Constructing the ESS Linear Accelerator: Pragmatic Approaches to Design and System Integration at the European Spallation Source

The European Spallation Source (ESS) is a neutron science facility, with planned start of construction in Lund in 2014, Sweden and it is one of the largest science and technology infrastructure projects being developed in the world today. It will include a 62.5 mA, 2 GeV proton linac, a tungsten target station, 22 state-of-the-art neutron instruments. ESS also includes a supercomputing data processing centre, which will be in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Accelerator Systems project (ACCSYS) represents almost one third of the total ESS construction budget. Seventeen European countries are participating as in-kind contributing partners. Because of the project complexity and the important number of interacting parties, it is crucial to establish a pragmatic approach for design and systems integration. Guarantee of requirements consistency, clarity of interface definition and allocation of correct spaces are just some of the fundamental aspects that must be addressed for a successful integration. Potential functional or design inconsistencies must be promptly detected and actively resolved to bridge the project from conceptual design towards a smooth, timely, cost effective installation. Minimizing the administrative burden is also important given the intrinsic prototypical nature of this type of project. This paper describes the pragmatic approaches to design and system integration as well as the system architecture and the tools deployed to integrate the design of the ESS Linear Accelerator and to prepare for its installation.