Trouble lies ahead

The year 2000 problem represents a critical business risk with well documented problems evident already and warnings of worse to come.

An IMO/US Coast Guard report on the year 2000 threat in the maritime/ports sector, submitted to the United Nations in December last year states: “There is general acceptance throughout the industry that companies need to focus on contingency planning, either because it is too late to fix all of their technology, or to prepare for some level of inevitable system failure.”

There is now overwhelming evidence that disruption in shipping will occur, although it is impossible to forecast how severe or precisely what form it will take. Disruptions in sea transport will fall into three main categories:

Technical – caused directly by failures of equipment and systems, which could for example cause ports to close or slow their activities, or send ships off course;

Business – caused by, for example, failures in financial institutions or international communications which prevents letters of credit being received to allow ships to leave port;

Behavioural – where ports or ships agree to change their normal operating patterns as a precautionary measure. The joint IMO/USCG report reveals that a number of international trading companies are considering restricting operations by either keeping ships at sea or kept alongside for 24 hours.

Even in the hugely unlikely event of there being no disruption caused by technical failures, the shipping industry must plan for such disruption.