Coming soon - A new location for the Concurrent Design facility
Along with many other labs from ESTEC, the CDF will soon be relocated in the brand new Eg building. Scheduled for mid 2007, this move not only signifies an end to the barracks but an opportunity to integrate new state of the art equipment in order to enhance communication and efficiency during studies. This integration effort is being managed and coordinated by Terma, a company already familiar with ESA's working environment and involved in the installation of the current CDF.
The surface area allocated to the new CDF (see figure 1) is larger than the current facility and beside the Design Room, will also include a Project Room to host parallel splinter meetings, reduced team studies (e.g. space instrument design) and also a visitors gallery.
Some of the lessons learnt from the current CDF concern the ergonomics of the room and BAe Systems (UK) is providing expert advice relating to all ergonomic factors for the new CDF, from projection screens, to room layouts, to the colour of the carpets.
All this expert opinion and advice will be correlated and used to ensure the new CDF will be a state of the art facility designed to provide the contiguous presentation of information required in a modern design environment.
The next CDF will also include the elements to start experimenting the use of CE to later project phases as well as to different interdisciplinary applications such as space instrument and payload design and the investigation of anomolies during testing and operation.