Project management as a breakthrough at CERN

Building and maintaining control systems for high energy physics is becoming an increasingly complex and costly activity. The quickly evolving technology and the tight budget conditions require today a better management of our engineering activities. This situation led us to organise these activities as "projects" and to use modern project management practices already widely spread in industry. In this context, many aspects of the re-engineering of the controls infrastructure of the two CERN largest particle accelerators - SPS and LEP - as well as the supervision of the CERN wide technical services are fully conducted as projects with special control over the costs, resources, objectives, activities and maintenance aspects. This paper presents our experience in project-based management with special emphasis on its applicability in a research environment, on the impact on the current working pratices and on the potential benefits for the future. Some key concepts and techniques of project management are introduced and illustrated through pratical examples.