The Technical Infrastructure, or TI, section operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year monitoring CERN's infrastructure.

We look after the Technical Infrastructure of what is known as machine buildings. These are buildings which house accelerators, experiments and other important or critical installations like the Computer Centre.

 

Technical Infrastructure systems include:

In TI we monitor the CERN infrastructure 24/7, and are one of the only teams that have a permanent year round presence at CERN.

We monitor alarms for everything from the incoming 400kV EDF electrical supply to individual circuit breakers, Fire and Gas safety systems, Cooling and Ventilation systems for both the accelerator complex and general surface buidings, environmental monitoring stations, access control and more!

As part of our shift work, not only do we monitor the infrastructure, but we also track and arrange maintenance activities on all of our systems.

Part of this is to allow us to know when alarms are related to scheduled maintenance activities, but we also receive phone calls for maintenance requests and for equipment breakdowns that require us to contact the equipment or group specialists to arrange the repairs in a timely manner.

We average around 120 calls a day, and up to 400 during busy periods. That’s over 40 calls an hour during the working day!

The main role of the TI operators is working on shift in the CERN Control Centre, assuring that all systems of the technical infrastructure run smoothly.

Our goal is to keep increasing the availability and reliability of the accelerators at CERN!

With approximately 70% of the time spent on shift work, the rest of the time is worked during normal office hours, working on different projects.