BCI Global Awards 2025 Winner Spotlight: University of Canterbury
The BCI is pleased to recognise the winner of the Collaboration in Resilience award 2025: The University of Canterbury. This award recognises an organisation that has demonstrated outstanding cross-disciplinary teamwork to strengthen continuity and embed resilience, and that collaboration is a critical enabler in developing organizational resilience.
The University took inspiration from the BCI’s Good Practice Guidelines, specifically the section ‘Embedding BCM into the organization’s culture,’ to break silos, align cross-functional efforts, and build shared ownership of emergency planning and business continuity.
They started from the viewpoint that collaborative resilience is not a one-off exercise but a culture of “how we work together.” For example, how earthquake preparedness is viewed as a collaborative initiative across multiple service units – risk, equity and inclusion, and student associations. By creating forums for early engagement and linking actions to values, the university developed integrated activities and a community of practice that drives resilience forward, making collaboration not just a tool but the essential infrastructure that enables coordinated response, continuity, and long-term adaptive capacity.
In practice, this meant that during 2024, six of the University’s disciplines collaborated to deliver a multi-layered, community-led adaptation of New Zealand’s ShakeOut earthquake drill. This included the Equity & Student Wellbeing Team, to ensure accessibility and engagement for all students, the Emergency Management & Business Continuity Manager who coordinates planning and integration of the UC’s Business Continuity Management System, the Health & Safety Team to align the drill with workplace safety compliance and hazard reduction, the University of Canterbury Students’ Association (UCSA), which bought authenticity and peer-to-peer credibility to student messaging, the People, Culture & Campus Unit, to create a supportive, safe, inclusive, and high-performing environment for staff and students through human resources, staff development, and wellbeing, and the Design Services team, which developed visually engaging communications tailored to UC’s diverse community.
The judges commented: ‘The University really took something from the GPG (something on paper) and not only brought it to life but put it into daily practice. This is an excellent example of an organisation taking a known adverse environment and leaning into how to better prepare themselves and manage when events occur. This shows how successful collaboration between groups can move an idea not only forward, but into centre stage, and serves as a world class example of how to create a well thought out and engaging programme for dealing with disruptions.’
Submissions for the BCI Regional Awards 2026 close 16 April, we strongly encourage all applicants to submit their applications well in advance of the deadline in order for us to review and feedback, if needed.
Join us for BCI World Hybrid 2026 at the Convene Sancroft, St. Paul's, London, on 10-11 November 2026! Register your interest now to secure a super early bird discount for both in-person and virtual attendance.
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