Memo                                                   September 1996
From:    M.Kasemann, C. Niebuhr
To:      HERA, H1, HERA-B, HERMES, ZEUS
Subject: The role of the Coordinating Experiment

In order to streamline the communication between the HERA control room and the 3 (soon 4) experiment control rooms the institution of the coordinating experiment was created. The communication between HERA and the experiments for all topics of general interest concerning immediate HERA operation is through the coordinating experiment.

Duties of the coordinating experiments

The coordinating experiment should:

get informed about the HERA running conditions and short term plans (passive: by calls from HERA CR, active: inquire the status from HERA CR ),
communicate the HERA information to all other experiments.

In case of a request to change the short term operation conditions - like e.g. the decision to dump beams etc... - by HERA or one of the experiments the coordinating experiment has to:

collect requests from all experiments or HERA CR, discuss and agree with all experiments,
communicate the agreed experiments request to the HERA CR, and discuss with HERA about the operation,
inform the other experiments about the result of the discussion with the HERA CR immediately.

Requests and proposals to change the general HERA operation conditions should be directed to the coordinating experiment, not directly to HERA or a specific experiment.

The coordinating experiment is responsible to have an experienced person (run coordinator or experienced shift leader) reachable permanently during HERA operation who is able to with the other experiments.

The role of 'coordinating experiment' is rotating between H1 and ZEUS on a weekly basis. These two experiments should take special care about the needs of the single beam experiments HERA-B and HEMRES. The changeover is every Tuesday 12:00h, unless one experiment is inactive and cannot fulfill the duty.

Complaints about a specific 'coordinating experiment' or proposals concerning the rules for coordinating experiments should be brought to the HERA experiment coordinators.