Millennium panic

Citation

(1998), "Millennium panic", Facilities, Vol. 16 No. 5/6. https://doi.org/10.1108/f.1998.06916eab.003

Millennium panic

Millennium panic

Keyword Computer disaster

If every qualified building services engineer in the industry begins work now on examining and preparing plant and equipment in readiness for the new millennium, little more than half of the country's installations will be totally prepared for the fateful New Year's Day.

This is the stark warning from Stuart Rose, Managing Director of FHP Management Services, who is already witnessing panic among building owners and users concerned at the possible impact of the Year 2000 on their building services plant and equipment. He suggests that national publicity on the fact that the New Year is also a leap year has given added fears to building operators who are now approaching his company in substantial numbers seeking information on the requirements of their systems.

But Stuart Rose says: "There is clearly going to be a resource problem ­ it is becoming apparent even now. There is going to be a tremendous strain on those carrying out the work and this is going to have a knock-on effect."

He said that in addition to building services consultants, it would be possible for facilities management companies, some IT companies, and also equipment manufacturers, to inspect equipment, make recommendations and oversee remedial works, but even this pool of resources would be insufficient to meet the nation's requirements and only 50 per cent of the work would be completed.

He also pointed out the cost of preparing plant for the millennium. A substantial proportion of the estimated £52 billion required to make the nation compliant would be spent on building services plant and equipment, and he added: "This means companies must not only be commissioning their millennium audits now, they must be making financial provision for implementation of the results of those audits."

He said that FHP had already developed a strategy for the inspection of buildings to establish the equipment likely to cause the greatest problems, test all systems to ascertain compliance and prepare risk analyses on plant where confidence in the equipment cannot be easily assessed.

Mr Rose added: "Investigations have to be made with the manufacturers wherever a microprocessor is involved, but we are receiving varying degrees of confidence that equipment can cope."

He went on to point out the additional uncertainty associated with linked systems such as fire, security and building management systems and suggested that it might be prudent to disconnect them, for even if it led to additional costs the prospect of the combination causing problems would be eliminated.

And on the subject of embedded chips, he said that even though date and time were not being used in equipment fitted with microchips failure of the chip could be extremely relevant on the arrival of the new millennium.

Stuart Rose concluded: "Without wishing to be a scaremonger, I do feel that, unless building operators have prepared their full programme of testing by the Spring, they are unlikely to comply by the Year 2000."

For further information please contact: Stuart Rose. Tel: +44 (0)171 631 0119; Fax: +44 (0)171 580 4472.