Business opportunities in focus when 1.5 billion SEK SHiP project leader visits Sweden

”SHIP, Search for Hidden Particles, is CERN's new mega-project. It has a construction budget of 1.5 billion Swedish kronor, making it the most expensive project approved at CERN since the LHC Large Hadron Collider. For me, this is a great example of how we at Big Science Sweden can work proactively to ensure that Swedish companies and research groups get to be a part of the design and development phase in projects like SHiP, and not only bidding for procurements after the design has been set.”

So, where are we on the timeline?

”Construction will begin in two years. Currently, CERN is looking for new industrial and academic partners to develop and build this fantastic experiment. This was the perfect timing for SHIP's project leader, Richard Jacobsson, to visit Uppsala to inform about the project and give an overview of the many procurements that will soon be initiated.”

Richard Jacobson also joined you on several visits to companies, the FREIA laboratory at Uppsala University and the Swedish Research Council, Sweden’s largest governmental research funding body, to brief them about the SHiP projects and the opportunities they pose to Swedish companies and research organisations. I know it was intense, but what was the major impression you got these three days?

”The level of discussions between the representatives of the companies and Richard Jacobsson. To me, it was obvious that the companies and laboratories we visited had the kind of competence that CERN is looking for. And also that they have the curiosity required to work on development projects like SHiP. It's always fun to be a part of when people with challenges – like the ones Richard Jacobsson has in the SHiP project - get to meet people who present solutions that no one has thought of before. And I hope that, as a result of this, SHiP and Swedish companies can help raise the level of competence in the project and make it an even better experiment. In the end, the science and the results from the experiment is why Sweden is a part of research facilities such as CERN.”

When can we start hoping for results?

”The goal is to start building the facility in two years, that is, in 2027, and to start producing data before CERN's two-year accelerator shutdown in 2034-2035.”