Women in FM: BGIS's Leigh Pearson on Building Facilities Programs From the Ground Up

More than 25 years ago, early in her career with a Canadian retailer, Leigh Pearson demonstrated that she had the ability and desire to create a function that didn't exist. Repair and maintenance at the time was decentralized, and her mandate was to design a department to centrally manage and maintain the portfolio of retail locations – including the network of trades and suppliers.

She built this initially for a base of 80 locations,  and then leveraged the structure to initiate two of her first major sustainability wins: a conversion from T12 lighting, and the deployment of building automation systems – years before either was standard practice in the industry. The results were impactful on many fronts: from energy use to better working conditions to the financial performance of the building. 

This allowed Leigh to scale and build a connected program integrating facilities management, indirect procurement, and sustainability for retail, supply chain and corporate locations.

Today, Leigh is Managing Director at BGIS, one of the largest facilities management firms in North America, where she leads the Canadian Tire account from the supplier side. 

She brings 28 years of retail experience with her, and having sat on both sides of the relationship gives her a vantage point that only few in the industry can claim.

Back when she was with the retailer, her approach to process design started with the people impacted by the outcome in mind. "You have to understand who your customer is and what problem you're solving for them," she says. "What friction are you removing so they can spend their time taking care of their customer? Creating trust at a local level so a central function can assume control of critical repairs takes more than a mandate. It takes credibility, compassion, and a commitment to serving the customer holistically, while also taking their operations, finance, safety, and brand into account. The list goes on.”

That instinct is what she uses now to hear what clients aren't saying outright. "Listen – not with the intention of replying – but just to be curious," she says. Then she pushes past the request itself: "Based on this expansive toolbox I have at BGIS, what do our clients need? What do they need to be successful?"

This is also why she’s not worried about AI flattening the work. "Facilities is largely a relationship-based industry, and that relationship is never going away," she says. "If anything, automation removes the tasks that were holding us back from diving deeper into the opportunities with our customers, our co-workers, and our supplier partners."

Sustainability is another place where knowing your stakeholders matters, because then you can find the specific, measurable opportunities that resonate with a company's own objectives. The rest just follows. "That's where you see the light bulb go off," she says, and at that point it stops being a compliance exercise and becomes "a source of process optimization, innovation, creativity, and pride."

Her advice? "Be curious. Ask questions, and don't assume that because something is a certain way, doesn’t mean there isn’t something better,” she says. "The biggest piece is to be yourself and to be authentic. You are unique. That is your superpower.”

"Never stop evolving," she says.

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