Joseph Belechak, the newly elected CEO and managing director of the JEA, is scheduled to take the job Oct. 1.
Current CEO and Managing Director Jim Dickenson will continue to work for the utility through February to assist in the transition. Dickenson, 60, has had the job for eight years.
"I will be taking a lot of time to listen and assess operations," Belechak said Tuesday.
The JEA board voted 4-1 Tuesday to hire Belechak. The other finalist was JEA Chief Financial Officer Paul McElroy.
Belechak, 52, of Pittsburgh, is a former senior vice president of nuclear fuels at Westinghouse Electric Co. in Pennsylvania with more than 30 years of experience in the energy and manufacturing industries.
Belechak has not had experience with a publicly owned utility and said he plans to draw on Dickenson's institutional knowledge, as well as the board's, during the transition.
Belechak offered a presentation to the board Tuesday and identified five "keys to success" that could help JEA on its "Journey to Success."
Those were:
• Significantly improve customer satisfaction.
• Continued commitment to workforce planning.
• Increase efficiency and reduce costs.
• Optimize asset management and utilization.
• Continue to pay down debt.
He cited the latest J.D. Power and Associates Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study, released July 12, as proof that JEA has room for improvement in the area.
Of 31 midsized utilities in the South Region, JEA ranked last. The study did rank Clay Electric Cooperative, an electric-only service supplier, fifth in the study.
JEA provides electric, water and sewer services.
Belechak talked about how Duquesne Light, where he was chief operating officer before joining Westinghouse, dealt with poor customer service. He said communication was an area where most companies miss opportunities to improve.
Duquesne Light was able to build a process to improve internal communications, which helped communications with customers.
"The customer service reps would call the operations center and ask, 'How long is it going to be before we get service back on?’ They'd reply, 'Hey, we're really busy here. Don't you know we have big outages. Don't bother us.' Then they'd hang up the phone."
That exchange left customer service reps with little information for customers, Belechak said.
"When they'd get a call from a customer asking how long it was going to be, they'd say, ‘I don't know. We are working really hard. We are doing the best we can.’”
Over about a year, Duquesne Light developed a process to provide good information and ensure good internal communication, he said.
"It was one of the key drivers of our improving customer service," said Belechak.
The example not only related to customer service but it also included changing a culture of "silos," an issue the JEA board wanted the next CEO to address.
A silo mentality occurs when several departments or groups in an organization do not want to share information or knowledge with other individuals or departments in the company.
"Making sure that the customer believes that we are going to do everything humanly possible to put them first, I just think Joe is the person to lead us there," said JEA board Vice Chair Mike Hightower.
The board authorized Chair Ashton Hudson to negotiate a compensation package with Belechak and bring it to the board for final approval. Dickenson’s salary is $364,197 a year.
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