The millennium bug
The millennium bug
Keywords Building management, Computers,Disaster prevention
"What is the impact of the microchip on the brick lined sewer?" a colleague who has responsibility for facilities and project management in a number of schools, many built in the 1960s, is wrestling with this problem. We know that well over 90 per cent of small and middle-sized buildings, which will be in use in 2020, have already been built. What are the interfaces between twenty-first century computer model solutions, nineteenth-century infrastructure and twentieth-century lowest tender build?
The microchips in controls equipment and the building management system have been one of the commercial growth phenomena of the 1980s. In the 1990s we have suffered refurbishment of controls projects which nearly, but not quite, work.
The cardinal rule of all computerised control systems is:
- 1.
commission the pipe duct and electrical systems on their own; and
- 2.
after commissioning of the systems, then commission the computerised system.
In a refurbishment project where a control system is being replaced, the remainder of the system should first be proved to work. A detailed analysis should be carried out of the impact on the existing system of the new controls.
There is evidence that these rules have not been followed in a significant number of installations. Controls have been changed and the sequence of operation of valves, pumps and heat emitters changed to fit into the theory of how it might work without checking thoroughly the real impact of the modifications.
This can be a minefield for the surveyor. The normal let out clause in the surveyor's report "Get a services engineer to look at it" all too often does not result in the appointment of a competent services engineer, with the necessary old-fashioned skills in heating and ventilating and with knowledge of systems in old buildings. The surveyor can sign off the building with too shallow a review.
The millennium bug sits waiting to pounce. Two recent battle stories. An establishment occupying several hundred square feet of space obtained a clean bill of health for all its management, financial, ordering and administration systems within the company but failed their audit on a microchip in the lift controls. A small company was pressed by its bank to declare that it had carried out a full millennium survey. When they did this, they found that the sprinkler system would have failed on 1 January 2000. There are many other stories in building services.
It is nearly too late to have the systems checked through. Have all building surveyors checked their own systems, in their own buildings? Have all building surveyors advised their clients of the risks? Have all building surveyors ensured that they can advise their clients with true competence on the impact of the millennium bug? Will the professional indemnity insurance of the building surveyor provide cover for buildings on which they have advised and which fail because of a hidden microchip which no one believed would fail, but did?
We will all know the answers to these questions in a few months time!
Richard Rooley
