Electrical Equipment Quoting Software: What It Can Price

I reviewed two switchgear specifications line by line and sorted every requirement that changes the price into three piles: things a product configurator can price once somebody selects them, things a price list can look up once somebody finds them, and things nobody can price until a person has read the document and made a judgement. There were 55 requirements. Seventeen went into the first pile, six into the second and thirty-two into the third. If you are shopping for electrical equipment quoting software, that split is the most useful number I can give you, because it tells you which kind of software addresses which part of your quote.

The two documents are public, issued for real projects, and the same two I walked through in how to quote switchgear: a 5 kV metal-clad lineup for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hydroelectric powerhouse, and a 15 kV class outdoor fused switch lineup for a new veterans' home in Quincy, Illinois. That article is about the method. This one is about the tools, and about which of those 55 requirements each kind of tool can see.

A note on who this is for. The phrase "electrical quoting software" is used by two very different groups of people, and most of what comes up when you search it is written for the other group. If you are an electrical contractor pricing installation labour from drawings, you want estimating software built for takeoff and labour units, and this article will not help you much. If you build electrical equipment, such as switchgear, switchboards, panelboards, power distribution units or power control rooms, and your quotes start from a customer's specification, read on.

In brief

• Of 55 price-relevant requirements in two issued switchgear specifications, 17 are configurator options, 6 are price-list lookups and 32 need someone to read the document and decide something.
• Configurators and CPQ tools are very good at the first pile. They price ratings, construction options and per-bay features accurately and fast, once somebody has chosen them.
• The third pile is where the time and the risk sit: conflicts inside the document, counts that come from drawings, scope that belongs to somebody else, services measured in days, and open items the author forgot to close.
• No single product covers all three piles. The practical question is which pile your quotes are heavy in, and which tool addresses that pile.
• You can test any vendor, including us, on the two public documents in this article. The list of what the software should find, with page numbers, is below.

Three things called electrical quoting software

Before sorting requirements, it helps to separate the products, because they are sold under overlapping names.

Contractor estimating software. Built for electrical contractors. It works from drawings and takeoff: count the fixtures, measure the conduit runs, apply labour units per item, add material from a supplier price feed. Products such as Trimble Accubid, McCormick and ConEst sit in this group. The switchgear itself usually appears in these estimates as a single quoted line, and that line comes from the manufacturer's quote.

Configurators and CPQ. CPQ stands for configure, price, quote. A configurator holds a model of your product: which ratings exist, which options are compatible, what each option costs and adds to the bill of material. Large equipment manufacturers typically run their own internal configurators; others use platforms such as Tacton, Epicor CPQ or Salesforce CPQ. Given a set of choices, a good configurator produces a correct price, a bill of material and often drawings in minutes. We have written honestly about where these tools are the right choice in Tacton alternative for custom manufacturing and Epicor CPQ alternative for custom manufacturing.

Document-reading software. A newer group, and the one Mavlon belongs to. It does not hold a model of your product. It reads the customer's documents, extracts the requirements that change the price, cites each one to its page and flags where the documents disagree, so that a person can decide what to select in the configurator and what to write in the clarifications.

These three are not competing for the same job. The rest of this article shows why, requirement by requirement.

How I sorted the requirements

I read both specifications in full and logged every sentence that would change a switchgear manufacturer's price, the scope they carry or the terms they accept. Then I put each requirement into one pile:

• Configurator option. Once somebody selects it, a product model can price it without further judgement. Ratings, bus material, enclosure type, per-bay features.
• Price-list lookup. Not part of the product model, but priced from a list once somebody has found it: accessories, spare parts, nameplates, document copies.
• Reading and judgement. Cannot be priced until a person has read the document, reconciled it with the drawings or the rest of the specification, and decided something: which reading to price, which scope is yours, how many days a service takes, which question to send.

The sorting is my judgement, and someone else might move a few items between piles. Trip coil monitors could be argued either way; so could the infrared windows, since "unless impractical" hides a small decision. But the proportions would not change much, and you can check every line against the source, because each one carries its page number.

The ledger: 55 requirements from two specifications

The Corps of Engineers powerhouse, Section 26 13 26.00 26, Amendment 0002. Thirty-six requirements.

The Quincy Veterans' Home, Section 26 13 00, Amendment 3, Illinois Capital Development Board project 040-010-115. Nineteen requirements.

