Tacton CPQ and AI: Reading the RFQ Before You Configure

If you have run Tacton CPQ at a switchgear maker, you know the configurator is rarely where the days go. Once someone knows what the customer wants, the model builds the lineup, applies the rules and prices it in minutes.

The days go before that step. A request for quote arrives as a stack of documents: a specification, a single line diagram, layout drawings, commercial terms, a bid form and a few addenda. Somebody has to read all of it and decide what to configure, and that person is usually your most experienced application engineer.

I build an AI quoting engine for custom equipment makers, and this article is about that first step. It explains what Tacton does well, what has to happen before anyone opens it, and how AI can do the reading so your team starts the configuration with answers instead of a stack of PDFs.

To keep this concrete, I worked through one real public tender from start to finish: a Government of Canada request for a new 13.8 kV switchgear lineup at a federal laboratory campus in Ottawa. Every page I cite can be checked against the public documents. If you want the short version first, our page on CPQ for manufacturing covers what CPQ handles and what custom equipment needs on top of it.

What Tacton CPQ does well

Tacton CPQ is configure, price, quote software for manufacturers whose products have many options. Your team builds a product model once: it includes the parts, the options, the rules about which options work together, and the prices. After that, a salesperson or an application engineer can configure a valid product without breaking a rule.

The parts of Tacton that matter for switchgear

• The product model holds the engineering rules, so an invalid lineup cannot be built. For switchgear, that means a breaker frame cannot be placed in a section that cannot carry it.
• The configurator guides the user through choices and shows the result, often with a visual model of the lineup.
• Pricing comes from the model, so two engineers who make the same choices get the same price.
• Tacton connects to CRM and ERP systems such as Salesforce and SAP, so an opportunity, a configuration and an order can move between systems.
• Tacton's design automation can produce drawings from a finished configuration, which saves engineering time after the order.

If your sales team sells from a product model, Tacton CPQ is a strong tool, and nothing in this article is a reason to leave it. Large electrical equipment makers have used it for years to configure medium-voltage switchgear and low-voltage switchboards.

What the configurator needs before it can start

Every configurator needs answers. You have to know how many sections there are, and what the voltage class is. You also need to know the bus rating and the short-circuit rating. You must find out which breakers go where, which relays sit on them, and whether there is an automatic transfer scheme.

When a customer picks options from your catalogue, those answers come from the customer directly. When a customer sends a tender, the answers are spread across a hundred or more pages, and some of them disagree with each other. That reading is the step this article is about.

The step before the CPQ: someone reads the RFQ

Here is what the Ottawa tender looks like when it lands. The solicitation number is EP067-162617, and it was issued by Public Works and Government Services Canada for the KC01 Complex switchgear upgrade.

That package is 177 pages in English, and the tender was also published in French. Only one drawing, E201, shows the new lineup. Only fourteen pages, in section 26 13 13, describe the switchgear itself. The rest still matters, because it holds the factory test travel, the field service days, the training and the terms you are pricing against.

Where each configurator answer was hiding

I listed the answers a switchgear configurator needs and wrote down where this tender gives each one. This is the work an application engineer does before opening the configurator.

Every row on that list changes either the configuration or the price. Three of the rows contain a disagreement between two parts of the same tender. None of this is unusual, and it is what a normal medium-voltage switchgear RFQ looks like.

How to read a switchgear single line diagram for a quote

The single line diagram is the most useful page in a switchgear RFQ. It is called "single line" because one line stands for all three phases of the power system, which keeps the drawing readable. For a quote, it tells you how many sections to build and what goes in each one.

Drawing E201 shows the new lineup as a row of eleven boxes, with one box for each cell. Power comes in from two transformers, with one at each end of the lineup. Here is what each cell holds, and what it means for the quote.

