When American Electric Power (AEP; Columbus, Ohio, U.S.) selected a lattice tower supplier for its ground-breaking 90-mile (145-km), 6-conductor bundle 765-kV project, it turned to LOCWELD Inc. (Montreal, Canada).

AEP had to supply 333 towers to the line contractor in a timely fashion. The mix consisted of 14 tower types (four guyed-V, seven self-supporting and three dead-end towers) that had been designed to give AEP the best choices for the mountainous construction in Virginia and West Virginia.

LOCWELD was selected as the sole tower supplier. The team first went through AEP's tower designs, improving their efficiency by identifying individual structural pieces that had limited or no availability on the market. This enabled the team to avoid angle substitutions when the tower was put into production.

After the towers were punched and galvanized, LOCWELD treated the surface of the steel with a process that darkened the material. The resulting color allowed the tower to blend in better with the environment and provide a significant improvement in mitigating the visual impact of the transmission line. Component bundling resulted in packaged towers that allowed easier and more efficient material procurement.

Upon completion, LOCWELD delivered 610 truckloads of steel with virtually no fabrication errors.