Several challenges will have to be faced by the staff at Paranal Observatory in order to be well prepared for a seamless integration of the ELT in the current VLT operations scheme. The Telescopes and Instruments Operator group (TIO) is already undergoing changes connected with some of the identified technological and operational needs for the ELT. This paper will have detailed information about the current training needs, group structural changes, the current activities using the adopted engineering-TIO [2] (eTIO) scheme and the staffing plan that will have to be applied in order to keep the centralized support of the biggest world infrastructure in astronomy at the time of the ELT, to handle daily science operations for seven different telescopes, the VLT interferometer and twenty-one scientific instruments in parallel.
Recently, the Science Operations department at the ESO-Paranal Observatory went through a series of changes, the one with the most impact goes by the name "SciOps 2.0", where staff changed the way they follow their daily work. In parallel to this development, a thorough analysis of the processes involved in the daytime coordination of Science Operations tasks led us to identify the need for an integrated task manager software [2]. In this contribution, we summarize the development process for such a tool (called "Dynamit"), the methodology used, and how it came to be from an idea in paper to a full production custom-made operations tool. This is a follow-up to the paper [2] mentioned above.
Paranal Observatory has a department called Science Operations (SciOps), which is in charge of operating the instruments within the global scheme established for the Very Large Telescope. This scheme was improved on what was called SciOps 2.0. The main operational goals of this new scheme were to strengthen the coordination of science operations activities within, and between, the department groups, by increasing the time allocated to “high-level” activities. It also improves the efficiency of the core science operations support to service mode (SM) and visitor mode (VM) observations, and the quality of the astronomical data delivered to the community of Paranal users.
In this context of efficiency and quality improvement of operations within the SciOps department, we had identified a strong need to optimize the management of daily operation tasks, via the development of a daily activity monitoring integrated tool, so this paper details the findings of the Daily Activity Monitoring Integrated Tool (DAMIT), the proof of Concept phase and the first delivered phase. The technical proof of concept was the first phase in development of a daily operation-monitoring tool for the science operations department. The primary objective of this phase was to evaluate the viability and impact of such a tool to improve the quality and efficiency of SciOps at Paranal.
This tool is running after overcoming the first phase of development, after followed an on-site technical analysis of the SciOps daily operation (day and night), the current procedures to certify the completeness and quality of the daily operations, and requirements for this new daily operation monitoring tool.
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