Motivation

The objective of the EIC Infrastructure Industry Day is to share information about a major new project at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). During the day BNL will give overviews and highlights of the project and the various subcontracting opportunities including Architectural/Engineering design, construction management, civil and site construction, commissioning and various other services that will be required to successfully accomplish the design and construction of the conventional facilities for the Electron-Ion Collider.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has granted Critical Decision 1 (CD-1) for the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a one-of-a-kind nuclear physics research facility to be built at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. This announcement—following DOE’s approval of “mission need” (known as CD-0) in December 2019—marks the completion of the project’s definition phase and its conceptual design. Approval of CD-1 provides the authorization to begin the project execution phase and allows project engineering and design funds to be used.

The EIC will be a 2.4-mile-circumference particle collider, the first of its kind in the world. It will steer beams of high-energy polarized electrons into collisions with polarized protons and atomic nuclei to produce precision 3-D snapshots of those particles’ internal structure. Experiments at the EIC will help scientists unlock the secrets of the strongest force in nature and explore how tiny particles called quarks and gluons build up the mass, spin, and other properties of all visible matter.

The comprehensive facility will include high and medium voltage power distribution, an estimated 120,000 square feet of new building construction to house state-of-the art accelerator systems components, and a large distributed cooling water system featuring high resistivity process water and several miles of distribution piping. Additionally, the new concrete linear accelerator tunnel will require careful earthwork stabilization to tie into the existing collider tunnel structure. In order to successfully design and execute this work, the services of Architectural/Engineering firms will be required to work with the EIC Infrastructure Division to develop and mature the current conceptual design, confirm and integrate requirements with the existing facility, create work packages for construction and support construction efforts. Significant opportunities are expected to be available for construction/contracting firms with the required capability to partner with the project to deliver the scope within the timeframe and budgets allotted.

The design for the EIC includes building a new electron storage ring and electron accelerator components that will operate seamlessly with existing infrastructure currently providing beams for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven Lab. RHIC, a DOE Office of Science user facility, has been serving nuclear physicists since it began operations in 2000. Construction of the EIC is expected to begin in 2024, with the facility beginning operations early in the next decade.