A Montego Bay Expo Learned the Hard Way: Building Info Was the Real Shortage

• Recover and Rebuild Jamaica Expo runs July 11-12
• The organisers started 10 years ago solving overcharging
• Homeowners lacked access to building systems and information
• The 2026 event adds climate resilience and financing seminars

Jamaica’s rebuilding effort after Hurricane Melissa must go beyond simply replacing damaged structures, according to Montego Bay Deputy Mayor and Build Expo Jamaica chairman Dwight Crawford, speaking at the launch of the Recover and Rebuild Jamaica Expo 2026, scheduled for July 11 and 12 at the Montego Bay Convention Centre.

Crawford traced the expo’s origins back a decade, to a founding diagnosis about the construction sector that, in his account, has proven durable rather than solved. Ten years ago, we had a bright idea that the building industry had great needs, he said, and what we found was that persons were being overcharged, information was not accessible, and building systems were not available. The 2026 expo is explicitly built to address that same three-part gap, cost, information and access, now applied specifically to post-Melissa reconstruction rather than ordinary home building.

The event’s structure reflects the diagnosis directly: an exhibitor marketplace for construction materials and technologies, a professional zone connecting the public with architects and engineers, and educational seminars specifically on climate resilience and financing, organised through a partnership between the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Build Expo Jamaica. The goal, Crawford said, is helping Jamaicans make informed rebuilding decisions that are sustainable and climate resilient, treating the information gap as seriously as the physical rebuilding itself.

That framing lands alongside a broader theme this publication has traced repeatedly since Melissa: hurricane straps that work only when installed to code, modular homes stigmatised as housing for the poor despite superior engineering, and a construction sector growing 49.7 percent in application volume even as actual build quality remains uneven. Crawford’s underlying claim, that many Jamaicans still lack access to proper information about resilient building methods a decade after his organisation first identified the problem, suggests the gap he’s targeting was never really about materials or money alone.

Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com