Jamaican Engineering in Business and the Costumer's Experience

Jamaica may not be a country you think about when you say engineering but it has its fair share of engineering feats. Jamaica boasts being the first Caribbean country to have electricity and running water. I can a bit further by saying that Jamaica even had light and water before United Sates of America. St. Elizabeth was the first parish in Jamaica to get Electricity, in 1893. St. Elizabeth, my parents' home parish, even had telephones 10 years after it was invented by Alexander G. Bell. Implementation of these mentioned infrastructure was to satisfy a need and solve a problem people faced, hence an engineer or group of engineers solved a problem. The engineers in 17th -19th century Jamaica, were predominantly English. The colonizers of Jamaica managed the Jamaican resource to their benefit but left a legacy of engineering development for Jamaica and Jamaicans to learn from. In my opinion the greatest engineering legacy in Jamaica was the railroading network the English established. A legacy it is indeed. So much that it seems to be a legend to most of those in my age group. Many don't even know that Jamaica had a railroading network opened to transport before U.S.A, dating from 1845.

Engineering in Jamaica has never gotten the highlight it truly deserved. For example, if a road is being built here, its not advertised via 'word o' mouth' as an engineering construction. Its just, 'dem a build a road'. The intricacies in some of our civil works are rarely eye catching due to the numerous shabby work done by cheap and greedy so called engineers. The Portmore leg of the Toll Road, for example, I assume many Portmore residence have forgotten the special construction this road got. When the road material was being laid they saw foam being placed in the ground, may be the first many was seeing this being done. And so the reason eluded them. This was because the area by the cause way is a wet land, (was a  swamp- now dumped up land). Heavy compaction of aggregate or regular construction material would prevent the regular flow of water in and out the coast. So after a short while all that expensive work would need to be repeated or wasted. Because after the land gets waterlogged the water would have to find some way out. The nice, pretty road would deteriorate fast.

With this article, I want to present what engineering looks like in Jamaica today with the examples of three well-known Jamaican companies involved in engineering. These companies manage a resource vital to Jamaicans and have been around for more than a decade. I want to focus on the efficacy of their respective managers in improving the organization. The companies will be assessed on their technological improvement, improvement in customer service and customers' perception of the company. Improvement in the companies technology and infrastructure is directly link to engineering skills but the effectiveness of its managers can only be measured by how beneficial these advances are to the customers.

So the three companies are:

1. Jamaica Public Service (JPS)
2. Lime/ Flow
3. National Water Commission

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