New ikeGPS white paper details how converging regulatory, legal, and environmental forces are making structural analysis a core requirement for electric utilities

BROOMFIELD, Colo., June 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Electric utilities that have not adopted systematic pole loading analysis (PLA) are accumulating structural risk as wildfire regulations, broadband expansion, and legal scrutiny of infrastructure failures intensify. This trend is explored in a new white paper published by ikeGPS (IKE), a leading provider of utility infrastructure intelligence solutions.

The white paper, Pole Loading Analysis: From Engineering Due Diligence to Core Risk Management, examines the consequences of deferring pole loading analysis, which are compounding across safety, legal, and financial domains.

The Unknown Liability of the Status Quo
Without pole loading analysis, utilities cannot reliably identify overloaded or undersized poles before failure, defend infrastructure decisions under regulatory or legal scrutiny, or manage joint-use growth without accumulating unknown liabilities. These liabilities — including overload conditions, safety code non-compliance, and clearance violations — can persist undetected until triggered by an environmental stress event such as a severe storm or wildfire.

“The absence of PLA is not simply a lack of information — it is a lack of defensible insight into system condition under real-world loading scenarios,” the white paper states.

A Convergence of Risk Drivers
The report identifies several intersecting industry forces that are raising both the likelihood of structural failure and the consequences when failures occur:

• Wildfire and extreme weather risk. Wildfire mitigation regulations are expanding across multiple states, requiring utilities to demonstrate how they identify and mitigate infrastructure-related ignition risk.
• Joint-use and broadband expansion. Rapid broadband expansion is putting unprecedented pressure on utility joint-use departments. Incremental loading from attachments can gradually push structures beyond their compliance limits, thereby risking structural integrity.
• Legal liability and regulatory scrutiny. The standard of care is evolving: utilities may be held accountable not only for known issues, but for conditions they should have identified through standard engineering practices. Failure to comply with applicable codes, like the National Electrical Safety Code® (NESC®), can translate into large settlements or punitive damages.

“Utilities today are operating in an environment where structural risks are compounding. Poles age, attachments continue to accumulate, weather events intensify, and the gap grows between utility standards and real-world conditions,” adds Brett Willitt, Senior Vice President of Product at IKE. “Utilities that invest in structural intelligence aren’t just checking a compliance box; they’re building the analytical foundation to make better decisions about their infrastructure. Our goal at IKE is to help utilities move from assumption-based decisions to defensible, data-driven ones, at a scale that works across their entire network.”

From Isolated Engineering Task to Foundational Practice
PLA is increasingly embedded in routine utility workflows — including distribution design, joint-use permitting, storm hardening, and wildfire mitigation programs. Rather than functioning as a standalone calculation, the white paper argues that PLA is becoming part of a broader structural intelligence process that links field data collection to analytical models and back into GIS and asset management systems. This integration enables utilities to make defensible, data-driven decisions about asset condition, risk prioritization, and capital investment.

Key Benefits of Systematic PLA Adoption
The white paper outlines three primary benefits utilities gain by adopting standardized PLA software:

• Standardization reduces risk by consistently identifying safety code and clearance violations and reduces organizational friction between internal teams, contractors, and joint-use stakeholders.
• Auditability enables utilities to demonstrate exactly how engineering decisions were made: through consistent assumptions and calculations rather than informal judgment or incomplete data.
• Data and workflow integration transforms PLA from a periodic report into a continuous workflow, linking field activities — inspections, emergency response, joint-use assessments — into enterprise systems so that structural data is captured, reused, and acted on across the organization.

The full white paper is available on ikeGPS’s website here.

About IKE:
ikeGPS, the PoleOS™ Company, provides data acquisition and analysis solutions for overhead power and communication infrastructure. IKE delivers actionable insights that help electric utilities, communications companies and their engineering providers optimize assets and achieve critical industry objectives, such as grid resiliency and fiber broadband expansions. With two decades of industry expertise, IKE is trusted by eight of the 10 largest investor-owned electric utilities in North America and 450 enterprise customers. Headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, IKE is driven by a commitment to essential infrastructure and to the success and well-being of those who manage it. Learn more at www.ikegps.com.

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SOURCE ikeGPS Inc