ALMA Organisational Structure

The ALMA Board has the overall responsibility for the ALMA Observatory. Upon decision of the ALMA Board, the Joint ALMA Office (JAO) was created during the year 2004. Prime objective of the JAO is to provide an overall management structure for ALMA, to lead the ALMA project, and coordinate ALMA construction activities in four different continents. The JAO is located in Santiago (Chile) and synchronizes activities of the Executives in Europe, North America and Japan, as well as on the ALMA site near San Pedro de Atacama. One of the most important responsibilities of the JAO is the management and organisation of the Assembly, Integration, Verification and Commissioning (AIVC) of the telescopes in Chile.

The European ALMA activities are managed by the European ALMA Project Office, located at ESO in Garching. The Project Office is led by the European ALMA Project Manager, who is also the Head of the ALMA Division at ESO. He is supported by the European ALMA Project Scientist, the ALMA Regional Center (ARC) Manager, a Management Team, and several Integrated Product Team (IPT) Leaders. The IPT Leaders direct their team of engineers and scientists for the various subsystems of the ALMA Project. Similar Project Offices have been organised at NRAO in Charlottesville (USA) for North America, and NAOJ in Mitaka (Japan)) for corresponding construction activities for ALMA. These three Project Offices collaborate closely with each other, not only at the level of the Executive's Project Managers, but also the Management Teams and IPT Leaders.

In addition, the ALMA Project Manager and his team at the JAO coordinate overall aspects of the project.

Besides the management, described above, which deals with all operational aspects of the construction on a day to day timescale, there are several external (independent) advisory bodies, dealing, for example, with scientific, technical, personnel, financial, management, and organisational issues. The various ALMA boards and committees deal in some cases with overall aspects of ALMA, in other cases also with regional aspects related to the specific circumstances of the respective Executives.

At present there are:

the ALMA Management Advisory Committee (AMAC),

the ALMA Scientific Advisory Committee (ASAC),

the ALMA North American Scientific Advisory Committee (ANASAC),

the ALMA European Scientific Advisory Committee (ESAC), and

the ALMA Japanese Scientific Advisory Committee (JSAC).