Power connecting: An Electrician service booking and job dispatch platform

POWER CONNECTING.
Access to reliable electrical repair services remains a significant challenge for many households and small businesses in Zambia. Customers experiencing an electrical fault, whether a power outage, exposed wiring, faulty circuit breaker, or general installation need, often have no structured way to find an available, qualified electrician quickly. The current process typically relies on word of mouth referrals, personal contacts, or informal roadside advertisements, which offers no visibility into an electrician's availability, no way to track the progress of a job once it has been requested, and no accountability if the work is delayed or left incomplete. This research project, PowerConnect, proposes a lightweight, web based system designed to formalize and streamline this process by connecting customers directly with electricians through a structured booking and job dispatch platform.
The system is built entirely with front end web technologies including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, using browser based storage (localStorage) to simulate a functioning database for demonstration and prototyping purposes. PowerConnect consists of several core modules. The first is a job request form where customers describe the fault type, provide their location, and indicate the urgency of the job, ranging from routine to emergency. The second is an electrician facing job board where available jobs are listed and can be claimed by an electrician, removing the job from the open pool once accepted. The third is a status tracking dashboard, visible to both the customer and the electrician, that visually represents the job's progress through defined stages, namely Requested, Accepted, In Progress, and Completed. The fourth is a simple profile or listing view for electricians, allowing customers to see who has claimed their job. Together these modules replace an informal, opaque process with one that is transparent, structured, and easy to follow from the moment a fault is reported to the moment it is resolved.
The motivation for this project stems from the observation that many service industries in Zambia, electrical repair included, lack accessible digital tools to match supply and demand efficiently, despite the clear practical need. Customers are often left waiting without knowing whether their request has been seen, accepted, or forgotten, while available electricians have no centralized place to find nearby work. PowerConnect addresses this gap directly by giving both parties real time visibility into the job pipeline, using the same status tracking approach that has proven effective in similar reporting and dispatch systems.
This project is significant both as a practical tool for the Zambian trades and services ecosystem and as a demonstration of how accessible, low cost web technologies can be applied to formalize informal service industries, improve accountability, and reduce the friction customers face when trying to access reliable electrical repair services.