Belinda Augustyn

I am an experienced Business Continuity Management (BCM) and resilience practitioner.  Over time I have established myself as a subject matter expert, assisting small organisations, medium enterprises and large corporates to respond to disruptions and achieve operational resilience.

For the past decade my career focus has been on establishing, maintaining and improving  BCM programmes for organisations, locally and internationally.

Apart from my highest academic qualification (M Com Economics) I am a certified ISO22301 Lead Implementer and a member of the London based Business Continuity Institute (MBCI).  I am proficient in all aspects of business continuity.

As a BCM subject matter expert and resilience practitioner, I am open to networking, collaborating and discussing opportunities where I can contribute and add value relating to:

  • Respond effectively and efficiently to business disruptions and disasters
  • Recover the value creating activities of the organisation to predefined levels
  • Resilient through an agile and robust approach to operational uncertainties and likely risk events.

Skills

My skills, knowledge and experience cover the following fundaments which should form part of the process to establish, maintain and improve BCM programs:

  • Developing BCM policies and frameworks

    To state the organisation’s intention and commitment to BCM, a policy should be developed, approved and communicated. The framework will provide practical executable steps to implement the BCM program over time.

  • Facilitating Business Impact Analysis and Risk Assessment

    To obtain an understanding of the likely risk and threat events that could impact critical  business activities an organisation should invest in the effort to perform a Business Impact Analysis and Risk Assessment. As an outcome the organisation will have a consolidate list of prioritised value creating activities mapped to the underlying risks and threats.

  • Identifying and selecting suitable solutions

    To be able to respond to disruptions an organisation should identify and select suitable solutions that will enable the recovery of critical business activities and information technology,  post the occurrence of a disruption.

  • Drafting various response plans

    To structure the response to a disruption different response plans should be developed. Response plans will be specific in terms  of the timeline of activation  as well as the intent of the response plan. The emergency response plan will set out procedures to safeguard life during a disruption, the crisis management and communications plan will be designed to the  protection of the brand, reputation and image, the business continuity plans will guide the recovery of critical business activities and the disaster recovery plan will be  the overarching plan to guide the recovery of information systems, applications, data sources and technologies following a disruption.

  • Testing, validating and maintaining plans

    To ensure the response plans remains fit-for-purpose the plans should be subject to testing of the recovery processes and validating the contents. Organisation’s will develop a detailed schedule to maintain plans over time.

  • Developing and delivering BCM training and coaching

    Organisations should assign specific  BCM roles and responsibilities to individuals to facilitate the BCM program in a consistent manner across the organisation.  Formal BCM training and workplace coaching  will form part of career development to ensure individuals acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to fulfil their BCM roles and responsibilities.

  • Performing gap analysis and maturity assessments

    To improve the quality and completeness of the various response plans;  gap analysis and maturity assessments should be conducted. BCM best practice standards i.e. GPG 2018 and ISO 22301 will be used to indicate gaps and measure maturity.

  • Reviews and audits

    To meet compliance and regulatory requirements BCM reviews and audits should be performed frequently by organisations. The outcomes of the review and audit will be used to report the state of compliance to the board, relevant regulators and shareholders.

My Journey

Work Experience

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Self-employed Business Continuity Management / Resilience practitioner

2021 - (To Date)

As practitioner, I am leveraging off my business continuity qualifications,  skills and experience.   As part of my role I am: Consulting and advising client across the BCM lifecycle, facilitating BCM projects and programmes end-to-end, engaging with senior management to obtain commitment to BCM programmes, reporting on BCM implementation progress to the relevant committees and forums, conducting reviews to establish BCM maturity and areas for improvement, preparing and delivering customised BCM training, aligned to best practice standards and embedding BCM as part of day-to-day operations through skills and knowledge transfer during BCM projects.

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Business ContinuityManager

2012 - 2020 (8 Years)

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Business Continuity Manager

2009 - 2012 (3 Years)

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Risk and Compliance Manager

2003 - 2009 (6 Years)

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Marketing Manager

2002 - 2002 (1 Year)

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Product Manager: Stannic Fleet

1996 - 2002 (6 Years)

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Lecturer and Research Assistant

1994 - 1996 (2 Years)

Education

Professional

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Business Continuity Institute (BCI)

Member of the Business Continuity Institute (MBCI)

www.thebci.org

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Professional Evaluation and Certification Board (PECB)

ISO22301 Certified Lead Implementer

www.pecb.com

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Institute for Risk Management South Africa (IRMSA)

Member of the IRMSA

www.irmsa.org.za

Academic

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UNISA

Certificate in Marketing Research (2008)

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University of Johannesburg

M Com Economics (1990-1994)

Get in Touch

Contact number:

+27 (0)82 559 8104

E-mail address:

belinda@augustyn.co.za

Social media:

 LinkedIn

Location:

I work remotely and can take on clients locally and internationally