From the Director's Desk

Two critical issues have occurred since the last Newsletter: agreement of the future operational plan for the JCMT and the very sad death of Sidney Arakaki. The latter matter is reported in a separate note and it is grim reminder that this is the second death in service at the JAC within the past year.

As has been widely reported, PPARC, in its bid to become a member of ESO, required savings to be made in its ground-based astronomy programme of order £5M p.a. from ~2005. The JCMT was impacted by this remit and during the late summer a significant amount of management staff effort was focused in preparing a response to the requirement to come forward with a viable operating model that also delivered the target savings required. Because UKIRT was also involved, this was a JAC site-wide issue.

The report produced by the senior management with input from group leaders was extensive. Fortunately, the future scientific directions of both UKIRT and the JCMT are in the area of wide-field and survey-type observational programmes with follow-up, and for the JCMT, involvement in sub-arcsecond astronomy with the SMA. Therefore, with a reduced instrument suite and anticipated longer observing programmes, this naturally leads to the possibility of achieving savings through a different operational model. The report was presented to an international review panel (including JCMT agency representatives) in October 2001 and subsequently to the JCMTAP and Board.

Three possible savings models were derived: natural wide-field; wide-field with savings; aggressive savings-driven. All produce savings, but the amount increases with each. The first is a natural evolution from where we are now to a wide-field model but without being driven by the need to make savings. This brings a level of savings that are modest. Because the majority of the cost of the JAC is on salary related areas, this means a small reduction in the workforce. The second takes this direction further by seeking additional savings and staff losses, which will be at a level that will definitely have an impact on the "look and feel" of the JAC but where the risk to the science output should be manageable. The third model requires much higher levels of savings and staff reductions and was closest to achieving the level of savings that PPARC were seeking. In this model, the level of staff reductions was so severe that it was assessed by JAC management as far too risky to contemplate both in terms of managing the change and of producing a far too stressed operational model. A critical aspect of the model was the number of resulting single point failures through loss of key staff leading to potentially serious losses in programme delivery.

In the latter two models there is a noticeable reduction in user support and users will need to take on additional responsibility for organising their observing runs. Furthermore, major project work at the JAC becomes almost entirely serial in nature rather than parallel. This means that only one major piece of work can be undertaken on either telescope at a time. On the other hand, because of the need to retain staff due to the arrival of new JCMT instruments (ACSIS, HARP-B, SCUBA-2) significant savings cannot readily be achieved prior to 2006.

The Review Panel, Advisory Panel and Board agreed that given the financial pressures the wide-field with savings model was the minimum acceptable operational level commensurate with scientific output. This translates into the JAC losing something around 15-18 staff, mostly expected after 2005/6. The details have yet to be agreed and depend somewhat on the future instrument reliability and programme delivery, and in any case will be for the next Director to really get into the details of managing this process. But the broad brush has now been agreed, the JCMT will focus on wide-field survey-type programmes as well as having an important role in sub-arcsecond submillimetre astronomy with our involvement with the SMA.

This brings up the question of the existing suite of heterodyne receivers. The JCMTAP were very keen that RxB3 and RxW had a significant role to play in the programme of sub-arcsecond astronomy. However, the use of these instruments as part of a single dish facility was seen to be much weaker by ~2004. It was agreed that RxA3 has a much lower priority altogether and given its age, obsolete components and lack of immediate opportunity for upgrading, its useful lifetime could be considered finite. Therefore potential future users of RxA3 are encouraged to submit programmes sooner rather than later {link}. So the future role of the JCMT is now defined. After the arrival of HARP and SCUBA-2, it will be a facility concentrating of wide-field astronomy and undertaking sub-arcsecond astronomy with RxB3 and RxW.

Turning to the development programme, the key aspect to note is that the JCMT Board has now approved committing all of the remaining funds through to the end of the Development Fund (2009) to the ongoing construction of SCUBA-2. However, such is the rate of spend on this instrument that all these remaining funds will be consumed around the time of the detector proof of concept critical design review in October 2002. So where will the remaining funds come from to complete SCUBA-2? The UK government (the Office of Science and Technology) has awarded £4M contingent on the full funding being identified. The bid to the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) was successful in the first selection round in December and has now been resubmitted to the final selection phase. A decision is expected in late May and because of the critical nature of the outcome for the future of SCUBA-2 and potentially the operational model and funding of the JCMT, the JCMT Board has been postponed until late June. The nature of the "savings from operations" will also be clarified in June.

As noted in a previous Newsletter, PPARC awarded funding for an outreach post and we welcome Douglas Pierce-Price who joined the JAC in December. Douglas has already stepped in and produced the JCMT poster for the Hale Pohaku Visitor Center and is now hard at work getting involved in numerous local outreach activities. At some point Douglas will also take over preparation of the Newsletters and the public web pages for both telescopes.

Finally, my two tours of duty are almost up and it is time for me to move on and return to the UK. It has been an exciting and challenging nine and a half years in Hawaii and I am very proud of what has been accomplished at the JAC. The credit of course goes to the staff, without their excellence and dedication nothing would have been possible. I should also like to thank the user community for being both supportive and understanding when things didn't happen as quickly or as efficiently as we might all have hoped for. My thanks also go to the members of the JCMT Board and Advisory Panel for their very encouraging support over the years, and to the funding agencies for their ongoing and prompt financial contributions. We all recognise that both telescopes are acknowledged world class and highly productive, the very best of their class. Both have well defined development programmes already in place and with the future operational models now agreed, the future at the JAC is rather tightly defined. I had hoped that the SCUBA-2 situation would have been decided by this point, but we should all remain optimistic that by June the last piece of the jig-saw will have been put in place and I can then go about moving back to the UK with a degree of satisfaction and closure.

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