Rocky Moutain News

The former director of Y2K compliance at Public Service Company of Colorado says the state's largest utility might not have gone far enough in preparing for 2000.

Will James, a member of the Governor's Task Force on Year 2000 Readiness, said he is concerned the utility's aging power plants have not been as carefully prepped for the transition to 2000 as they should have been because the utility didn't want to spend extra money to do the work James thought was necessary.

James also blames the state for failing to fund an independent Y2K audit and verification program for Colorado's utilities. "Without a state-sponsored independent audit and detailed examination of the readiness of these organizations," James wrote in a report to the task force last month, "a guarantee of Y2K readiness in the energy sector cannot be made to the citizens of Colorado at this time."

But Public Service, the governor's task force and the Colorado Utilities Commission have said the utility is well-prepared for Y2K. Public Service said it has spent nearly three years and $25 million on its Y2K compliance program. Recently it hired an independent audit firm to review its Y2K plans and that firm gave the utility high marks.

"I may be all wet on this," said James, who worked for Public Service from 1995 to 1999. He left the utility voluntarily, in part because he thought it wasn't going far enough to address Y2K issues. The utility agrees that James left voluntarily, but disagrees with his assessment of Public Service's Y2K readiness plans.

"Everything may be just fine Dec. 31," James said. "But if things do go wrong, I think people should know what happened. We (the governor's task force) tried to do the right thing for the families and businesses of Colorado. But what started out as an 'all-for-one' type of approach has ended as an every man and industry for himself situation."

This is a small snippet from a long article about the State of Colorado's preparedness...and this is one of only 50. It

-- Nom (nom@de.plume), December 06, 1999

Answers

I saw Will James at a y2k conference in 1998. At that conference, he explained how he had gone to the governer's office to request assistance on coordination in the remediation effort for all CO utilities. This guy is upstanding and if he quit because of an every one for himself outcome on what started out to be a group effort, I suggest all Coloradans take heed.

-- OR (orwelliator@biosys.net), December 06, 1999.

What a brave guy.

Hey, if he's lying, why aren't they suing him? Could it be that their legal department aren't entirely convinced that their PR guys are better qualified to judge the situation? :)

But really... :(

-- Colin MacDonald (roborogerborg@yahoo.com), December 07, 1999.

Trust me, Colin, he isn't lying.

He saw the implications back in 1996-97 and took the initiative by going to the governors office himself. For that effort, he was appointed state 'head' y2k coordinator while still a VP for the Public Service Company of Colorado. When I saw him at the y2k public meeting he was the only speaker who did not try to assuage the audience with false statements. He said they were working on it. The rest of the speakers were rather condescending in their comments about their companies state of compliance/readiness.

-- OR (orwelliator@biosys.net), December 07, 1999.

Another important snip from the article (I wish I knew how to bold text on this board):

"But James, who now runs his own Y2K consulting firm, is concerned because not all systems in the plants are capable of running in "future time." Although testing has been done on individual parts of power plants and those parts are now Y2K compliant, James said more system-wide testing is needed.

If problems occur, they could be compounded because Public Service has downsized and doesn't have enough skilled workers to cope with a crisis, James said."

And another:

""What Will is saying is that it would have been nice if we could have done those things," Ray said. "It would be nice if we could run every piece of equipment in the power plants in (future time), but cost-wise it is prohibitive. And from a necessity standpoint, it is not necessary."

Ray said the utility has worked hard to identify all the critical systems and to test them for Y2K readiness. Doing the kind of inventory and testing program James advocated easily could have cost several million dollars more.

"No, we probably haven't found every embedded chip," Ray said. "But that's why we will have 300 extra people in the field that night. If we find something that we missed, we will be able to run it manually. ... We've never set a 100 percent guarantee that everything will be fine. But we're 99.9 percent of the way there.""

Hmmmmm, 99.9%, huh?

I'll bet they'll be wishing they had spent the extra time and money.

What is the price to pay for people freezing int their homes?

-- Duke 1983 (Duke1983@AOL.com), December 07, 1999.

Another important thing to note about the artice are the numerous contradictions between Will James and the statements of Public Service Co. (courtesy of their attorneys, no doubt). Remember, this guy was a VP at this utility company up until some time this year and is a sitting co-chairman of the Colorado y2k taskforce.

1. James states PSC will not have enough people for a potential crisis due to downsizing. PSC says they will "have 300 extra people in the field that night". Interesting, huh?

2. James states they have not undergone an independent audit as per a report dated November 11, 99. PSC states that it *recently* hired an independent audit firm. 30 days, h*ll make it 60 days, to do an audit is laughable, but you note the article does NOT state than an audit is being done on the remediation, but on the PLANS. What value is that? Later in the article it is reiterated about an independent audit firm being hired after PSC was not audited by the DOE. It conveniently leaves out the part about the audit firm being hired less than 2 months prior to rollover and what the audit firm was really auditing.

3. James states that he quit in part because he did not feel the utility was doing enough to address y2k issues. (Probably didn't want the stench of deceipt and failure on his hands) The company doesn't agree (well of course they don't agree. **Duh**)

Lastly, James offered no less than 3 warnings in this one article. He can safely say "I tried to tell you" in the aftermath. Sounds like a guy with a conscience to me. There are far too few of them out there.

-- OR (orwelliator@biosys.net), December 07, 1999.