3.

The first three and last branches of activity will be the prime responsibility of ECMWF. The validation and exploitation workpackages in the fourth branch of activity will be primarily the responsibility of the other partners in this project. A summary of the rôles of these partners in the project has been given in section 3.

ECMWF will provide the Project Co-ordinator and the Project Manager. The Project Manager will be responsible for the day-to-day management of the project. This will include co-ordinating the workpackages within branches 1, 2, 3 and 5, and liaising with the workpackage leaders associated with branch 4 to ensure effective progress of the project as a whole. The Project Manager will report to senior management of ECMWF and will work (with their assistance as required) on the detailed planning and monitoring of the project, and on any problem-solving that is needed.

Work on the preparatory phase of ERA-40 has reached a very advanced stage. The progress has been made possible by external support from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Beijing, the University of California Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI), and Fujitsu Ltd., obtained as a result of direct contacts from ECMWF. Two project management groups have been convened, an External Advisory Group and a Steering Group. Both of these bodies are chaired by the Project Co-ordinator, the Head of Research of ECMWF.

The management structure is illustrated in Figure 3.

The External Advisory Group represents a broad cross-section of customers for re-analysis products. It comprises scientists from each partner together with selected scientists who represent principal user-groups such as WMO, WCRP, GCOS, UCAR, CLIVAR, and others. The Scientific Advisory Committee of ECMWF also nominates a member of this Group. Two meetings of this group have taken place to date. It has provided direction in drawing up the detailed project plan, including advice on the details of the production system and on the archive of re-analysis products. It will advise on any changes deemed necessary to the plan, and will contribute to the assessment of the preliminary results of the validation and exploitation tasks.

The Steering Group is chaired by the Project Co-ordinator. It comprises additionally the Head of Operations, the Division Heads and Project Manager from ECMWF, and a representative of each of the remaining partners. Appropriate advisors may accompany Steering Group representatives. Much of the work of this group is conducted informally, by e-mail and correspondence, with meetings where necessary. Its task is to review the planning, the preparation of the observational data and of the assimilation system, the pre-production experimentation, the production and archiving of results, the progress with the validation and exploitation tasks and the project documentation.

A major strength of the partnership is that all partners are thoroughly experienced in working together. Most are inter-connected electronically through a dedicated, high bandwidth network, facilitating the rapid exchange of information and data, and direct access to the sophisticated archival/retrieval system to which the ERA-40 results will be written. All partners have high speed Internet connections. Special arrangements are already in place for sharing ERA-40 information between partners through a dedicated Internet web site, and for sharing larger files of information and data through a dedicated Internet ftp site. Each partner has well defined contact points, and liaison through e-mail and meetings when necessary is well established between the contact points, the Project Co-ordinator and the Project Manager.