For water and wastewater equipment makers

AI quoting for water and wastewater equipment manufacturers.

Give it the whole specification book, not only your section. It finds every part of the book that carries a requirement for your equipment, lists each one with its page number, and drafts the first quote in your own pricing logic. Your estimator checks it and decides the number.

Book a DemoHow we test it →
From three public bid documents
  • 668 ppIn one headworks book, the requirements that changed the equipment price sat in fourteen separate sections.
  • p.2A 4-page bar screen specification says: substitute materials or work shall not be permitted.
  • p.143A water tank book says here that no subsurface report exists. Page 234 points to the report bound into the same book.

The sentence on page 2 ends the exercise for any maker who is not the named one. It should reach your estimator first, not after a day of reading.

What our software found in one book

On treatment plant equipment, most of the quote is reading.

We ran a public specification book through our software: the headworks of a water reclamation facility in Hailey, Idaho. The book covers sitework, concrete, structural steel, electrical, instrumentation, painting and every other trade on the project.

668
Pages in the book
14
Sections that carried requirements for the equipment
102 sec
To find them and pull their requirements, with pages
15 to 40
Pages that concern your equipment in a typical book

The machine has a section of its own, and the price does not stay inside it. The motor, the starter and the control panel are in the electrical section. The coating is in the painting section. Witness tests, start-up visits and training are in another. None of that is in a price book, because none of it is a property of your machine. It belongs to this book, for this job.

We publish all three of our results in this field, including the two where software was not needed. On a 4-page and a 2-page bar screen specification, a careful estimator with ten minutes would have found the same things. The value is in the 668-page book.

How to quote from a specification book →Our scorecard, all three results →
The whole book, not only your section

Every part of the book settles a different part of the price.

Mavlon reads all of it together, because the answers are not in one place and not in one form. Where an example comes from a public document, the document is named.

The equipment section

The machine itself: size, materials and performance.

It usually sits in Division 11 or Division 43, and it is where everyone starts. On the Hailey book it was one of fourteen sections that mattered.

Hailey, Idaho headworks, 668 pages
The electrical section

The motor, the starter, the local control panel and the named drive maker.

This one boundary is the most common source of a quote that looked competitive and then lost money.

Our guide to quoting from a specification book
The coatings section

The coating system, the film thickness, the surface preparation, and what is done in the shop.

On a public water tank bid in Kentucky, the steel is prepared by commercial blast cleaning to SSPC-SP6, and the sealer is called out by a named product.

South Eastern Water Association, Kentucky, 356 pages
Testing and start-up

Days on site that never get a line of their own.

Witness tests, field tests, start-up visits and operator training are written in days or in visits, and they sit in a section of their own.

Our guide to quoting from a specification book
The front of the book

Bonds, warranty, damages for late delivery, and whether an equal may bid.

A 4-page bar screen specification from Odessa, Missouri says on page 2 that substitute materials or work shall not be permitted.

Odessa, Missouri bar screen, 4 pages
The addenda

What changed since you last priced it.

Addenda routinely change quantities and sometimes change the equipment entirely. Quoting from a superseded addendum is a real and common way to lose money.

Our guide to quoting from a specification book
What your estimator gets

AI quoting for treatment plant equipment, as a reading you can check line by line.

Four kinds of line come back. The examples are from the public documents in our guide to quoting from a specification book.

01

Every requirement that changes the price

Wherever in the book it sits, each one carries the page it came from, so checking it takes seconds instead of a search.

14 sectionsOn the Hailey book the requirements came from fourteen sections, not from the equipment section alone.
02

Whose it is

Yours, the contractor's or the electrician's. The book is written to the general contractor, not to you.

ElectricalWho supplies the starter and the local control panel, and which drive maker is named.
03

Questions for the engineer

Where the documents close a door or disagree, the sentence is shown. Nothing is quietly assumed.

p.2Substitute materials or work shall not be permitted. Is an equal allowed to bid at all?
04

Services you price in days

Witness tests, start-up and training, pulled out of the prose so they reach the quote.

Start-upStart-up visits, field tests and operator training, in days or in visits.
Then the quote

A first draft, priced from your own rules: your rates, your formulas and your past quotes, exported in your own quote format. The clarifications list carries every judgement into the quotation, and the margin stays with you.

What it does not do

It does not create drawings, and it does not fill in the customer's forms. It does not choose whether to bid, and it does not set your margin. When the documents conflict, it raises the conflict and does not resolve it. It does not decide whether your machine is an acceptable equal. That is the engineer's call.

When it fits, and when it does not

The value is in the long book. A short specification does not need us.

