During the first year of the KM3NeT-INFRADEV2 project (1st of January to 31st of December 2023), the Consortium met almost all the achievements set for the period.
Regarding the governance of the project, guidelines were set during the Kick-off meeting of the project and in its Dissemination and Exploitation Plan. A Project Management Board, composed of the Work Package leaders and the European Project Manager, as well as a Steering Committee, composed of one representative of each beneficiary, were created and meet regularly to ensure the follow-up of the project. Progresses made are reported to the KM3NeT Collaboration during the Collaboration meetings and boards.
The primary objective of the project was to progress towards the establishment of a legal entity for the KM3NeT RI. A legal entity committee was set up and met to discuss the possible legal forms for KM3NeT. Thanks to the work performed, it was decided to create an AISBL, a non-profit international association based on Belgian law. The statutes of this future entity were drafted and approved by the KM3NeT Collaboration, enabling further action towards the full establishment of the KM3NeT RI.
Another objective was to recruit additional members for the KM3NeT Project Office, in order to accelerate the implementation of the detector and to guarantee its reliability and quality. These two positions have been fulfilled. Thanks to the recruitment of a Procurement Officer, it was possible to consolidate common purchasing procedures and the drafting of a Procurement Plan. A risk management procedure for component shortage was also defined. Finally, the recruitment of a Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety (RAMS) Officer allowed great progress in order to reach KM3NeT reliability and quality standards.
Regarding data management and open science practices, the KM3NeT Data Management Plan (DMP) was successfully reviewed by external experts and their recommendations are being integrated into an updated version of the DMP. Working groups were created in order to set up workflow and data management systems and enhance the open science interfaces. Finally, progress towards handling of multi-messenger alerts was made and allowed further steps towards the KM3NeT contribution to global real-time multi-messenger networks.
To support the path of KM3NeT towards greener practices, increased socio-economic impact and technology transfers with industry, specific working groups were created and will study possible changes and activities to be carried out within the project.
