As 1999 winds down, the City of Weyburn, the South Central Health District, and companies both big and small have plans in place for the turnover of the calendar on January 1, 2000.

After testing and upgrading equipment for all city facilities, the attention in the final weeks of the year have been centred on establishing a Y2K Co-ordination Centre for the city, with a view to act upon any situation that may arise.

The city's Emergency Measures Organization will set up the Y2K centre at the fire hall on Friday, Dec. 31, under emergency planning co-ordinator Denis Pilon, with monitoring to start at 7 a.m. as the new year comes in around the world. New Zealand will be the first to ring in 2000 at 6 a.m. Weyburn time, and the monitoring will continue through the day via news services and the Internet to see if anything arises.

"We will be gathering information from the utility companies, banking industry, and federal and provincial emergency planning agencies in order to develop an overall view of the effect this event may have locally," said Pilon, in a statement detailing the setup of the centre.

"It is our opinion that the turn of the century will be just another day with no major incidents. However, we are prepared for the worst if something should happen, and it is our intention to keep the public informed," he added.

With testing of the city's major computer systems completed since June, efforts since then have centred on contingency planning, which includes this centre, said city commissioner Bob Smith.

Part of the plan includes having emergency power backup generators available if the power goes out, and ensuring that the water and sewer facilities will continue to run along with all emergency services, said Smith.

"We've also been co-ordinating with the health centre, and they've been doing a lot of work on emergency planning. We've done our due diligence in checking our equipment, and we are confident everything will work, and all departments are confident (the new year) will be a non-issue," said the commissioner.

The South Central Health District is also ready for the new year, and like the city will be monitoring the situation on Dec. 31.

"We're 99 per cent completed on our total program, all we're doing now is trying to tie up any loose ends," said Gene Schmidt, chairman of the district's Y2K committee. A meeting was held on Nov. 15 to finalize the details for setting up a communications command centre on Dec. 31 to be located at the Souris Valley Extended Care Centre.

The centre will monitor the rollover to 2000 on international news services, like CNN, as well as via the Internet, and will keep in contact with the city and with other health districts which will be manning similar centres that day.

"Our main concern is on that Friday that our facilities have communications, heat, lighting, water and sewer. As New Year's rolls over west into Europe, there's a lot of premise equipment used there that we also use here. If they start having problems we'll be forewarned," said Schmidt. "Quite frankly, everybody like SaskEnergy and SaskPower have done their work. We don't expect to see any problems; nevertheless, we have to be prepared for whatever happens."

Having Jan. 1 on a weekend will be an additional advantage, as most computer systems won't be running at the time anyway, he added.

The centre will also have a computer fanout phone list for people in the health district who are on standby in the event any kind of problem might arise that day. This list will finalized at a final Y2K committee meeting in mid-December, said Schmidt. The centre likely won't hold news briefings for the media, but will keep the city's centre informed, which will in turn be keeping in contact with the public through the media.

The health district carried out tests of 537 pieces of health care and support equipment, and of that number, five or six minor pieces will be retested before the end of the year.

"Every health district in the province has done the same thing, so everybody can be assured that critical equipment in the hospitals have been tested and are verified," said Schmidt.

The area's major petroleum company, PanCanadian Petroleum, is also geared up for the new year, said area superintendent Darcy Cretin, with the Weyburn Unit undergoing all of the tests and drills as all of the company's units have done in the past 18 months.

All of PanCanadian's critical hardware, software and field process control systems have been tested, repaired as needed and placed back into active use. All further changes to the company's computer equipment have now been frozen until March 15, 2000, in order to maintain their current level of compliance, according to information on the company's web site.

All new acquisitions of property and equipment and all new business relationships are being put under a close review to prevent the importation of Year 2000 issues. PanCanadian officials believe that the vast majority of the systems it controls or manages will continue to function normally after Dec. 31.

A corporate level Year 2000 contingency plan and contingency plans for each business unit, including the Weyburn Unit, have been prepared to address problems if they arise.

These plans are intended to provide guidance and alternatives for unexpected failures of internal systems, as well as external failures (such as electricity, telecommunications and industry transportation systems) that may prevent work in a particular unit from going ahead.

"From an operations perspective, the main concern is making sure, if there are any failures, that you're protecting the public, protecting the employees and the environment," said Cretin.

The contingency plans involve staffing of crisis management teams during critical time periods, implementation of manual or back-up systems, increasing inventory levels, preparing for alternate transportation or operations and business resumption procedures in the event of extended disruptions. Drills, exercises and simulations of each of the contingency plans were completed prior to Oct. 31.

A command centre won't be set up here, as their Goodwater plant is manned on a 24-hour basis already, said Cretin, but there will be one at company headquarters in Calgary which will monitor the year change-over as it occurs around the world.

"If the folks in Calgary see anything they're concerned with, they'll let us know and get the resources out to us if they're needed. We didn't have to do anything specific here because we're already operating 24 hours a day," said Cretin.

PanCanadian estimates that Year 2000 expenditures will total approximately $6 million company-wide over the life of the project. The total cost of the Y2K program to date is $5.6 million.