Case Study — The Barbados Light & Power Co. Ltd.
Rebuilding — and standing behind — a utility's website
The Barbados Light & Power Co. Ltd. is one of the largest utility companies in Barbados — and its website is where customers turn when the lights go out. We rebuilt the entire site on WordPress with the Bricks visual builder, structured it so BLPC's own team manages routine content, and stayed on under a support retainer built around governance, not guesswork.
Full rebuild
WordPress with the Bricks visual builder — not a patch job
Outage Centre
Live service status for customers
Tariff library
Rates and regulatory documents, updated by the internal team
2–3 days
Turnaround on routine content changes under the support retainer
The challenge
A utility's website carries a different weight than most. It is not a brochure: when the power goes out, the website is the customer service channel. The Outage Centre and the customer account portal have to be reachable exactly when demand spikes — the worst possible moment for a fragile site.
And the site is not small. It carries a six-section information architecture, a tariff library of rates and regulatory documents, and a set of satellite systems — a customer account portal, a helpdesk, and a reporting tool — that all hang off the main site. Content moves every month: tariff notices, announcements, the steady drumbeat of a regulated utility talking to its customers.
The brief, then, was really two briefs. Rebuild the platform properly — a full rebuild, not a patch job. And structure it so BLPC's own team could run routine content under proper governance, without depending on a vendor for every comma.
The approach
A full rebuild on a stable foundation
We rebuilt the entire website on WordPress using the Bricks visual builder, organised around a six-section information architecture. The Outage Centre gives customers live service status; the tariff library holds rates and regulatory documents in one findable place. The satellite systems — account portal, helpdesk, reporting tool — integrate with the main site rather than fighting it, so the core stays stable while the services around it do their jobs.
Built to be run in-house
A rebuild the client cannot operate is only half a rebuild. We structured the site so BLPC's internal team manages routine content themselves, and backed that with training documentation written for the people actually doing the work. The result is a monthly publishing cadence — tariff notices, announcements, service updates — handled entirely in-house, with no vendor in the critical path.
Support with governance
We stayed on under a structured retainer: monitoring WordPress core, theme, and plugin updates; security checks and general site-health monitoring; minor content updates with a 2–3 business-day turnaround; and emergency assistance if the site ever becomes unavailable. Every change ships through a change-controlled workflow — written approval before anything goes live. For critical infrastructure, “move fast” is the wrong instinct. Predictability and accountability are the point, and the process is designed to deliver exactly that.
The results
- —The rebuilt platform is live and in daily use — a full rebuild on WordPress and Bricks, not a patched-over legacy site.
- —BLPC’s internal team publishes monthly content updates — tariff notices, announcements — without vendor dependency.
- —The satellite systems — customer account portal, helpdesk, and reporting tool — hang off a stable core.
- —Routine changes turn around in 2–3 business days; emergency assistance is defined for when the site is unavailable.
- —Every change ships under written approval — a change-controlled workflow suited to critical infrastructure.
Need a site your team can actually run?
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