The symbols worth learning first

• A breaker is drawn as a curved line with small arrows above and below it. The arrows mean it is a drawout breaker that slides out of its cell on rails.
• A number with "MAIN", "TIE" or "FDR" next to a breaker is its frame rating in amps and its job. "FDR" means feeder, which is the breaker that sends power out to a building.
• "(2) L-L" next to a fuse symbol means two potential transformers connected line to line. They step the voltage down for meters and relays.
• "15 KVA" marks a control power transformer, which feeds the breaker motors, the heaters and the control wiring inside the gear.
• A dashed breaker marked "FUTURE" is space planned for later. The drawing alone does not tell you whether to supply the breaker now.

Counting from the drawing

When you add it up, you get eight 1200 A breakers to supply now: four marked main, one tie and three feeders. Two more feeder positions are planned for later. There are four sets of potential transformers, two control power transformers, two utility metering compartments and one relay cabinet.

That count is the core of the configuration. In Tacton it becomes a list of sections, where each section has its breaker frame, its devices and its options. The drawing gives you the count, and the specification tells you how to build each piece. You need both before the configuration is right.

Our longer guide on main-tie-main switchgear explains why a lineup like this one has two mains and a tie, and what the transfer scheme between them has to do.

Three places this tender disagrees with itself

A careful reader finds three disagreements in this package. Each one is small on its own. Each one also changes either the configuration or the price, and a configurator cannot catch any of them, because it only sees the answers someone typed in.

Ten cells or eleven

The electrical overview on page 1 describes the job in one sentence:

Drawing E201 shows eleven cells. The switchgear section explains the eleventh one on page 10:

The most likely reading is that the job has ten switchgear cells to replace plus a new relay cabinet as cell 11, and that the overview counted only the switchgear. The cabinet comes with bus differential and transformer differential relays, so it is not a small item. In our sample quote, cell 11 is worth $64,300, which is about nine percent of the total.

13.2 kV or 13.8 kV

The overview says 13.2 kV, and the switchgear section says this on page 4:

Both voltages fall in the same 15 kV equipment class, so the price of the switchgear barely moves. However, the potential transformer ratios and the relay settings do depend on the real system voltage. A configurator will happily accept either number, so the question has to be asked by a person or by whatever reads the documents.

Two people or three at the factory test

The buyer wants to watch the factory test, and the specification asks the manufacturer to pay for the trip. Page 11 asks for "the complete cost of two people to attend the factory witness testing." Page 12 then says this:

The phrase "three (2)" is a typing error, and it is also a real question. The difference is one extra person's flights, hotel and meals, which is small. It is still the exact kind of line that quietly disappears from a quote, or gets argued about after the order.

We wrote more about this pattern in our article on how to quote switchgear from real specifications. Disagreements like these are normal in real tenders, and the cost comes from not noticing them.

Whose scope is it: the contractor's or the switchgear maker's?

This tender was written for an electrical contractor, not for the switchgear maker. The contractor bids the whole job, and the switchgear maker quotes the gear to the contractor. That means part of reading the package is splitting the work between the two, because only the switchgear maker's part belongs in your configuration and your quote.

A configurator cannot make this split for you. It prices whatever you put into it, so a contractor item that slips into the configuration makes your quote too high, and a missing item turns into a dispute after the order.

How this tender splits the work

Two of those rows are easy to get wrong. The arrester cables look like contractor wiring, but the specification says the switchgear maker supplies them. The training looks like a contractor item, because the contractor arranges it, but the person in the room has to come from the switchgear maker, so the days belong in your quote.

The weekend that sets the field service price

A note on drawing E201 gives the whole changeover one weekend shutdown. The old gear comes out on Friday evening, the new switchgear goes in on Saturday, and the work on the relay cabinet in cell 11 happens on Sunday.

That note never appears in the specification text, but it changes the quote. Your field service days fall on a weekend, your shipping splits have to arrive ready to set in one day, and your start-up representative has to be on site when the contractor needs them, not when it suits your calendar. If your field service rates are higher on weekends, this is where the difference belongs.

The same drawing also says the existing battery bank stays and must be made compatible with the new switchgear. Your breakers run on 125 V DC from that battery, so the control wiring has to fit equipment you will not supply.

