Paralleling Switchgear: From the Bid Package to a Priced Quote

If you have quoted paralleling switchgear, you know the breakers and the bus are rarely where the bid is won or lost.

The money sits in the lines around them: the control program, the backup switches, the engineering study, the days your engineer spends on site and a warranty that may run for ten years.

This guide builds one quote from start to finish.

It takes a real public bid package, a 92-page request for proposal from the Public Works Commission of Fayetteville, North Carolina, and turns it into a priced draft quote, one line at a time.

The draft is an example, and it is priced with sample rates, not with any manufacturer's real rates. So read it for the method and for how the lines relate to each other.

Every line still carries the page of the package it came from, so you can check each one yourself.

In brief

• The example draft quote has 11 lines and comes to $720,150.00 on the priced lines, plus one line marked TBD.
• The lineup itself is only about two thirds of the total. The rest is controls, backup controls, a future generator, studies, the battery, spares, field days and warranty.
• One decision in the package moves $48,600. Page 52 and page 78 put the paralleling controls in two different places, so the quote carries one reading and prices the other.
• The package gives no short-circuit rating, so the draft prices a stated rating and leaves the step up as TBD instead of guessing.
• The 12 field service days are a floor, because the package puts any extra days on the bidder.
• Three questions go back to the customer, each one saying what its answer changes in the quote.

What a paralleling switchgear quote contains, line by line

Before the lines, it helps to say in plain words what this gear does. Each line of the quote pays for one part of that job.

What the gear does

Paralleling gear lets several generators connect to one shared bus and carry a load together. At a water plant, that is what keeps the pumps running when the utility fails.

A generator can join a live bus only when its voltage, frequency and phase angle match the bus. Matching them is called synchronizing, and the controls do it before they close that generator's breaker.

Once the generators are on the bus, the controls share the load between them. They add loads in priority order and drop the least important ones if a generator trips.

Some lineups also run in parallel with the utility for a short time. This is called closed transition, and it lets the load move from one source to the other without an outage.

The lines a complete quote carries

A quote for this gear is more than one price for "the switchgear". A complete one has the following lines, and each of them can be priced and checked on its own:

1. The lineup, which is the steel structure, the bus and the breakers in their compartments.
2. Provisions for the future, such as a breaker and extra bus capacity for a generator the owner will add later.
3. The master controls, which are the controller, the operator screen and the program that runs the sequence.
4. Backup controls, meaning switches and meters wired directly, so operators can still run the plant if the controller fails.
5. Equipment by others, which lists the parts the package gives to someone else, so nobody prices them twice.
6. DC control power, meaning the station battery and charger that close and trip the breakers when there is no AC power.
7. Engineering, such as the power system studies, when the package puts them on the bidder.
8. Spares, counted from the package's own list.
9. Field service days for installation, startup, testing and training.
10. The warranty, when the package asks for a longer term than your standard one.
11. TBD lines for anything the package does not settle yet.

Under the lines sit the notes that make the price mean something. These are the calls you made where the package can be read two ways, the clarifications, the exclusions and the questions for the customer.

If one of these lines is missing, the cost has not gone away. It has only moved to whoever signed the quote.

The bid package behind the example

The Fayetteville Public Works Commission issued the request in September 2022 to upgrade the standby power at the Cross Creek Water Reclamation Facility, which is a wastewater plant.

It is one 92-page PDF. It holds the request itself and two specification sections: Section 26 23 00 for the switchgear and Section 26 32 13 for the engine generators.

Who you are really quoting to

This is a design-build request. The bidder, which the request calls the Materialman, answers for the whole standby power system, not only for the gear.

The acceptable generator makers are Power Secure, Cummins and Caterpillar (PDF page 76). So a switchgear builder usually quotes this job to a generator dealer, and the dealer folds that price into its own proposal.

That changes how the quote should be written. The dealer will read it looking for gaps between your scope and theirs, so every line, every exclusion and every by-others item has to be easy to find.