Custom work

Mavlon is the right tool when

  • The request is a project manual written by a consulting engineer for a general contractor, and your equipment is a few sections inside it.
  • The motor, the coating, the testing and the warranty are in other sections.
  • Another maker is named, and you have to work out whether an equal may bid.
  • The book runs 400 to 700 pages, and 15 to 40 of them concern your equipment.
  • Addenda keep arriving until the bid date.
Short, clean requests

You do not need us when

  • The specification is two to four pages and names the equipment plainly. We ran two like that, and ten minutes of careful reading would have found the same things.
  • You sell from a catalogue with list prices, and the customer orders by model.
  • A sizing program already turns the duty into a selection and a price.
  • What you are short of is speed on repeat orders.

We make Mavlon, so weigh this sort with that in mind. If most of your requests are short and clean, you do not need this, and we would rather say so now. Corrections are welcome at atishay@mavlon.co.

Do not take our word for it

Test it on a whole specification book, and name only the equipment.

Do not point the software at your section. Hand any vendor, including us, the whole book, name the equipment, and see what comes back.

  1. Does it find every section that carries a requirement for the equipment? On the public Hailey book there were fourteen.
  2. Does every requirement come back with its page?
  3. Does it bring the motor, the starter and the control panel in from the electrical section?
  4. Does it surface the sentence that decides whether an equal may bid, like the one on page 2 of the Odessa specification?
  5. When two pages disagree, does it show both? In the Dixie Bend tank book, page 143 says no subsurface report exists and page 234 points to it.

Score it the way you would score a new hire. Did it find the item? Did it cite the page? Did it show you the conflict, or quietly pick a side?

The guide these results come from →Our pilot protocol and pass bar →
What we have published so far
  • Hailey, Idaho headworks book, 668 pages: the 14 sections relevant to the equipment, found without being told where to look, and their requirements pulled with page references in 102 seconds.
  • Odessa, Missouri bar screen, 4 pages: the sentence on page 2 that says substitutes are not permitted.
  • Grosse Ile, Michigan bar screen replacement, 2 pages: the equipment and the demolition scope. A document this short does not need software.
  • These are reading results. The pricing column on our pilot page is nearly empty, and the page explains why.
The pass bar: seven of ten totals within 15 percent, agreed in writing first.
We did the reading first

Guides and a tool for people who quote plant equipment.

GuideQuoting water and wastewater equipment from a spec bookWhere the scope hides, and what three public packages showed.GuideOr approved equalWhen to bid and when to walk away.GuideElevated water storage tank bidWhich rules actually apply in a 356-page book.GuideReading bid packagesWhat five real public packages taught us.GuideHow long should a quote be valid for?One public case where 180 days became 260.ToolSpecification compliance matrixAn Excel template for answering a specification line by line.
What does AI quoting for water and wastewater equipment look like in practice?

The software reads the whole specification book your customer sent, with the drawings and the addenda. It finds every section that carries a requirement for your equipment, lists each requirement with the page it came from, sorts whose scope each one is, and drafts a first quote from your own pricing rules. Your estimator reviews it and decides the price.

Does it read the whole book, or only the equipment section?

The whole book. That is the point of it. On a public 668-page headworks book, the requirements that changed the equipment price sat in fourteen separate sections, and the software found them without being told where to look.

Can it tell whether "or approved equal" means we can bid?

It finds the clause and the substitution procedure and shows you the pages. It does not decide whether your machine will be accepted as an equal. That is the engineer's call, and whether to chase the job is yours. Read our guide to or approved equal.

Is Mavlon a configurator or a sizing program?

No. A sizing program turns a duty into a selection. A configurator prices the options somebody selects. Mavlon starts from the customer's book and works out what is being asked for around the machine. If you already size and price in your own program, that stays where it is.

How do we find out whether it works on our quotes?

Bring a quote you have already priced. The pilot is a blind test on your own past quotes, scored against a pass bar that is agreed in writing before anything runs. The whole protocol is published on our pilot page. Read the pilot protocol.

Who sees our customers' documents?

An NDA is signed before any document of yours moves. Deployment options, encryption and the controls that keep your documents out of model training are set out on our security page. Read the security page.

Questions equipment makers ask

Asked plainly, answered in writing.

Bring one specification book you have already quoted from.

We read it together on a call. Compare what it finds against what your team found. If you would rather not share a document on day one, we can read a public specification book together instead. An NDA is signed before anything of yours moves.

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Field Notes

The numbers that change your next quote. Once a month.

  • 01A material price that shifted this month, with the number.
  • 02What contracts in one segment actually closed for.
  • 03A real bid package taken apart page by page.

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