These were designed to maintain the integrity of the project at the end of the EDA so as to prepare for joint construction and operation. A Project Board coordinated the activities of the Participant Teams - one for each negotiating Party - plus an International Team located at the ITER EDA Joint Work Sites.

The work of the Participant and International Teams during the CTA involved preparation for an efficient start of construction, including

• design adaptations to potential sites and their regulatory environment, and formal review and modification to ensure design completeness;
• preparation of licensing applications by closer dialogue with potential host regulators;
• exploitation of physics R&D to take advantage of the latest experimental results, and incorporation of or planning for manufacturing R&D;
• technical specification for procurements which needed to be launched as soon as possible, i.e.
  • magnet conductors
  • toroidal field coils
  • the main magnet structure
  • poloidal field coils
  • vacuum vessel
  • site excavations (especially tunnels)
  • tokamak building
  • cryogenic buildings (used for PF coil manufacture)
  • large piping (to be installed during building erection)
• checking technical definition of interfaces between systems, in particular those with machine assembly, maintenance, and computer control;
• defining the skeleton of remaining procurement documents, and establishing the schedule and resources needed to complete them;

The CTA terminated in December 2002, the above work being continued under ITER Transitional Arrangements.