MBORC FORCE MAJEURE

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MBORC / FORCE MAJEURE
Matters Beyond Our Reasonable Control
Tony Smith, Malcolm Bush
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MBORC

• MBORC is a contractual provision
• The cause of the incident is beyond our
  reasonable control and
• The fix to remedy within contractual timescales
  is also beyond our reasonable control.

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Common Examples of MBORC

• Damage to the Network by Third Parties
• Cable theft
• Road Traffic Damage

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MBORC Programme

• Sept 08
• New governance and process single solution
• Nov 08
• XML Schema issued (R1000)
• Trial of new internal MBORC system Global
  Communications tool
• Dec 08
• Deployment of Global Communications Tool
• Jan/Feb 09
• KCID delivery for WLR3/SMPF/MPF
• TBC - 09
• Global Comms for all Major Network Outages
• Fibre products MBORC Provision

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MBORC Improvements (Release 1000)

• Global messaging - real time
• Notification on job by job basis
• National process
• Common approach across all products
• Auditable Improvements ie single solution

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MBORC Communication Process
Authorising Manager
Incident
Engineer
Global Message All CPs
RSS
Desktop Alert
Openreach Control
Web
Email
MBORC system
Openreach.co.uk
Text
Individual CPs
Phase 1 Fault tracker WLR2, WLR3, MPF, SMPF
Phase 2 KCID WLR3, MPF, SMPF
Group Fault reports
EMP
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What you will see

• 3 Information Types
• New, Update, Closed
• Location/ Address
• Post Code
• MBORC Description type/ affected plant
• Date and Time MBORC Identified
• Expected Clear Date
• Notes -

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Governance

• See for example WLR3 contract Issue 7 - Clause
  14.1
• If either party is unable to do or delayed in
  doing what it has agreed under this Contract
  because of Force Majeure then the party affected
  shall have no liability to the other for that
  delay or failure to perform.
• Legal Advisers and Risk and Quality Managers in
  Openreach Legal Risk and Commercial team (LRC)
  have devised internal governance to control the
  application of Force Majeure / MBORC
• We recognise that our application of Force
  Majeure must be, above all, legally robust

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Governance

• INCIDENT / CAUSE TYPES
• 1. Damage - negligent ( JCB in the street,
  building refurb. at end-user premises )
• - criminal ( theft of live copper, cable cuts
  to facilitate other criminal activities )
• - RTA ( road traffic accidents ) where
  poles/cabinets are damaged destroyed by
  vehicles leaving the road
• Over 95 of all relevant incidents are of this
  type.

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Governance

• 2. Weather-related
• - flooding, storms, lightning
• 3. Emergency / crisis situations
• - fuel shortages, foot mouth, pandemics,
  terrorism
• 
  
  
  

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Governance

• We recognise that if we fail to get this right we
  risk
• losing your trust
• wasting our time and yours in investigating and
  possibly unwinding specific case-by-case
  applications of MBORC
• Industry, legal and regulatory interventions

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Governance

• We have developed a two-part governance process,
  dependant on the type of incident
• For Type 1 incidents negligent, criminal and
  RTA damage
• Field staff or Workflow and Allocation (WFA)
  identify potential incidents
• WFA Managers consider, investigate as necessary
  and decide on applicability of MBORC
• LRC Risk and Quality team see and audit all
  declarations and report to Legal Advisers and
  SPM on trends as well as getting advice on any
  incident
• LRC feed back to Ops teams
• LRC has put in place a governance document to
  which Ops must adhere. This is a set of dos
  and donts, e.g. no MBORC for damage by BT own
  contractors, no excuse for extended repair times
  when MBORC applied.

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Governance

• All other incident types
• - Ops teams will raise possible incidents with
  Legal Advisers
• - Legal will ask for and gather evidence, eg
  fault picture, other operational impacts,
  mitigation measures eg increased use of
  contractors, direct labour shrinkage
• - Legal advice will be given to Openreach Senior
  Management Team for decision
• We will develop internal governance on non-Type 1
  incidents.