How the page numbers work in this guide

The first 16 pages of the PDF carry no printed page number.

Inside Section 26 23 00, printed page N is PDF page N + 36, and inside Section 26 32 13, printed page N is PDF page N + 67.

To keep one system, every Fayetteville page in this guide is the PDF page, which is also the number the example draft quote shows. If your copy shows printed pages, subtract the offset for that section.

The example draft quote

Here is the draft for the package, dated 19 October 2026. It is an example draft quote priced with sample rates, so read the amounts as a picture of how the lines relate, not as a market price for this gear.

The draft describes its own scope in its title: "Paralleling switchgear for the Cross Creek Water Reclamation Facility, Fayetteville PWC: drawout lineup, controls, studies, spares and field service."

The draft states the rates it used, so anyone reviewing it knows what the amounts rest on:

How to read this draft

• Every line names the page it came from, so a reviewer can open the PDF and check the sentence behind it.
• One line says "By others" and has no price. It records a part of the system that the package gives to the generator supplier.
• One line says TBD. The package does not settle it, so the draft does not guess.
• One call sits behind the controls line. If it is read the other way, the total moves from $720,150.00 to $768,750.00.

The total is written as $720,150.00 + TBD, and that is how it should be read. It is a firm figure for what the package settles, plus one named open item.

Where the money sits

The lineup is $468,500.00, which is about 65% of the priced total. The other 35%, or $251,650.00, is everything a price book does not hold: controls, backup controls, the future generator, the battery, studies, spares, field days and warranty.

That second part is where quotes for this gear usually go wrong, so the rest of this guide spends most of its time there.

What drives the price of each line, and where the package says it

This section takes the draft one line at a time. For each line, it shows the sentence in the package that sets the price and what would make that price move.

The lineup, $468,500.00 (PDF pages 41 and 45)

This line covers the structure, the bus and the breakers. Two sentences in the package set the class of equipment.

Page 45 then asks for every breaker to be "drawout type and enclosed in a separate metal compartment." A drawout breaker sits on rails, and it can be racked out to a test position without unbolting any cables.

A UL 1558 lineup of drawout power circuit breakers is a different product from a UL 891 switchboard with fixed breakers, and it costs more.

If you price this line from a switchboard price list, it is wrong before you start. The two standards are compared in UL 891 vs UL 1558.

The breakers also have to open and close on command. The controls close each generator onto the bus, and page 57 also lets the plant's SCADA open and close breakers.

So the breakers they operate need motor operators and close and trip coils, which adds cost to each of those breakers.

The rating the lineup is priced at

Page 42 asks for the bus to have "a minimum ANSI 30-cycle short circuit withstand rating."

That means the bus must hold a fault for 30 cycles, which is half a second at 60 Hz, so that a breaker further downstream can clear it first.

The same page has the ratings tested to ANSI C37.20.1, C37.50 and C37.51, the standards for this class of gear. A withstand rating still needs a kA figure, though, and the package never gives one.

The draft prices the lineup at 65 kA and says so in the line itself. That stated rating is the reason the TBD line exists, which this guide comes to below.

One sentence about the maker that nobody can meet

Page 41 then names the switchgear makers as Power Secure, Russelectric, ASCO, Cummins Power Generation or Caterpillar. It names the breaker makers as Eaton, Square D, Siemens or ABB.

The two lists share no name. Read literally, no bidder can meet both pages, because the switchgear maker would also have to be one of the breaker makers.

The money here sits on the lineup line, and the carried reading does not change it.

The draft prices the arrangement every bidder will have to offer: a listed switchgear maker building the lineup around breakers from a listed breaker maker. That keeps the line at $468,500.00.

If the owner held to the literal sentence, no lineup on either list could be priced at all. So the point does not belong in the price. It belongs in the clarifications, with both page numbers.

