Sébastien König
Scheduling Responsible Officer
Conference : How to reach a goal in time?
Sebastien König is the Schedule Responsible Officer at the ITER Organization. He has 20 years of experience in controlling major projects (exceeding a billion dollars budget), with a focus in planning, scheduling and risk management. He has worked in the owner’s teams of construction projects such as aluminum smelters in Oman, Iceland, India and Canada, hydropower plants in Cameroon and iron ore mine infrastructure in Guinea. In the ITER’s project control office, Sebastien is responsible to coordinate the planning and scheduling effort together with the agencies representing the 35 nations that are collaborating to build the world's largest Tokamak. He also loves travelling and astronomy. Some of his trips include observatories in Chile and Namibia, or hunting northern lights. He likes to explore how planning, scheduling and risk management can apply to projects outside of the office.
ITER (The Way in Latin) is one of the most ambitious energy projects in the world today. The members (China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States) are collaborating to build and operate the world's largest Tokamak in south of France, designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy. The project timeline covers the period up to First Plasma and on to Deuterium-Tritium Operation. ITER is nothing like an ordinary project. Not only is it big, complex and international, but it is also a one-of-a-kind project, spanning several decades, with a unique form of organization. The successful integration and assembly of over ten million parts, built in the ITER members' factories around the world constitutes a tremendous planning and scheduling challenge. The ITER schedule is more than just a road map, giving the direction to the project team. It combines both a GPS navigator and a guide providing helpful information along the way helping the team gauge their progress and plan ahead. It supports the management in assessing the project’s performance and take corrective and preventive measures. So when will we achieve our objective of First Plasma?