February 5, 2016

TO:                All Employees

FROM:          Stuart Henderson, APS Upgrade Project Director

SUBJECT:    APS Upgrade  Project Achieves CD-1

After many months of a strong and determined team effort, the APS Upgrade Project has received formal notification of Critical Decision 1 (CD-1) approval from the U.S. Department of Energy.

As you may know, CDs are key project milestones that identify the exit point from one phase of the project and entry into the succeeding phase. Each Critical Decision marks an expansion of project definition. With CD-1 approval, the project can move on to advancing the design, further refining cost and schedule, and preparing the initial procurement plans.

CD-1 approval follows a two-year period in which the Upgrade Project prepared a technical design and formulated cost and schedule estimates. The project presented and defended its plans to two DOE review committees in September 2015; both reviews were very successful, leading to the CD-1 designation.

The APS Upgrade Project is designed to transform today's APS into the ultimate 3-D x-ray microscope, creating the world's leading storage-ring hard x-ray light source and offering world-class capabilities that will fulfill the U.S. scientific community's research needs for decades to come. The upgraded APS will offer its more than 5,000 unique yearly users the capability to map matter and dynamics across length scales — in real time, in 3-D, in a single experiment.

I want to give my personal congratulations and thanks to everyone who has helped to make it possible for the APS Upgrade to achieve this crucial milestone.