Breaker and bus for a future generator, $36,800.00 (PDF pages 37 and 44)

The owner plans to add a generator later and wants the switchgear ready for it now. Page 37 asks for "a spare circuit breaker for a future engine-generator set."

Page 44 sizes the bus for "the entire generator system, including future generator capacity as identified herein."

So the bus is bigger than today's generators need, and a whole breaker sits in its compartment waiting for a machine that is not in the contract.

Page 57 adds that the controls must accept the future unit "without having to add any additional paralleling and load sharing hardware." That sentence touches the controls as well, so check that the controls line allows for the future unit too.

This line exists so that the future generator is visible in the quote. If its cost disappears into the lineup price, a buyer comparing bids cannot see who included it and who did not.

Master PLC and paralleling controls, $86,400.00 (PDF pages 52 and 53)

Most of the cost in this line is usually engineering and programming rather than hardware. It covers the master controller, the operator screen and the sequence that moves the plant onto the generators and back to the utility.

Page 53 adds that the controls must "softly load/unload the generators", which means ramping the load across gradually instead of switching it all at once.

Page 53 also names the hardware. The master PLC, the programmable logic controller that runs the sequence, must be a "Modicon Momentum, Allen-Bradley Compact Logix, or GE VersaMax."

The controls must be "non-proprietary" and "compatible with Woodward control products", and the screen must be at least 19 inches with 1920 by 1080 pixels.

What the program has to do

The hardware is named on one page. The program is spread over several, and each of these sentences is work someone has to write and test:

• On the way back to the utility, the controls open the main breaker "when only 100kW (adjustable) of the plant load is being served by the generators" (PDF page 59).
• An extended parallel mode keeps the utility connected while the generators carry the plant, and it opens the main breaker at once if the power bought from the utility falls below 100 kW (PDF page 61).
• When the load stays below 25% for 15 minutes, the controls stop the generator with the most run hours, and they stop a second one below 30% (PDF page 63).
• The bidder provides a register of all the data points, and the Commission picks "up to 300 points" for its SCADA, which is the plant's central monitoring and control system (PDF page 57).

Each item is a piece of program, a screen to draw and a step in the site test. At the sample programming rate of $140 an hour, every 40 hours of programming adds $5,600 of cost before margin.

That is why the controls line should be built from counts: the sequences, the screens and the SCADA points. A lump sum hides the one number the reviewer most needs to check.

The alternate inside the controls

The extended parallel mode also splits the bid. In the base bid it is set up "for use with the future generator only", and the alternate bid sets it up for all the generators (PDF page 61).

The alternate needs its own price on the bid form. Keep its programming hours out of the base controls line, or the base bid carries work the owner may never buy.

This line also carries the one decision in the package that moves real money: whether the switchgear supplies paralleling controls for each generator as well. That call has its own section further down.

Hard-wired backup controls, $32,600.00 (PDF pages 55 and 56)

Fayetteville does not let the plant depend on the PLC alone. Transfers to and from the utility must work "whether the Master Generator Switchgear PLC (PLC-GEN) is operational or not" (PDF pages 56 and 57).

So the package asks for a second, simpler control system beside the PLC:

• Operators can synchronize each generator by hand, using selector switches that share "a single, removal T-handle", so only one manual circuit can be live at a time (PDF page 55).
• A list of controls must be "physical devices (not soft devices simulated via the touch screen)" (PDF page 56).
• Each generator gets "An analog synchroscope with 360 degree movement (not a digital display)" on a swing-out panel. A synchroscope is a dial that shows how far out of step the generator is with the bus.

This line is mostly panel space, wiring labour and test time. At the sample labour rate of $98 an hour, every 100 hours of wiring and checkout is $9,800 of cost before margin.

A design that relies on the touchscreen alone would leave this whole line out. It would look cheaper on bid day and fail the package on site.

Generator panel paralleling controls, by others (PDF page 78)

Section 26 32 13, the generator section, asks each generator's control panel for "integral paralleling and load sharing controls" (PDF page 78). Those panels come with the generators, so the generator supplier furnishes them.

