of Energy for its review is a conservative projection of the real costs of completing the project.

Now, that statement in itself when you present a cost for review, it is conservative. It is on the low side, and somehow or another that disturbs this Senator that when it is on the low side that when final figures come in and bids are awarded or that sort of thing that is something you will not have control over. That we get into the problem of you just committed yourself to a figure. Well, I am not sure we all have that much control.

Dr. SCHWITTERS. Let me try to explain that. You are quite right, and it is precisely these issues of, again-——

Senator FORD. Uncertainty.

Dr. SCHWITTERS [continuing]. Incomparables and uncertainty in those aspects of the cost estimate. And I want to-really I am saying commit within, again, a reasonable understanding with the department and you on those kinds of figures because inevitably there will be uncertainties on bids and so forth.

What we want to put in place, though, is a very clear statement of what is there, what is not there, what the assumptions are and so that we are all playing on the same field.

Senator FORD. I understand what you are confident with the management now that has been put together, and let me ask you this. I asked Dr. Bromley-I went back and asked him a final question, and so let me ask you. How much magnet testing is planned before major construction is done, and what is the test schedule? Dr. SCHWITTERS. The next stage is to bring industry on board on these magnets. We have working with the department the first request for proposals-it is in draft form-that we expect soon to get out for industry comment. We hope later this year to bring our first development industry on board, as you heard, to build the first roughly one eighth of the magnets. That is the development contract leading to the tooling and methodology to build the full 8,000 dipoles.

That program goes itself in stages. For example, the first stage will be 12 magnets built with industry side by side with the development folks up at Fermilab. Then industry will build the next 15 in its facilities. Going beyond that, then we-every case we have a design review, we carefully watch again performance, costs, schedule and so forth. The next stage will be a pre-production batch of 100 magnets. We will watch that very carefully and look at-again, you have a precise set of design reviews and so forth. And finally, we will build approximately 500 magnets in the next stage, beyond that to verify the production.

So, we are continuously watching that as we go into the full rate production of the magnets with-

Senator FORD. What is your time frame from the first one to the 500?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. First to 500 I believe is about three years. I have to

Senator FORD. That is all right. Just ballpark, that is fine because the first few, you had a dozen.

Dr. SCHWITTERS. That is right.

Senator FORD. Then you keep-and then you go out to 500.

Dr. SCHWITTERS. You keep working through that. Now, you say construction. Again, in a project of this scope one, of course, has to do many different activities in parallel and to mesh the project together in the most cost-effective way.

Senator FORD. The fear I have here is that this is new. You have never built one like this before.

Dr. SCHWITTERS. You have got it.

Senator FORD. Everything-so, there is a ghost behind every tombstone. Things are going to be popping up all the way, things that you did not understand. My concern is that it may-the dollars may pop out here, and we all will be concerned about it and surprised.

Dr. SCHWITTERS. Yes, sir.

Senator FORD. Somewhere along the line we have got to be convinced about the scientific results that it would be worth whatever the price is. Dr. Bromley said there probably would a level at which he would reconsider the project, but he did not have the figure for us this morning. You have a figure at which you would like-you would say that when it goes beyond that, we should reconsider the project?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. Let me say-first of all, let me say that in the planning process, of course, our business is the business of the unknown. Ultimately it is the research we are doing. But at the engineering level we build in, again, these check points, reviews, contingency on time and to be able to understand problems and so forth. We also build in contingency into the budget process itself, into the costing process.

So, that is what I say again. In that context, we are very committed to these figures and the overall program on that. Now, in terms of the you asked at what point do you go no further. I guess from my perspective on the scientific front is that I view the one truly non-renewable resource is a person, a creative person's time, and our young people and the whole people involved in this, and I will give you, again, a very personal heartfelt view that if we start stretching beyond the sensible careers of the creative people that we need to make this thing what we all want it to be, that is when I think we have to seriously start reconsidering whether that is a wise investment.

Senator FORD. Thank you, Dr. Schwitters. Mr. Chairman?

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Schwitters, I understand you have built a number of-well, you have built 15 full-length and many short magnets that have been built and tested in the National Lab, and a main-line design was chosen early in fiscal year 1989 and five such magnets have been built and tested to date, is that correct? Dr. SCHWITTERS. Yes, of the 4-centimeter design.

The CHAIRMAN. Now-that is the main line design?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. That is right, and we are scaling from that design now to the new 5-centimeter aperture.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. So we never have built the 5-centimeter aperture?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. That is correct. We will have our first short prototype versions of that at the end of this year and again we are taking, though, the design information, the engineering informa

tion and essentially scaling up the mechanical design to the new 5centimeter aperture.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, when you go from the 4 to 5 centimeters, do you just take every dimension and increase it?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. To a good approximation, that is what you do. Now, it turns out that you do not want to do that for the outer jacket of the cryostat for other reasons, but you can think of it as almost like putting it on a piece of xerox and expanding it by a ratio of 5 to 4 in your Xerox machine.

That has one-by the way, one very natural benefit. That gives you what is called more margin. It makes, again, the magnet be able to perform at its high field in a more reliable fashion, just by virtue of that scaling property.

The CHAIRMAN. Right. Well, of these five main-line, 4-centimeter aperture magnets, three have worked perfectly well, one had human error, design errors or manufacturing errors, one had quench problems, or something.

Dr. SCHWITTERS. Yes. Yes, sir, there are-again, let me say a little bit about that program. The emphasis up until now has been to understand the mechanical details, the forces, or the tremendous forces that want to take these wires and expand them apart. That part of the program now is well understood. There are measurements of the force loads and levels inside there.

