CERN Accelerating science

The LHC and its Injectors were stopped in February 2013, in order to maintain, consolidate and upgrade the different equipment of the accelerator chain, with the goal of achieving LHC operation at the design energy of 14 TeV in the centre-of-mass. Prior to the start of this First Long Shutdown (LS1), a major effort of preparation was performed in order to optimize the schedule and the use of resources across the different machines, with the aim of resuming LHC physics in early 2015. The rest of the CERN complex will restart beam operation in the second half of 2014. This paper presents the schedule of the LS1, describes the organizational set-up for the coordination of the works, the main activities, the different main milestones, which have been achieved so far, and the decisions taken in order to mitigate the issues encountered.