Those of you who attended the recent Business Continuity Awards organised by CIR and supported by the Institute and The Corporation of London, will know what an excellent evening it is, with over 400 Business Continuity professionals and their guests packed into The Ballroom at The Grosvenor House Hotel with presentations and entertainment from the peerless Rory Bremner.

The Awards Ceremony provided the ideal platform for reflecting on the changed perception of our profession. In under than two decades, since I started in Business Continuity, our subject has moved from a set of ideas held by a few individuals to a serious business discipline. It is now raises concerns pertinent to business, governments and regulators worldwide, and is respected in academic circles.

I am often asked about how the BCI has changed in the 10 years of its existence. Although it has grown, one fundamental aspect is constant. That factor is the professionalism, commitment and belief of its members. Although most of us have commercial interests in BCM, almost all leading BCM practitioners really do believe in the importance of what they are doing and have a code of ethics stronger than in most comparable industries. The amount of unpaid time many BCI people spend on supporting industry working groups, education programmes and community activities is remarkable. This commitment seems to me to be consistent throughout the BCI membership worldwide.

Our members are not only leaders in their field, they also represent a wealth of knowledge and opinion and in many cases a strong desire to test than opinion through discussion. Within the BCI we have the basis for a very high-level informed debate both about the way forward for the BCM industry and also how the BCI can best support that direction. The BCI Board are very eager to obtain the views and opinions of as wide a group of members as possible.

I see the BCI as a broad church of opinion, not a closed society with a restricted view of its profession. I like to look at how we can integrate the expertise of like-minded people into our organisation rather than isolate ourselves. The need to share best practice and ideas with emergency planners, risk managers and security professionals is key to our future success.

A few years ago in trying to explain the difference between Business Continuity and Emergency Planning I came up with an ill thought out answer. If you have a train crash, the Emergency Planner asks about casualties and clearing the track, the Business Continuity Planner asks about alternative routings.

This answer came back to challenge me as I heard the news of the bombs in Madrid. Despite the worst level of carnage ever in peacetime Europe, the trains continued to run largely without interruption to schedules through Madrid’s Atoche station on 9 of the 11 lines.

To decision to continue running was taken at local security level where clear authority and responsibilities were fully delegated, understood and accepted by politicians. I suspect without knowing it, they had a Business Continuity Plan in place that linked Emergency Response with Security and Operational Resilience. Perhaps my original answer was not so crass after all.

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