The ESnet6 2021 Annual Status Review was a great success, and the Review Committee, led by DOE, concluded that the ESnet6 Project is being managed and executed well!

Given that the project’s budget, scope, and schedule were approved in February 2020, this was the first official Annual Status Review – and what a year it has been! The 2021 Review was a major milestone, allowing the Project to formally present the project performance over the past year and, consequently, during the COVID-19 pandemic. I continue to be amazed by the entire project team, and I felt very honored to be the one to introduce the astounding progress we made during an extremely challenging year. Not only that, it was all done while operating the current ESnet5 production network at the same time.

The project execution continued at full speed while some of us started carving out time over the past several months to prepare for the Review. Pulling together all of the information required, synthesizing it into a clear and concise set of briefings and documents, and presenting it to leaders in our field is a monumental task under any circumstances, but the pandemic made this especially difficult. However, the project team, backed by strong support across LBNL (Procurement, Project Management Office, Project Management Advisory Board members, and many others) made everything appear seamless. The impressive level of teamwork did not go unnoticed and was specifically mentioned repeatedly during the Closeout session. I am grateful for and proud of, all of the members of the team who contributed to this terrific success.

The Review Committee consisted of three Subcommittees (Technical, Cost & Schedule, Project Management & Environment, Safety & Health), all charged with answering a set of questions to determine if we were on schedule, achieving scope, within budget, and performing all tasks safely. The answer to every charge question: Yes! It was an all-encompassing couple of days, but we really couldn’t have asked for a better result. In short, there were no formal recommendations, so we’ll be considering how best to implement several of the Review Committee’s extremely helpful comments as we proceed onward. Our hard work, not only on the Review itself, paid off!

With the formal Review complete for the year, we’re all back to our daily project plan of execution, while keeping the network “lights on” in the process, of course.