April 7, 2025
Enhancing Industry Leading Rope Inspection Best Practices with AI
Technology
Enhancing Industry Leading Rope Inspection Best Practices
with AI Technology
Ensuring safety is essential for our people and our utility
customers. MYR Group’s transmission and distribution (T&D)
operations teams are improving safety measures by implementing
industry-leading rope inspection processes and adopting AI
technology to further strengthen these efforts.
Why rope inspection matters
Rope is an integral tool in electrical transmission and
distribution work, used in wire pulls and transmission haul
backs on projects of all sizes and voltages.
If rope breaks on the job during a pull, the resulting dropped
line can cause anything from minor injury, property damage and
unplanned outages, to severe injuries and death. Efforts to
prevent rope failures are critical to keeping both our
lineworkers and the public safe.
Developing best practices for rope inspection
Years ago, MYR Group set out to prevent these kinds of potential
rope failures from happening by developing and implementing a
rope inspection process for our transmission and distribution
operations. This process, which began in 2016, has evolved to
establish industry-leading best practices for rope inspection.
Most recently, we have enhanced these practices by incorporating
AI technology to improve the visual inspection process, ensuring
even greater reliability and safety.
cJosh Holland is integral to MYR Group’s Fleet department. He
oversees the critical aspect of fleet and asset management for
all rope used in wire stringing across MYR Group’s companies.
Together, the rope inspection team inspected more than 5 million
feet of rope in 2024 and expect to continue at that pace
annually.
“I want every wire pull to be a safe pull. Some of my best
friends are lineworkers and whatever we can do to help protect
them in the field is our main goal,” says Holland.
The team visually inspects all rope once a year, ensuring that
no rope remains in the field for more than a year without being
inspected.
It is also inspected every time it changes locations within MYR
Group. For example, if a rope is being used by Sturgeon Electric
in Colorado and going to be sent to Harlan Electric for a
project in the Northeast, it goes to the rope inspection team in
Indiana for inspection in between.
These best practices are applied to all rope the company owns
and anything that comes with rental equipment before it is ever
sent out to a job site.
While the industry standard is 3-to-1 strength for a safe
workload, MYR Group’s rope inspection technicians use a
higher 3.5-to-1 ratio. This means rope on a 4,000 lb. puller would need to meet the
threshold of 14,000 lb. break strength for MYR Group to approve
use of the rope.
Embracing technology to strengthen our rope
inspection processes
Implementing regular inspections of all rope was already
making work safer and reducing rope failures when
Holland learned about a new high-tech product to improve
rope inspection. A company called Scope developed an AI
system to detect damage and measure the quality of a
used rope compared to a new rope.
This innovative technology is a device with multiple
cameras that rope can be pulled through as the cameras
image the rope. It uses AI technology to analyze the
condition of the rope, as compared to brand new rope,
and produces a “percentage of new” rating, as well as
noting the locations of splices, debris, damage and
anomalies at points along the rope.
Holland and the entire rope inspection team was
influential and “played a crucial role” by
collaborating with Scope
to pressure-test and validate the technology’s damage
detection capabilities, helping it “achieve a high level
of accuracy.”
“As one of the first adopters, MYR Group helped
pressure-test the system extensively before its public
release. By utilizing the Scope system to predict the
break strength of line segments, then testing those
predictions against actual break strength measurements,
MYR Group provided valuable feedback that enabled
continuous improvement. Their hands-on involvement
allowed Scope’s AI models to be iteratively fine-tuned,
ultimately achieving reliable accuracy, ensuring the
system was highly effective for real-world use,” Scope
wrote on its website.
Following the pressure testing phase, the team
implemented the technology in 2024 to successfully
augment their visual inspections.
If the SCOPE machine identifies rope conditions that are
65 percent of a new rope’s spliced break strength (or
lower), that portion of rope is retired. If the majority
of the reel has rope that tests below this threshold,
the entire reel is replaced and any rope from it that
tests above the threshold is saved for future usage.
The use of Scope’s AI-driven technology has bolstered
their processes by providing “an extra set of eyes on
the rope,” and providing documentation of the quality of
each rope that is second to none.
It also provides time savings in situations where visual
inspections discover a section of rope that looks worn
or prompts concern. That rope can be fed through the
SCOPE machine and more quickly identify the point where
the rope quality meets our strength standards again.
Then technicians can cut a sample of the section and
break test the strength to confirm the results.
“Implementing AI technology for rope inspection has
been a game-changer for us. Not only have we
significantly reduced rope failures and improved
safety, but we’ve also set a new standard for
efficiency and best practices in our industry.”
MYR Group Director of Specialty Equipment Josh
Holland
