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British Petroleum acknowledges that it is facing problems. But we are assured that the universally promised deadline of 31 Dec. 98 will be met by BP, too.
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We have adopted the following action plan, and our timetable is for Business-critical tasks to be completed by 31st December 1998:
. . . .BP has a long-established investment in global package software, such as our core "downstream" business package. We are planning world-wide roll-out of a fully year 2000-compliant release in good time for the Millennium. In parallel, we are conducting site-level analysis of local systems in order to isolate commercial and other subsystems which must be upgraded.
The nature of our business is such that we rely on engineering process control systems for the monitoring and control of our refineries, distribution systems and manufacturing and processing plants. These are reliable failsafe systems in which we have great confidence, and we are working closely with the manufacturers on assurance processes.
We are also investigating business-critical infrastructure areas such as telecoms.
Our three priorities in conducting this work are:
Health, Safety and Environmental risk. This chiefly relates to the systems controlling our production processes. None of our plant must by reason of date changes endanger personal safety, lose the full uninterrupted operation of safety systems or suffer oil/product losses or spillage. Equally, we want to avoid false alarms on plant safety systems.
Continuity of Operations. We must secure the continued operation of our production, distribution and manufacturing processes and of our banking, billing, credit control and accounting operations.
Customer Satisfaction. We want to ensure continuing customer satisfaction by eliminating potential problems such as reminders for bills which have already been settled, failures on telephone-based systems and the like.
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