At the end of May Niall Kinloch and myself were invited to the prestigious CIR Business Continuity Awards to present an award for the Business Continuity Management Planning Software of the Year on behalf of Scottish Continuity. On its own this was a fantastic honour and a priviledge (not to mention a great opportunity to spread the word about what Scottish Continuity does!) This year the awards had a number of Scottish individuals nominated for awards:

Business Continuity Manager of the Year
Gillies Crichton, head of assurance, BAA Glasgow Airport

Public Sector Continuity Manager of the Year
Mary-Ellen Lang, council business continuity officer, City of Edinburgh Council

Business Continuity Team of the Year
Standard Life

Student of the Year
Nikola Brown

An absolutely fantastic achievement to be nominated, but special mention must go to Mary-Ellen Lang who took home the Public Sector Continuity Manager of the Year. Now most of will know Mary-Ellen not only as a Board Member of Scottish Continuity, but also as the person who runs the extremely successful Edinburgh Resilience Week. At the awards ceremony I managed to speak to one of the judges who informed me about Mary-Ellen's nomination was not only what she had managed to achieve over the course of the last year but also the fact the she had done it on a shoe-string, great work Mary-Ellen, good to see you getting the recognition everyone who works with you here knows you deserve!

The picture shows Mary-Ellen flanked by Australian comedian Adam Hills and one of the judges from the panel, Colin Lowe (Head of Business Continuity at Bupa Healthcare)

For information the prize that was being presented by Scottish Continuity was:

Business Continuity Management Planning Software of the Year and it was won by ClearView Continuity (which was somewhat of a relief to myself, as this is the company that was chosen for our BCM Planning Software after an extremely long tender process!) For information, Scottish Continuity had no say in who picked up the prize, as with all prizes this was determined by a panel of independant judges!

All in all it was a top night and watch this space for next year when following a long discussion with Niall we feel that there is a category that would perfectly fit with what Scottish Continuity do in Scotland.