October 2003 Newsletter

EarthScope Update

In September EarthScope achieved a significant milestone when it moved from the planning stage to the construction stage. UNAVCO, IRIS and Stanford signed cooperative agreements with the National Science Foundation for the construction of the EarthScope Facility. An NSF funded Major Research and Equipment Facility Construction (MREFC) project, EarthScope is the largest NSF earth science project ever. Ten representatives from UNAVCO, IRIS and Stanford attended a workshop (at Aspen, Colorado) organized by the physicists involved in the Laser Interferometric Gravimetry Observatory (LIGO). There we spent an intense three and one-half days hearing the good and bad experiences of large physics projects and, between talks, planning the management of EarthScope.

The PBO Standing Committee met in July at Stanford to discuss the strainmeter component of PBO. The committee made several recommendations that are under consideration by UNAVCO's Board of Directors. The report should be made public soon.

UNAVCO is in the final throes of making a decision on the GPS receiver procurement for PBO. Several receivers have been tested and the results of the test are being considered by a Technical Advisory Committee. Once the award is made, the results of the testing and the selected vendor will be made public.

Finally, UNAVCO has been busy hiring staff required for constructing PBO. The following report from the PBO Director summarizes the progress so far.

From Mike Jackson, PBO Director

The PBO is in the process of staffing key positions so we can move quickly to implement the PBO project plan. We have put together a strong project team. Please join me in welcoming the new staff to UNAVCO Inc, and PBO. We will make a broader announcement to the EarthScope, PBO and UNAVCO, Inc. communities. The enclosed attachment contains an updated organizational chart. I will update the PBO web site as time permits. By way of background, the process for hiring included extensive local and web-based advertising as well as emails to the UNAVCO community. Each position had 10 - 50 candidates from which the top three to five were selected for interviews. The interview teams included two to four senior managers as well as invited members where special expertise was required to evaluate candidates.

Senior Management Positions

PBO Operations Manager. Karl Feaux has accepted the PBO Operations Manager position. Karl comes to PBO with 10 years of field engineering, station installation and maintenance, and management experience. He has personally installed and/or supported many of the western US regional GPS networks. In the next few weeks Karl will be focusing his attention on hiring PBO Regional Engineers.

PBO Data and Data Products Manager. Greg Anderson has accepted the PBO Data and Data Products Manager position. Greg is currently a postdoc at the USGS in Pasadena and will join PBO around November 1. Greg brings a broad knowledge of GPS and strain data and data products based on his experience at the USGS and SIO. In the first few months Greg will be focused on establishing the PBO GPS and strainmeter data and data product SOW's and subcontracts.

Line Management Positions

PBO Senior Engineer. Dave Mencin accepted the position for the PBO Senior Engineer. Dave had extensive field and software development experience at UNAVCO before leaving for the private sectors. Dave's specialties included over 15 years of GPS engineering experience with an emphasis on data communications and software development.

PBO Cost and Schedule Coordinator. Blaise Stephanus is the PBO Cost and Schedule Coordinator. Blaise brings over 20 years of Project and cost/schedule management experience to PBO. He has extensive experience in EVA (Earned Value Management) and other cost accounting methods required to account for PBO MREFC funds. Blaise's first tasks are to finalize the PBO work breakdown structure and baseline budget, work with the EarthScope office to define PBO Cost Performance Reports, and finalize the PBO budgeted cost of work scheduled.

Permit and Reconnaissance Coordinator. Kyle Bohnenstiehl has accepted the PBO Permit and Reconnaissance Coordinator position. Kyle comes to PBO from the Department of Interior where he oversaw land use and permitting activities for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Kyle also has extensive experience in GPS control surveys, image acquisition and processing, and GIS.

Engineering

Rocky Mountain Regional Engineer. Steve Borenstein will fill the Rocky Mountain Regional Engineer position. Steve has a great deal of experience with power systems (solar, wind) and systems enclosures as a development and testing engineer at the Facility as well as previous experience as a Product Support Engineer at Sun.

Northern California Strainmeter Engineer. Bob Mueller is the Michael Jordan of the strainmeter community. He was at the top of his game when he retired and we have brought him back for his strong leadership and strainmeter engineering talents. Bob starts work around November 10.

Support

PBO Systems Administrator. Steve Smith is the PBO systems administrator. Steve has extensive UNIX/Linux networking experience that will serve us well is setting up the PBO remote offices. Steve came to us from CU.

PBO Administrative Assistant/Office Manager. Krista Barbour is the PBO Administrative Assistant. Krista handles PBO travel, purchasing, and meeting set up activities.

Pending Hires

Regional Engineers. We are actively interviewing people for the Regional Engineer Positions. We currently have short lists developed for most of the regions and anticipate finalizing the hires by early November.

Strainmeter Processing Technician. We currently employ Kathleen Hodgkinson on an hourly basis for strainmeter data processing. Kathleen has been working closely with Evelyn Roeloffs on a specific set of tasks as outlined by the PBO standing committee. We anticipate bringing Kathleen on as a full time member of the staff in late February of 2004.

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