Totals: 17 configurator options, 6 price-list lookups and 32 that need reading and judgement, out of 55.

What the configurator pile tells you

Seventeen of the 55 requirements are the kind of thing a configurator is built for. The ratings, the breaker type and operator, the bus material, the enclosure, the instrument transformer accuracy classes, surge protection, heaters, lights, receptacles, communications options, the mimic bus. Each is a choice from a known set, each has a known cost, and each changes the bill of material in a predictable way.

If most of what you quote looks like this pile, a configurator is the right tool, and document-reading software would add little. A distributor ordering a standard switchboard from a panel schedule, or a repeat customer re-ordering a known lineup, produces quotes that are almost all configurator choices. The job is selecting accurately and fast, and a good product model does both.

Notice, though, that even in this pile somebody has to make the selection from the document. The configurator can price infrared windows at every main, tie and feeder connection. It cannot tell you that page 12 of the powerhouse specification asks for them there, or that "unless the switchgear manufacturer can show that such installation is impractical" gives you room to leave some out. The configurator prices the choice; it does not read the page.

What the price-list pile tells you

Six requirements are lookups: the remote racking device, the handling and test accessories, the nameplates, the O&M manual copies, the trilingual position flags on the Illinois lineup, and the spare parts. Once found, each is a line from a price list.

The difficulty is the finding. The powerhouse spares list on page 28 includes one complete spare 5 kV vacuum breaker, identical to those supplied, plus spare instrument transformers, coils and charging assemblies. That is not a small accessory line. It sits on page 28 of 35, in a paragraph headed "Spare Parts", after twenty-seven pages of construction detail. A quote that misses it is short by the price of a breaker. The lookup is trivial; the reading is what protects the margin.

What the reading pile tells you

Thirty-two requirements, 58 percent of the total, could not be priced until someone had read the document and decided something. They fall into six groups.

None of these is exotic. Every experienced quotation specialist has met all six groups. What makes them expensive is that they are spread across the document, they are written in prose rather than in a schedule, and several of them only become visible when two pages are read against each other. A product model cannot hold them, because they are not properties of the product. They are properties of this document, for this job, written by this engineer.

This is also where two honest quotations for the same equipment drift apart. One bidder resolves the 135 kA line one way and another resolves it the other way. One prices the battery and another leaves it out. One counts eight fused bays and another counts seven. The configurator prices each of their selections correctly, and the totals still disagree, because the disagreement happened before anybody opened the configurator.

Where each kind of electrical equipment quoting software fits

Put the three product groups against the three piles and the fit is clear.

For a manufacturer whose quotes start from specifications, the realistic setup is layered: the reading happens first, a person resolves what it finds, the configurator or pricing model prices the selections, and the clarifications list carries every judgement into the quotation. Software can help at each layer. No single product replaces all of them, and a vendor who says theirs does should be asked to show you, on a real specification, what it did with the reading pile.

For a manufacturer whose quotes are mostly standard products, the configurator pile dominates, and the honest advice is to invest there first. We say the same thing in the AI quoting software buyer's guide, against our own interest, because it is true.

A test you can run on any vendor

The two documents in this article are public. That makes them a fair test for any software that claims to read switchgear specifications, including ours. Give a vendor the powerhouse specification and the Illinois specification, and see whether their software finds these, without being told where to look:

1. The momentary withstand rating of 135 kA on page 9 of the powerhouse specification, against the 25 kA short-time rating on the same page and the 65 kA closing and latching capability on page 10.
2. That the protective relays are furnished, installed, tested and commissioned by the government (powerhouse, page 26), and that the test switches and CT burden analysis are still in scope.
3. The complete spare 5 kV vacuum breaker in the spares list (powerhouse, page 28).
4. That the field service engineer must attend both the contractor's and the government's commissioning (powerhouse, page 34), and that training may be split across different weeks (page 34).
5. The capacitor trip device required on breaker 3AG2 only (powerhouse, page 24).
6. That the Illinois bay descriptions use one manufacturer's product names and the phrase "This quotation includes" (Illinois, pages 7 to 12).
7. The bay numbering 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 46, 5, 67, 8, 79, and the fuse count on page 12 that does not match it.
8. The battery system marked "(remove??)" (Illinois, page 14), and the gray and olive green finishes (pages 6 and 16).