The draft still shows them as a line, marked "By others", with no price. That tells the dealer and the engineer that you read page 78, and that your price assumes the generators bring their own controls.

A by-others line costs nothing to write, and it heads off an argument after award about who owes the hardware.

Station battery and charger, $13,900.00 (PDF pages 51 and 52)

The station battery is the DC battery that closes and trips the breakers when there is no AC power. On paralleling gear, that is exactly the moment the breakers have to work.

Fayetteville asks for a "sealed pocket plate nickel-cadmium type" battery at 48 VDC (PDF page 51). It must carry the trip current of every breaker tripping at the same time, and page 52 adds 25% spare capacity on top.

Both rules push the price. Nickel-cadmium costs more than lead-acid, and the battery is sized for every breaker tripping together, not for an average day.

The quote should state the chemistry, the voltage and the duty you sized for, so the engineer can check them against page 51.

Power system studies, $22,500.00 (PDF pages 13 and 15)

A power system study is an engineering model of the electrical system. It works out how much fault current can flow at each point and how the protective devices should be set.

In this package, the bidder pays for the studies, and two requirements set their cost.

They must be signed by a North Carolina engineer with at least 15 years of experience (PDF page 13), and they must be run in SKM PTW version 9.0 or newer, or in ETAP version 20.

Page 13 bases the studies on today's generators and on "identified future units" too. Page 15 then has the Materialman perform "All recommended protective device settings adjustments", so the study's results turn into field work as well.

If your company has neither that engineer nor a license for one of those two programs, this line is a subcontract. It then needs a real quote from the firm that will do the work, not an allowance.

The study matters for more than its own cost. It also sets the short-circuit rating of the lineup, and that is where the TBD line comes from.

PLC and fuse spares, $11,750.00 (PDF page 40)

Page 40 asks for a "Spare PLC CPU programmed with the final as-built program version", a PLC power supply, "1 PLC I/O module for each type used" and two sets of fuses of each size.

The CPU is the costly item, and the words "as-built" matter. The program is only final after startup and testing on site.

Yet the same page says "Spare parts shall be delivered at the same time as the equipment to which they pertain." A spare that ships with the gear cannot hold a program that is finished months later.

The price impact is a site task, not new hardware. Someone has to load the final program into the spare CPU and check it, which is engineering time on the last field visit.

So the quote should carry that reading: the spare ships with the equipment, and it is reloaded with the as-built program before the field service ends. Write that into the clarifications with the page.

The I/O module count depends on your own design. The more module types the controls use, the longer this list gets, so count the types from your own bill of material.

Field service engineer, 12 days at $1,650.00 (PDF page 67)

Page 67 counts the visits one by one. It asks for two working days during installation, two for startup, five for functional testing, two for training, and one day two months before the warranty ends.

That is 12 days, and at the sample rate of $1,650 a day it comes to $19,800.00. The same page then adds a sentence that changes how to read the count.

The 12 days are a floor, not a cap. Every day beyond them costs $1,650 at the sample rate, and the package gives no way to bill it.

Why the test list makes extra days likely

• The site test asks for "Three (3) closed transition transfers from the utility service to the generator and then back to the utility service at 2000kW of load", then three more at the plant's own load, and one with a generator locked out (PDF page 91).
• The loads must stay on each source for at least five minutes between transfers (PDF page 91).
• The owner wants "field verification of each and every part of the sequence of operations", with its own people watching (PDF pages 65 and 66).
• Functional testing cannot start until the owner approves "a test plan" (PDF page 66).
• If anything fails during a transfer test, "the problems shall be fixed and the test shall be restarted" (PDF page 91).

Five testing days is not much for all of that. The two training days, on the other hand, line up exactly with page 66, which asks for "two (2) sessions of eight (8) hours each" on the switchgear.

