The champagne can stay in the ice for Bank of Bermuda information technology personnel this New Year's Eve.

For along with some of management, computer-savvy staff will be ringing in 2000 from their desks -- at work, in Command and Communication Centres.

"The Centres will be in place for all our offices over New Year's Eve,'' Bank of Bermuda press officer Elizabeth Tee said. "Senior management and some others as well are going to be on hand for that.'' The Bank says its Global Year 2000 Project, an "extensive and rigorous testing of our systems'', was completed last October leaving a clean bill of health for all the bank's applications. But top workers still aren't taking any chances.

"Most executives aren't going to come in unless they're needed,'' explained vice president and Year 2000 project director Carole Gilbert. "We'll have some senior people and mostly IT people physically present, plus the co-cordinators, middle management, and the help desk people.'' Ms Gilbert will be among those in work for the New Year.

Is any special celebration planned? "We'll be busy,'' Ms Gilbert said.

The command centres will be running in each Bank of Bermuda location between December 17 and January 15, 2000. During the most critical period -- December 29 through January 4 -- the Global Command and Communication centre will be on 24-hour call, with period status reports to be posted at the Bank's website, www.bankofbermuda.com.

Bermuda will be the central bunker of 15 Bank of Bermuda locations.

"Contingency planning is part of the final phase of the Bank's overall Year 2000 plan,'' a bank client briefing reads. "Contingency arrangements have been documented for all key deliverables over and above all other internal and external contingency plans that pre-exist or which arise from the Year 2000 project.'' In contrast to the year 2000 dread in other business centres, much of Bermuda will be taking New Year's Eve relatively easy -- those businesses without overseas branches, at least. The Royal Gazette's own computer technician Steve Dunkerley said the newspaper's vulnerable machines would simply be shut down for the night, thereby avoiding any serious problems which might occur when a functioning computer is flummoxed into thinking it's in 1900.

"There's no telling exactly what will happen in different places around the world,'' Mr. Dunkerley said. "After all, New Year's will start at the international date line. Something major might happen in Bermuda, for example, but not on the East Coast of the US, or something might happen on the East Coast but not the West Coast. It's impossible to know. We'll just have to see what happens.'' One Hamilton IT professional told the Royal Gazette that barring any unforeseen emergencies the night of the calendar change would see him in the real hot seat: "I'll probably be watching TV,'' he said.