Score it the way you would score a new hire. Did it find the item? Did it cite the page? Did it put the conflict in front of you, or did it quietly pick one side? The last question matters most. A tool that resolves the 135 kA line on its own, without telling you, has made a pricing decision that belongs to your estimator. The full protocol we ask to be judged by, including the pass bar, is published on our pilot page.

Questions worth asking before you buy

The test above covers what the software finds. These questions cover how it fits the way your team works.

• Does every extracted requirement link to its page? A requirement without a citation has to be checked by hand, which removes most of the benefit.
• Does it read the drawings, or only the text? Five of the 32 reading items in this ledger are counts that come from drawings.
• What happens with scanned pages? Many issued documents mix text pages with scanned drawings and addenda. Ask what the software does with a scan, and whether it says so when it cannot read one.
• Does it separate your scope from everyone else's? Seven of the reading items are scope sorting. A list of requirements that does not say whose they are is only half an answer.
• How does its output reach your configurator or pricing model? The value is lost if someone has to retype everything.
• Who decides? The software should present the conflicts and the open items. Your estimator should resolve them. Be wary of any product that prices an ambiguity without telling you it made a choice.
• Where does your data go? Customer specifications are often confidential. Ask where documents are stored, who can see them and how long they are kept. We wrote about the version of this question most teams face first in is it safe to upload engineering drawings to ChatGPT.

What a good handoff looks like

The three piles only help if they meet in the quotation. Reading produces findings; the estimator turns each finding into either a configurator selection, a price-list line, a service estimate or a written clarification, and usually more than one of those. Here is what that looks like for seven items from the powerhouse specification. The day counts are left as N on purpose, because they depend on the job and on your own service rates.

Two things stand out. First, only one of the seven turns into a pure configurator selection without a sentence in the quotation. Second, the sentences are what make the quotation comparable. A buyer reading three bids can see that you priced 25 kA and excluded the relays, and can ask the other bidders what they did. Without the sentences, the three totals simply disagree and nobody knows why.

Measure your own split before you buy

Every company's split is different, and the only split that matters for a buying decision is your own. It takes an afternoon to measure roughly.

1. Pick five recent quotes that started from a customer's specification, not from a phone call or a repeat order.
2. For each, list every requirement that changed the price, the scope or the terms. The clarifications page of the quote and the estimator's notes are the best starting point.
3. Put each requirement in one of the three piles: configurator option, price-list lookup, reading and judgement.
4. Ask the estimator roughly how the time on each quote divided between the piles. Rough is fine.
5. Then look at what went wrong after award on those jobs, if anything did: revisions, change orders, disputes, write-offs. Note which pile each problem started in.

If most of the time and most of the problems sit in the configurator pile, your next investment is your product model: a configurator, or a better one. If they sit in the reading pile, a better configurator will make the easy part faster and leave the expensive part where it is. Most switchgear and power equipment manufacturers who quote engineered work find the second, but it is worth confirming with your own quotes rather than taking our word for it.

What this does not mean

It does not mean configurators are obsolete. The configurator pile in this ledger is where your product knowledge lives, and no reading software replaces a good product model. It does not mean the estimator's job shrinks to checking a list. The reading pile is full of decisions, and the decisions are the job. And it does not mean every quote is 58 percent reading. A standard switchboard ordered from a panel schedule might be nearly all configurator choices. The 58 percent belongs to quotes that start from an engineer's specification, which for switchgear, power control rooms and utility or federal work is most of them.

What it does mean is that the question "which electrical equipment quoting software should we buy?" is really two questions. How good is our product model? And how much of our time goes into reading the customer's documents before the product model is even opened? The first question has good answers already. The second is the one most teams have never measured. A simple way to start is to take your last five quotes that started from a specification, and sort their requirements into these three piles yourself. We described a fuller version of that exercise in the manufacturing quoting process audit.

Why we built for the reading pile

Mavlon is document-reading software for manufacturers who quote from their customers' specifications and drawings. It reads the full document set, cites every price-relevant requirement to its page, sorts scope, and puts conflicts and open items in front of your estimator, who decides what to price. It does not replace your configurator or your pricing model; it feeds them. How long it takes to set up depends on your documents and your pricing rules, and we can only give you a real number after looking at an actual bid package with you.