Ten-year warranty, $27,900.00 (PDF page 41)

Page 41 says the switchgear warranty "shall in no event be for a period of less than ten (10) years from date of delivery." It covers repair labour and travel, not only parts.

That is far longer than a standard switchgear warranty, so ten years of cover is priced as its own line. Labour and travel for ten years are a real cost, and the line makes that cost visible.

The generator warranty in the same request is "ten (10) years or two thousand (2000) hours of operation, whichever comes first" (PDF page 74).

So the generators can leave warranty early on hours, while the switchgear warranty runs the full ten years.

The paralleling functions also sit on both sides of the cable. The generator panels hold their own controls under the generator warranty, while the master controls sit under yours.

A fault between the two can land under two warranties with different terms, so the quote should say where your warranty starts, what it covers and where it stops.

Higher kA rating, TBD (PDF page 42)

The package leaves the rating to the study, and the bidder runs the study after award. So nobody can know the rating on bid day.

The draft prices the lineup at 65 kA and adds a line for a higher rating, marked TBD. That is why the total reads $720,150.00 + TBD and not $720,150.00.

Guessing would be worse in both directions.

A high guess loses the bid on price. A low guess with no TBD line means that a study result above 65 kA brings heavier breakers and bus bracing that nobody priced.

Where the package leaves money open

A bid package for this kind of gear nearly always leaves some decisions open. The quote's job is to show each one with its money, not to bury it in a lump sum.

There are three ways to handle an open point, and a good quote uses all three:

1. Carry the most likely reading in the price.
2. Price the other reading as well, and show it as a call with its amount.
3. Write the point into the clarifications, or send it to the customer as a question.

The call: who supplies the paralleling controls

Page 52 puts the paralleling controls inside the switchgear. Page 78 asks each generator panel for its own integral paralleling and load sharing controls. Read alone, either page sounds complete, and the two readings price very differently.

The gap is $48,600.00, about 7% of the total. That is the largest single amount the package leaves open.

The draft carries the first reading, because Section 26 32 13 asks each generator panel for integral paralleling and load sharing controls, so the generator supplier furnishes them.

The second reading comes from reading page 52 alone, and it should be priced in only if the engineer confirms it.

Both prices are worked out before the quote goes out. If the answer comes back the other way, the estimator flips the call and the total moves from $720,150.00 to $768,750.00 at once, with no re-pricing under deadline pressure.

The other open points, and the line each one moves

The call is the only open point in this package with a second full price. Several others still move a line, so the quote should name them:

The last three rows are about scope, not price, and that is the point. An exclusion the dealer can see is cheaper than a line you end up paying for after award.

The utility side of this package is specific, and none of it is switchgear.

It names SEL 651R relays "no exceptions", G&W Viper reclosers with "a closing speed of no more than 60ms", and wooden poles from the bidder (PDF pages 11 and 12). All of it sits in the same request as your gear.

TBD lines and the questions for the customer

The draft ends with three questions. Each one is written so it can be pasted into the reply to the dealer or the engineer, and each says what its answer changes in the quote.

Why the utility question matters

Closed transition puts the generators in parallel with the grid, even if only for a moment. The utility then has a say in the protection, and its rules can add study and settings work that the package does not count.

The package already names the relay functions it wants on the reclosers at the utility lines. They include synchronism check, under and over voltage and frequency, directional overcurrent and reverse power (PDF pages 12 and 13).

If the utility wants its own review of those settings, the study line grows.

Closed transition between two utility feeders, rather than between generators and the utility, is a different job with its own lines. It is covered in main-tie-main switchgear.

Why TBD beats a number

A TBD line is honest about what nobody knows yet. It keeps the total readable as a firm price for what is settled, plus one named open item.

When the answer comes back, the TBD either becomes a priced line or disappears. Either way, the person who approved the quote saw it before it went out.

When to send the questions

Send them early and in writing, through whoever issued the package. On a design-build job like this one, that is often the dealer, who passes them on to the engineer.