What we are seeing in a couple of instances, I would say, are the next level of what I call system errors. As you say, there is human error involved in assembling the wire that came into one magnet. Just last week we had another case where one of the internal components slightly overheated. It damaged some insulation. This is an example now where, in my view, one needs to rely on industry to be able to use the system engineering approach and the manufacturability approach to go now beyond the conceptual scientific design into the full product development, and this is why it is so important for us to learn-

The CHAIRMAN. Well, my question really is, Can you give the specifications blueprints, if you will, to industry and say, build this, or do you give them sort of a general idea of the blueprints and also give them some engineering requirements of what this thing will do after it is built?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. The answer is the latter. We are entering a development program of the roughly 1,000 magnets. We give them blueprints where we stand. We give them engineering information and general specifications. Then we work with them as a team to develop the precise blueprints and methodology that then we insist be followed as we build the subsequent 7,000 magnets.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, you heard Dr. Bromley state that he thinks 25 or so should be given to industry to build and not just assembled. Would you like to agree or disagree with Dr. Bromley on that?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. Well, as I indicated in the early question, in fact that is part of the program. We work with industry first to be able to transfer the laboratory information and experience. We then build batches of these in the industry, in batches of-again, the numbers are slightly different, but they are essentially the same. The first 25 are built, in fact, roughly half and half, side by side in

the laboratory and then completely in the industry, then we go to a batch of 100 and 500. So I do not disagree with the step by step aspect of it. What we have developed, and are working with-

The CHAIRMAN. As I understood you, though, the first 12 are going to be built by the National Labs, in effect, with industry sort of looking over their shoulder.

Dr. SCHWITTERS. No. No, in fact we are building those in the National Lab now. In fact, it is the opposite. We bring industry on board to use tooling that we believe is developed in a way that is consistent with industry needs, and we-in fact the National Lab people look over industry's shoulders for that first 12.

The CHAIRMAN. For that first 12-and that is on-going right now?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. No. That program is just-we have the request for proposals under consideration with the Department, and we hope to bring that contractor on board late this summer.

The CHAIRMAN. Late this summer?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, that was ready to go in March of this year, was it not?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. It has been in draft form, and again we are discussing with the procurement experts between our shop and the Department of Energy.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the delay in that? Is that because of foreign participation, trying to decide what they will do?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. That has not been an aspect of it. It was really the details of the RFP in terms of the selection procedures, statement of work and those contractual details.

The CHAIRMAN. If you do foreign participation, at what point do they come in?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. It seems to me it is going to depend a lot on exactly the details of the participation. I believe that it could be done in certain ways on a laboratory to laboratory collaboration, working with our development teams on this side and then possibly the foreign laboratory working with development teams in its industry and its host country, so one could imagine that participation at the development level.

At the production level, one would imagine, having derived this set of specifications and drawings, if we got into this and then making that the responsibility of a participating country. Now, what that means, and it is inevitable, is that it is a more complex management issue. One would have to have teams of our experts inspecting production, making sure all the details were done just right, because we cannot stand green and red magnets. I mean, they have got to be the same. They have got to work.

In fact, one of the interesting experiences in this going on right now is with the German project at Hamburg. They have built a new superconducting accelerator. It is roughly the scale of the Tevatron. Half of the magnets were built in Germany and half were built in Italy, and in fact they find minor technical differences between those magnets which are of relevance to the performance of the machine.

The CHAIRMAN. Well now, I think when Dr. Decker testified before the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee the last

time, we were talking about phase 1, phase 2 and phase 3. Phase 1 we are engaged in now, which is the R&D phase. Phase 2, as I recall, was you go out with an RFP and make the development phase for the first-I forget what the first buy was, and then phase 3 you went to multiple-the 8,000.

Dr. SCHWITTERS. Right.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, this looks like five phases-the phase we are in now, then you go out with some kind of RFP for 12, and then you go for 15, and then 100-

Dr. SCHWITTERS. No, no, no. I am sorry, let me explain that. The RFP that we are doing now is phase 2 under that language. It is the full development aspect, ultimately 1,000 magnets, but it has different checkpoints in it that you review and look at the program as you go through-the first 12, the first 25, the first 125 and so on. So in that, and the details of that, are precise checkpoints-design reviews, cost reviews and so on. That is phase 2.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. That is 1,076 magnets with checkpoints along the way so that in effect you can get out of the deal if they do not pass muster?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. That is correct. More important, of course, is to hopefully get a better product at a lower cost.

The CHAIRMAN. But that essentially, they would be assured that if they do pass muster they will get the 1,076.

Dr. SCHWITTERS. They will get through that, yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Now, have you decided on the strategy of whether it is one contractor or two, or multiple?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. The strategy here is that we will work principally in the beginning of that with one contractor. Again, it is going to be close teamwork. We do not want to diffuse the development and engineering and scientific effort on that.

It was implicit and built into it a leader-follower concept, for one of the tasks is to be able to bring a second contractor on board at the tail end of that development process to make absolutely sure that we have capability of more than one contractor for the production phase later on.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. So that what you foresee is an award under the RFP to one contractor with another looking over his shoulder, participating in what he is doing so that you will be prepared on phase 3, which is the production phase, to make a multiple or dual award if you want to?

Dr. SCHWITTERS. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. But that in phase 2, which is 1,076, you foresee a one contractor award only, with the other just observing.

Dr. SCHWITTERS. Bringing in a follower, and I think the final buys on that, we can actually-the final buys, as I recall the details, could actually go even more to the follower if the leaders were not producing well, as you got into that.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay, and the follower would be participating in hands-on

Dr. SCHWITTERS. Oh, yes. The idea here is we must, again, produce a package that describes the full content of building these magnets.

The CHAIRMAN. All right. Now, you are ready to submit that RFP and to make an award this fiscal year?