Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) has provided Jamaica’s power generation, transmission, and distribution needs for just over a century as its sole electricity provider. It has continued to address those needs with a team of over 1,500 employees across the island. Although JPS is the country’s only integrated energy provider, it has established itself as a benchmark company throughout the Caribbean.
“We have continued to excel in so many ways, in terms of our capabilities, innovation, and renewables integration,” says Dionne Nugent, JPS’s Director of Business Development. “We are highly focused on enabling the government’s agenda to make Jamaica’s power infrastructure self-sufficient and resilient.”
It is an agenda that not only gives JPS a strong mandate, but also a huge responsibility to ensure its operations are sustainable and that it is providing its customers with the best service through a robust grid, digital services and contact centres.
“Our duty is to ensure we have satisfied customers at all times,” Nugent tells us. “We are a strong organisation of talented people, excited to follow our mantra of ‘Powering What Matters’.”
Jamaica Public Service has led the agenda along with the government and regulator for grid modernisation, improving its capabilities in automation and renewables integration for all levels of customer.
“We pride ourselves on being innovators and forward thinkers. We are driving the agenda for self-sufficiency and sustainability, with our own targets and goals. We are leading the way in terms of renewable generation in the region,” Nugent shares. “Our desire is to make sure that we are able to demonstrate the highest levels of professionalism and a willingness to go to the edge of what the grid can do.”
After the Storm
JPS’s achievements and capability are beyond doubt, but the organisation has also faced its fair share of challenges. At the time of speaking with Nugent, she was a part of the leadership team overseeing the company’s recovery from just such a challenge – Hurricane Beryl, a Category Five hurricane that passed just south of Jamaica on July 3, leaving a trail of damage in its wake.
“The southern end of the island saw quite a bit of damage, but incredibly we were able to maintain power supply from the grid in sections of the island,” Nugent tells us proudly. “No shutdown of the grid was necessary during the event, but we did see extensive outages among our customers.”
Jamaica Public Service responded by going immediately into emergency response mode, a process that the company is very familiar with.
“We have teams well prepared in advance, executing our established restoration strategy,” says Nugent.
In this case, the challenge was increased by the growing needs and expectations of its customers. But in these challenges, Nugent sees opportunities.
“We got 95% of our customers reconnected within the first week,” Nugent says proudly. “We are still not at 100% just yet, that last mile is always the most challenging! But it presents opportunities to improve service delivery and restoration, while on a technical level, we are looking at how to make our systems and network more resilient.”
A Proud History of Talent
In overcoming those challenges or embracing those opportunities, JPS relies on its long history of recruiting and investing in the best available talent.
“We have very strong technical talent and engineering capabilities across several disciplines, as well as in finance, procurement and logistics, digital services, and customer services,” Nugent says. “We have been good at recruiting services right across the board. We engage with young recruits, and we are always looking to refresh our complement of staff with regular internship programs for students from universities and colleges and at-risk youth.”
Nugent herself is a beneficiary of that process, starting with the company as a trainee engineer before working her way up to being responsible for Business Development. JPS has its own learning development institute, training standards and programs to support the development of the utility’s specialist skills, and is advanced in establishing a Centre of Excellence to further build on that foundation.
Retention of staff is also important, with some like Nugent sticking with the organisation for 20 or 30 years. However, even when staff leave Jamaica Public Service, to work overseas or in other regions, the story does not always end there.
“We may not keep them all but they excel in other areas across the world. The investment pays dividends,” Nugent says. “Our new President and CEO, Hugh Grant, started as a trainee engineer, left to work in the US and then came back as CEO. He is living proof of the quality of the team.”
It is a team with bright things in store for the future.
At every level of this great team, the number one priority is safety.
“We are dealing with a dangerous product that you cannot take lightly,” Nugent cautions. “Safety is critical. No schedule is so important, no job so urgent, no emergency so great that we cannot have the time to work safely and take care of the environment.”
“We are a country known for its community and national engagement, and as a company, we are supportive of the national agenda for transformation,” Nugent tells us. “We are a company that is strong on developing people and demonstrating new technologies that can bring value to ourselves and our customers.”
Jamaica Public Service Company’s future is about continuing to pursue this transformation agenda by improving its hard assets, in particular, the grid itself, while accommodating new technologies to build Jamaica’s resilience and sustainability.
“Tangibly, that means we are planning grid improvements, improvements to our skillsets and our response to the growing expectations of our customers. We are born to be leaders in the space,” Nugent declared.
Nugent is also the first to acknowledge that the utilities sector is undergoing a revolution around the world, and JPS intends to be at the forefront of adapting to meet those needs.
“We are looking at how to adopt new generation technologies and how we can be more sustainable and reduce our carbon footprint,” Nugent shares. “E-mobility is a big part of my agenda in Business Development. I am looking at how can we leverage our people and assets for our customers and our nation. This is no longer just about the energy sector. We are a critical partner for Jamaica in making the country a better place for generations to come.”
