The Large Hadron Collider project: organizational and financial matters (of physics at the terascale)

In this paper, I present a view of organizational and financial matters relevant for the successful construction and operation of the experimental set-ups at the Large Hadron Collider of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva. Construction of these experiments was particularly challenging: new detector technologies had to be developed; experimental set-ups that are larger and more complex than ever before had to be constructed; and larger collaborations than ever before had to be organized. Fundamental to the success were: the ‘reference’ provided by CERN, peer review, signed memoranda of understanding, well-organized resources review boards as an interface to the national funding agencies and collegial, but solidly organized, experimental collaborations.