Designing an ambitious facility such WST is a demanding task. We have brought together a large consortium of 23 research institutes or universities spread over 10 different countries. In addition to having significant experience in running spectroscopic surveys, the whole consortium has an impressive record in instrumentation and telescope projects. Together we have or are studying and building 9 optical telescope, 8 MOS and 10 IFS.The image on the right shows the distribution of participant’s institutes (dark blue) and science

team countries (light blue) in Europe and Australia.