From computers and fuel supplies to emergency services and snow plowing, systems at CU-Boulder are being tested and checked to ensure they can cope with anything the so-called Millennium Bug can throw at them.
"Guarded optimism" is the key phrase among the many people contributing to the Y2K contingency plan as the university prepares itself for any possible problems.
And readiness around the CU campus is only half the picture: the university is also including in its plans any ways in which it might be able to come to the assistance of Boulder city and county governments if needed.
The whole exercise, like thousands of similar ones around the country, has been prompted by concerns about what may happen when the world聮s clocks tick over to the year 2000 at midnight on Dec. 31.
Because computers have mostly been programmed to read years just by the last two digits, for example 98 and 99, when 00 appears some people predict systems will crash as computers "think" it聮s 1900, or a wrong instruction.
However, Tom Carney, emergency management coordinator from the university聮s Department of Public Safety, environmental health and safety division, says overall he remains "fairly optimistic."
He believes there has been enough work done nationally and internationally to avoid most problems, while at the university level planners are gaining a good idea of which systems and programs are Y2K compliant and which still need some work.
Carney says one big advantage CU has is that the university will not be in session on Jan. 1, 2000. If any glitches do happen, the university will have until Jan. 10, when spring semester classes start, to sort things out.
Looking at some of the key services, Carney says the campus depends on the general Boulder water supply, but since it is mostly gravity-fed, any power failure which affected pumping would have little impact.
Joe Hanlon, operations supervisor with Facilities Management, says after testing and contacting manufacturers, everything is looking good for the campus power supply.
The university聮s primary fuel source is natural gas but if anything interrupted supply, generators can be switched to diesel and there is plenty of that fuel stockpiled.
Carney says Boulder will continue supplying fire and ambulance services while the campus police and emergency service would carry on operations as normal.
He sees no problems with phone services, the usual campus staff would be plowing snow if it snows, and if necessary the university would offer a bus and snow plow to help emergency personnel in the wider community get to their posts.
Still with an eye to the wider community, the university is prepared to provide shelter if for some reason people have to leave their homes. Carney says there would be room on campus for 10,000 using minimal space each for a short time or for 5,000 accommodated more comfortably over a longer period.
As for the university computers, Y2K coordinator and Information Technology policy and management analyst Deborah Keyek-Franssen is confident everything that needs to be done will be done by the end of this year.
She says one quarter of computers have undergone complete remediation and testing already, and that figure will rise to between 30 percent and 40 percent in the next few weeks.
Keyek-Franssen is sure mission-critical systems will be fine. She says the university will not go down and neither will any departments, though a few older computers still may have problems when the date changes.