Sébastien König

Biography

Sebastien König is responsible for planning in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) organization. He has 20 years’ experience in controlling major projects (in excess of $1 billion), with a particular focus on schedule planning and scheduling, as well as risk management. He has worked on owner teams for construction projects such as aluminum smelters in Oman, Iceland, India and Canada, hydroelectric power plants in Cameroon and iron mining infrastructure in Guinea. In the ITER project control office, Sébastien is responsible for coordinating planning efforts with agencies representing the 35 countries collaborating on the construction of the world’s largest tokamak. He also enjoys traveling and astronomy. Some of his trips include observatories in Chile and Namibia, or hunting for the northern lights. He enjoys exploring how business planning and risk management can be applied to projects outside the office.

Conference: How to reach a goal on time?

ITER (Latin for “the way”) is one of the world’s most ambitious energy projects. Members (China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, the United States and Russia) are collaborating to build and operate the world’s largest tokamak in southern France, designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale, carbon-free energy source. The timetable covers the period up to the first plasma and the exploitation of deuterium-tritium. ITER is nothing like an ordinary project. Not only is it a large-scale, complex and international project, it is also unique in its kind, spanning several decades and featuring a unique form of organization. Successfully integrating and assembling over ten million parts, built in ITER members’ factories around the world, is a major planning and scheduling challenge. The ITER schedule is more than just a roadmap, giving direction to the project team. It combines both a GPS and a guide providing useful information along the way, helping the team to assess their progress and plan ahead. It helps management analyze project performance and take corrective and preventive action. So when will we have achieved our goal of a first plasma?