An answer that goes to every bidder is the only kind that keeps the prices comparable, so ask for it to be issued as an addendum.

How to check a draft before it goes out

A draft is a starting point, whoever wrote it. Before it goes out, the estimator or applications engineer should check it the same way every time.

Here is a check that works for this kind of gear:

1. Add up the lines yourself. In the example, the nine priced lines come to $720,150.00, and the total says "+ TBD" because one line is open.
2. Open every page reference and read the sentence behind it. If the page does not say what the line says, fix the line.
3. Check the counts against the package: 12 field days on page 67, two training sessions on page 66, and one I/O module of each type on page 40.
4. Read every by-others line next to the exclusions, and make sure the dealer will see both.
5. Look at each call and ask whether the carried reading is the one most bidders will take.
6. Check that the rates are current. The example's sample rates are dated October 2026, and a quote priced on last year's labour rate is already wrong.
7. Compare the shape of the total with your past jobs. If the lineup's share is far from your last few generator jobs, find out why before you send.
8. Read the clarifications as the dealer will read them, and make sure none of them is a surprise.

The check is where the estimator's judgement should go. That is why the draft should leave as little else to do as possible: no missing pages, no hidden guesses and no open point without a price or a question.

The wider method for turning a switchgear package into a quote, including the commercial terms, is in how to quote switchgear and in what a switchgear bid package asks you to price.

How other owners change the same lines

Your next package may not come from Fayetteville. Four more public documents show how the same lines move with a different owner, and what each change does to the quote.

No standard price survives all five owners. The lines stay the same, but what fills each line comes from the document in hand, which is why every line in a good draft keeps its page.

How Mavlon's AI Quoting Engine produces this kind of draft

The example in this guide shows the shape of the draft that Mavlon's AI Quoting Engine produces from a bid package.

Here it is shown with sample rates. With a manufacturer's own pricing, the same lines come out priced the way that company prices.

It learns your pricing first

The engine learns each company's pricing from its own past bid packages, the quotes it sent and its costing workbooks and rate books.

So the controls line is built the way your applications engineers build it, and the field days use your day rate. The margin is your margin, not a market average.

What the draft gives your estimator

• Every line keeps the page it came from, so the reviewer can check it against the package.
• A line the package does not settle says TBD instead of a guess, and the total shows it.
• Each decision the package leaves open becomes a call with the price of each reading, and flipping a call moves the total at once.
• Parts the package gives to someone else appear as by-others lines, so the exclusions match the scope.
• Anything nobody can answer from the documents becomes a question for the customer, ready to paste into the reply.

For paralleling switchgear, that means the controls, backup, study, spares, service and warranty lines are on the first draft, each with its page, before anyone has spent days reading the package.

Who decides

The estimator checks the draft, changes what they know better, and sends the quote. The engine does not decide compliance or the final price. Those stay with your team.

Before the engine prices live bids for a company, it is tested blind on that company's own past quotes, with a pass bar agreed in writing.

The published bar is 7 of 10 job totals within 15% of the quote that was actually sent, and the protocol is on the pilot page.

If you build switchgear and switchboards, there is more on how this works for your products on the AI quoting for switchgear manufacturers page.

Sources

• Public Works Commission of Fayetteville, North Carolina, Request for Proposal for Standby Power System Upgrades, Cross Creek Water Reclamation Facility, September 2022. This is the package behind the example draft quote.
• U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Section 26 23 13, Generator Paralleling Controls, 11-01-22.
• U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Section 26 23 00, Low-Voltage Switchgear, 11-01-22.
• University of Maryland, Baltimore, Section 262313, Paralleling Low-Voltage Switchgear, latest update 5-6-2017.
• USACE, NAVFAC and AFCEC, UFGS 26 32 15, Engine-Generator Set Stationary 15-2500 kW, with Auxiliaries, February 2026.
• City of San Diego, Section 16355, Generator Switchgear, CWP Guidelines, February 1992.

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