Holly McInroy wins the BCI Americas Award for Continuity and Resilience Professional Private Sector 2021
On April 29, 2021 Holly McInroy, CBCP, CEM, CRM, BSc. Env, was announced as the winner of the BCI Americas Award for Continuity and Resilience Professional Private Sector 2021.
In this category, the BCI judges were looking for evidence on how the individual has used creative and original approaches within their employing organization to improve overall resilience. All requirements for application and what the judges were looking for can be found here.
Holly’s nomination submission was based on her leadership role within BGIS Global Integrated Solutions and focused on Holly’s:
- Management of a North American program while promoting continuous improvement; and
- Response and recovery to a series of events during an unprecedented year
BGIS Global Integrated Solutions is a leading, technically led real estate management services company. Offering Facility Management Services, Real Estate Management Services, Technical Services, Project Delivery Services, Professional & Sustainability Services, Workplace Solutions, Critical Environments & Data Centers to produce real results for businesses. Providing services to a diverse client portfolio, spanning many industries. BGIS enables customers to see change as opportunities to embrace doing things differently.
As the North America, Manager, Business Continuity Emergency Response at BGIS Global Integrated Solutions, Holly is responsible for the regular program requirements including planning and exercising Client Account Business Continuity Plans (>50), Corporate Business Continuity Plans (~20), and Emergency Response Plans (~30), and delivering the governance, regional regulations, and client requirements. She is responsible for the implementation and roll out of program enhancements (e.g. Program Standards, Metrics, Risk Assessments and Corporate Business Impact Analysis, Third-Party Questionnaires and Processes) and the maintenance of an ISO 22301:2012 certification (with no findings, a week after the pandemic was declared and simultaneously responding to two other events). Holly also obtained the latest release of ISO 22301:2019 and developed a plan to ensure alignment and recertification within the next two years and expansion of scope of certification into the US.
Holly is also responsible for response and recovery activities, acting as the Crisis Management Team Chair (Incident Commander). In 2020, she monitored, was engaged, and managed the response to over 75 events, including the Australian Wildfires, St. John’s Newfoundland State of Emergency (snowmageddon), a communication outage caused by landslides in British Columbia, flash flooding in Fort Vermillion, and leading the global COVID-19 response, to name a few.
During COVID-19 Holly worked alongside the Health, Safety and Environment team to monitor the progression of COVID-19, initiate the Infectious Disease Team (IDT), and support the preparation, mitigation, activation and response of the Infectious Disease Plan. Holly supported the administrative and logistical needs related to COVID-19 including but not limited to scheduling of meetings, tracking of meeting minutes, communications, action items, maintaining metrics, development and maintenance of the organizations internal COVID-19 website, gathering information and documenting situation reports and sharing the responsibility of leading global Crisis Management Team (CMT) meetings. In addition, Holly was tasked with working with the members of the Health, Safety and Environment team to create and maintain a COVID-19 specific Infectious Disease Plan and the procedures and materials to support the plan. Due to Holly’s engagement and support, the organization has been able to provide support to client accounts throughout the pandemic, drive efficient and effective response and re-occupancy activities, reinforced the importance of continued service delivery and ensured support for team members mental wellness and infection containment protocols.
Holly’s response to winning the award was “Complete surprise. I did not expect to win! I was honored to be named as a finalist. I want to recognize the support I’ve had from past and present mentors, team members. Without their guidance, engagement, subject matter expertise, I wouldn’t be where I am today. An enormous thank you to the judges who put in their time to read all the nominations and believed in my accomplishments enough to recognize me as the winner. In addition, a sincere congratulations to everyone who was nominated or a finalist. Together we grow this profession, and keep people, communities and businesses safe. I encourage everyone to challenge themselves, collaborate with others and push the boundaries.”
