How can you avoid the risk of accidents or other dangerous incidents arising from the millennium bug when your business starts up next month?
If software programs in your machinery, plant or equipment cannot recognise 00 for the year 2000 and produce incorrect results - whether obvious or hidden - machinery could shut down or operators be deceived by incorrect information, resulting in risks of injury to workers, customers or the public.
Britain's Health and Safety Executive has produced a useful 12-page leaflet The morning after the Millennium before: a strategy for restarting operations safely if you've been bitten by the Millennium Bug.
It warns the problem may not be restricted to the roll-over from 1999 to 2000. Other dates to plan for include the roll-over from February 28th to 29th and December 30th to 31st, 2000. Next year is a leap year but not all software programs might reflect this, so problems could arise on February 29th or on December 31st, the 366th day of the year.
Employers need to consider the likelihood of equipment being affected and the possibility that "much, if not all, of your computer-controlled equipment may be affected at the same time", says the HSE.
Where risks to health and safety are high, additional equipment may need to be installed to ensure people's safety. Employers need to know which items of equipment are not working properly, what effect the problem will have on each item of equipment and whether or not equipment can be operated safely. Safety-related systems need special attention to avoid being degraded by the Y2K bug, warns the executive.
The HSE advises employers to consider separate trial run operation of different items of equipment at low volume or low speed to test correct operation and positioning additional employees around equipment, for instance at remote control stations or emergency stop controls.
If a Y2K fault occurs, employers in the Republic as in Britain are obliged by law to place the equipment in a safe state, for instance, under manual control. But in such cases, there must be adequate management and supervision to ensure continued safe operation. "Note that operating for extended periods under these conditions places great strain on operators, supervisors and managers and is therefore not recommended," says the HSE.
Additional risks posed by the roll-over include "an overload on the telephone service [which] could result in problems in contacting the emergency services should the need arise"; scarcity of technical support and scarcity of supplies, warns the executive. - The HSE's checklist (abbreviated):
1. Ensure that everyone who operates equipment is sufficiently familiar with it to recognise any unusual operation.
2. Ensure operators know how to put the system into a safe state if any abnormal operation is detected.
3. Ensure equipment can be shut down safely on the loss of electricity and all other services if they fail simultaneously.
4. Check whether the emergency stop buttons operate independently of any computer-controlled system.
5. Test all hard-wired back-up, or protection, systems.
6. Ensure on-site personnel are competent to shut down equipment in the event of a fault they haven't met before.
8. Authorise selected people to shut down equipment if they consider that continued operation may be unsafe.
9. Check that if equipment is shut down it will continue to be safe without the need for external services.
10. Decide how long you will observe systems or equipment following start-up to ensure its safety.
The Health and Safety Executive website: http://www.open.gov.uk/ hse/hsehome.htm
Joe Armstrong can be contacted at jmarms@irish-times.ie
