The Bonneville Power Administration’s (BPA) traditional model for deploying transmission capital will not be enough to meet customer needs and has determined a need to double its transmission capital execution by 2028.
BPA is looking to improve and expand its existing portfolio delivery methods to meet the challenge. Currently, BPA’s Transmission segment uses two project delivery models to execute projects within its capital portfolio: the primary (PCM) and secondary capacity models (SCM).
The PCM is transmission's traditional method of capital project delivery, which uses a mix of internal and contracted resources for both design and construction phases of a project. SCM is a method contracting all phases of a project entirely, reducing strain on internal resources.
Transmission used PCM for completing sustained maintenance work and smaller expansion projects, while using SCM for larger, customer-driven expansion projects.
In 2024, Transmission Engineering and Technical Services began efforts to increase the agency's portfolio execution capacity by transforming the PCM and expanding the SCM. The efforts are seen in BPA's capital execution through 2024, where transmission deployed $655 million toward capital projects.
Accelerated hiring and efficiencies with the PCM contributed to BPA's strong capital execution throughout 2024. Additionally, the SCM program resulted in an expansion of 140% in 2024.
Mike Miller, Vice President, Transmission Engineering and Technical Services at BPA, said the need for expansion within the SCM program was evident after its implementation. The original scope of the program proposed to spend $3 billion on transmission expansion projects over 10 years. Due to an increase in both generation and load growth, BPA has reached a $3 billion figure.
Transmission Engineering is looking to streamline its workload through a bottom-up and top-down approach. Through the bottom-up approach, Miller’s organization is working to collect ideas and solutions from its employees.
The top-down approach will include wider structural changes to the PCM program. These include changes such as decreasing project handoffs between groups within Transmission.
The SCM program uses two types of contracts: a progressive design builder and an owner's consultant. The progressive design builder takes on the design and construction work, while the owner's consultant fills in for BPA and looks after the progressive design builder's work.
According to Miller, adding progressive design builder contractors will allow the existing SCM program to double its capacity. Through these two efforts, Transmission will be able to meet BPA customer needs and help the agency achieve its goals through innovation, streamlining and expansion.