What AI adds in front of the CPQ

The reading step is the part of the job that AI now does well. An AI quoting engine can read every document in the package, including the drawings, and produce the answers a configurator needs, with each one tied to the page it came from.

What the engine produces from a tender like this one

• It produces a count from the single line diagram, cell by cell: this covers the breakers, their ratings and jobs, the transformers, the metering and the future spaces.
• It pulls the requirements from the specification that the drawing cannot show, such as the 25 kA rating, the motorized racking and the transfer scheme, each with its page.
• It creates a priced draft quote in your own rates, with every line pointing back to the page that asks for it.
• It flags a call for every disagreement, such as ten cells or eleven, with both readings priced, so the total moves the moment your engineer picks one.
• It writes a list of questions for the customer, so they can be pasted into your reply.

This is not catalogue pricing. The engine does not match part numbers to a price list or apply list-price discounts. It prices custom equipment from the customer's own documents, using the rates and rules your team already uses.

Documents in more than one language

This tender was published in English and French, which is normal for Canadian federal work. European tenders often mix languages too, with a German specification and an English data sheet in the same package. The engine reads documents in other languages, so a package in German or French goes through the same steps as one in English.

Who does what, before and after

The judgement stays with your team. Your engineer still decides whether cell 11 is in scope, which margin to use and when to call the buyer. What changes is that they make those decisions on a complete list, on day one, instead of on whatever they found by the end of the week.

How the handoff to Tacton works

Reading the RFQ is only useful if the answers reach the CPQ without being typed in again. Mavlon's AI Quoting Engine can connect to Tacton, Salesforce and other CPQ systems. Once your estimator approves the draft, the configuration and the quote lines go into the CPQ you already run.

Your product model, your rules and your pricing logic stay in Tacton. Your opportunities stay in Salesforce. The engine adds the step that was missing in front of them, which is turning the customer's documents into configuration answers that someone has checked.

What to agree before connecting the two

• Agree on which configurator fields the engine fills in, and which ones your engineer always sets by hand.
• Agree on how a call that is still open, such as a future feeder, reaches the CPQ: it can go in as an option, as a note, or not at all until the customer answers.
• Agree on who approves the draft before anything is written into the CPQ, so the system of record only ever holds checked answers.

Our page on RFQ to CPQ goes through this handoff in more detail, for teams that run Salesforce, SAP or another CPQ instead of Tacton.

Tacton's own AI, and where it is heading

Tacton is working on AI too, and it is fair to say so plainly. In January 2026, Tacton published an article on responding to RFQs faster. It describes generative AI that can process unstructured data from PDFs and emails and help create early configurations. The article calls this an emerging tool and says the AI cannot provide a final solution.

In May 2026, Tacton announced an AI product modeling assistant. It helps the people who build Tacton product models turn product documentation into a working model, which makes a CPQ project faster to set up. It is aimed at building the model, not at reading a customer's tender.

If Tacton adds full RFQ reading inside the CPQ, you should compare it with any other option on your own packages. Use the test in the next section, and judge each tool on the same RFQs.

A checklist before you add AI in front of your CPQ

You do not need a long project to find out whether this works for your team. You need three past RFQs and an afternoon.

1. Pick three RFQs that your team has already configured and quoted, including one with drawings and one with a single line diagram.
2. Write down the configuration your team entered in Tacton for each one, and the final price.
3. Give the same documents to the tool you are testing, without any notes from your team.
4. Compare the answers line by line. Check the count from the single line diagram first, because everything else depends on it.
5. Look at what the tool flagged as a disagreement, and check whether your team caught the same ones at the time.
6. Check that every answer points to a page you can open and verify in a few seconds.
7. Try one package that is not in English, if your customers ever send them.
8. Ask how the approved answers reach your CPQ, and who approves them first.

We run this exact kind of test with new customers on their own past jobs, and our pilot page explains how it works. If your RFQs look like the Ottawa tender, the AI quoting page for switchgear manufacturers shows what the engine does for switchgear and switchboard makers on one page.