Today’s world is electric.
With electric vehicles gaining popularity, data centers popping up to support the digital space, and other technologies requiring more and more power, it is up to civil engineers to ensure that power grids are equipped to handle the needs of the modern era.
And two new ASCE manuals of practice aim to provide civil engineers with the knowledge they need to do so.
Overhead Power Line and Substation Foundations: State of Practice, Basics, Type Selection, Geotechnical Topics, and Specialty Analysis, MOP 160, and Overhead Power Line and Substation Foundations: Design Loads, Strength Factors, Threshold Criteria, and Design/Construction Methodologies, MOP 161, work in harmony to discuss best practices and recommendations for the analysis, design, and construction of electrical overhead power line structure and substation structure foundations. They will be published in July and are currently available for preorder.
A distinguishing characteristic of ASCE MOPs is the Blue Ribbon panel peer-review process, in which the manuscript is reviewed by a group of highly qualified experts prior to obtaining institute executive committee approval.
Civil Engineering Source spoke with Prasad Yenumula, Ph.D., M.ASCE, a chair on the Task Committee on Overhead Power Line and Substation Foundations of the Committee on Overhead Power Line Structures, about the importance of these MOPs and the process of putting them together.
Civil Engineering Source: What inspired you and your team to create MOP 160 and MOP 161?
Prasad Yenumula: The development of MOP 160 and MOP 161 was driven by a clear electric utility industry need.
As power demand grows and the electric grid continues to expand and evolve, foundations remain one of the critical components of overhead power line and substation infrastructure, alongside structures and conductors. Although foundations are often hidden from view, they play a fundamental role in system reliability. While the industry has long benefited from guidance and standards for many other line system components, foundation engineering for transmission lines and substations has lacked a single, uniform reference that reflects current best practices. Design practices have often remained fragmented and inconsistent across the industry, even though these foundations differ significantly from those used for buildings, bridges, and other civil infrastructure because of their unique loading conditions, performance expectations, and construction challenges.
MOP 160 and MOP 161 were created to help address that gap by providing companion best-practice guidance documents developed specifically for overhead power line and substation foundations. The goal was not only to capture the collective experience of the industry, but also to bring greater consistency to how these foundations are analyzed, designed, and constructed. The electric utility industry is also seeing a significant number of new engineers enter the field, which makes it especially important to have consistent guidance gathered in one place.
Together, the manuals provide guidance that is relevant to a wide audience, including civil engineering students, early-career engineers, experienced practitioners, and electric utilities professionals. In that sense, they are intended to serve both as an educational resource and as a practical reference for improving understanding, supporting knowledge transfer, strengthening decision-making, and promoting greater consistency across the industry.
Source: The two MOPs will be released as companion publications. How do they complement each other?
Yenumula: The two MOPs are intended to work together as companion best-practice guidance documents that cover both the foundational principles and the practical application of overhead power line and substation foundation engineering.
MOP 160 provides a broader framework, addressing the basics, foundation types, their advantages and limitations, loading, geotechnical investigations, development of geotechnical parameters, special design considerations, evaluation of existing foundations, and seismic design. In that sense, it helps readers understand the full range of issues that influence foundation selection and performance.
MOP 161 builds on that baseline by focusing more directly on design philosophy, conventional and alternate foundation systems, design models, their limitations, and construction considerations. Together, the two manuals move from understanding to implementation, with MOP 160 laying out the broader background and key considerations, and MOP 161 carrying that guidance into design and execution. As companion publications, they provide a comprehensive and consistent resource for engineers working in an area where the industry has historically relied on varied approaches.
Source: What did the process of creating MOP 160 and MOP 161 involve?
Yenumula: It was a truly collaborative effort that spanned several years. Our first task committee team meeting was held in December 2019 at the Mortenson Office in Golden Valley, Minnesota. The effort brought together more than 30 multidisciplinary professionals from the electrical transmission, distribution, and substation industry, representing utilities, consulting engineering firms, and material vendors. Because this was such a significant undertaking, we organized the work into more than 25 subcommittees, with smaller groups focused on individual chapters and a designated lead for each one. With MOP 160 at 331 pages and MOP 161 at 532 pages, the final body of work reflects both the breadth of the subject matter and the scale of the committee’s effort.
Much of the work was carried out through virtual meetings because of the challenges created by COVID. Although the pandemic slowed progress somewhat at the beginning, it ultimately helped the team make significant progress by enabling frequent online collaboration.
Over the course of the project, we held approximately 200 full task force meetings as well as roughly 300 smaller team meetings. As the chapters matured, we also assembled an external Blue Ribbon Panel of experts to support an independent technical review of the publication.
We are now awaiting the proofread versions, which represent the final milestone. There has already been strong interest in the MOPs, and I will be speaking about their content at several industry forums. It is exciting to see this level of enthusiasm across the industry.
I want to acknowledge the many hours our large group of contributing authors devoted to advancing this important body of industry guidance. Leading the committee over these years gave me the opportunity to build relationships with professionals across the industry and to collaborate with both new and long-term colleagues.
Source: In what ways do you think MOPs 160 and 161 will impact the design and construction of overhead power line and substation structure foundations?
Yenumula: I believe these MOPs will have an important impact by bringing greater consistency, clarity, and technical depth to the design and construction of overhead power line and substation structure foundations. The electric grid is facing unprecedented demands, including renewable integration, climate resilience, aging assets, and evolving regulations. In that environment, foundation performance plays an important role in the reliability of overhead power line and substation structures.
The task committee’s survey work revealed significant inconsistencies in how foundations are designed across the industry, contributing to uneven reliability expectations and design outcomes. In the absence of a common baseline, projects can become overly conservative as added safety margins accumulate through the design, bid, and construction process, increasing cost without always improving outcomes. By consolidating decades of research, survey results, and practical experience into a single companion set of references, the manuals establish more consistent design methods, geotechnical practices, and performance criteria while improving decision-making in areas such as foundation selection, loading, geotechnical investigation, and overall design approach.
The manuals also advance practice by explaining load transfer mechanisms, presenting the theoretical models used in foundation design, identifying the limitations of those models, and addressing construction practices for a wide variety of foundation types. Equally important, they provide best practice design methodologies that help move the industry beyond traditional allowable stress approaches toward more modern reliability-based approaches. These methods offer a more refined way to account for uncertainty and help engineers better balance performance, risk, and cost. Taken together, MOP 160 and MOP 161 can strengthen both technical understanding and practical execution, benefiting students, emerging engineers, experienced practitioners, utilities, and the industry as a whole. As one task committee member observed, every pole and latticed tower starts in the ground, and these manuals help the industry build reliability from the ground up.
