Quoting a control panel: the questions that save a revision

The enquiry reads "MCC for pump house, six feeders, please quote urgently". You price it with the switchgear you always use, send it the next morning, and the consultant's comments arrive a week later. Different approved makes. An outdoor enclosure. Tests the client's engineer wants to witness. Now you are on revision three and your price has moved twice. A control panel quotation goes round again when five questions were never asked: which drawing, which makes, what ratings, what enclosure, and which tests. Ask them in one message. Then price once.

Why the same panel gets quoted three times

The purchase officer or the contractor sends it. Behind that person sits whoever wrote the specification, a consultant or the client's own electrical engineer. Behind that sits a tender, a project budget or an approval meeting with its own date.

The purchase officer forwards what is on hand: perhaps a single-line diagram and one BOQ line, without the pages that name the approved makes and the tests. You price what you were sent. The consultant checks it against the specification, and every gap comes back as a comment.

Each revision costs more than an estimator's afternoon: the buyer watches your number move. If it falls in revision three, the first figure looks padded. If it rises, the contractor who put your price into a bid has to explain the difference to the client.

Five things to settle before you price

The drawing and its revision. A single-line diagram tells you the feeders. It does not tell you the size, the layout or where the cables come in. Ask whether a general arrangement drawing exists, and write its revision letter on your quotation. A later change then reads as new scope, not as your mistake.

Makes, line by line. Project specifications carry an approved make list, and "or equivalent" means whatever the consultant accepts. Ask for the list. Ask too whether anything is free issue: a PLC, drives or meters the client buys and hands over for you to fit.

Ratings. Incoming supply, busbar material and rating, control voltage, and the fault level the panel must withstand. Fault level is often missing from an enquiry, and it changes the busbars, their supports and the breakers.

Enclosure, and the room it goes into. Indoor or outdoor, protection rating, sheet thickness, shade, cable entry from the top or the bottom. Then one question that can save a lorry trip: how wide is the door the panel has to pass through?

Tests and documents. Which tests happen at your works, whether anyone will witness them, and which papers travel with the panel. What applies depends on the specification and on the rules for that site. Those rules differ by state and body and change, so check with the buyer's consultant and your own adviser instead of assuming.

The query sheet, ready to send

Send the questions together. Ten separate calls to a busy purchase officer get hurried answers; one clear sheet that can be forwarded to the engineer gets considered ones. Copy this into an email or a WhatsApp message and fill the first line.

Enquiry: MCC for pump house            Your ref: ______
Before we price this, please confirm:

1.  Drawing: SLD only / GA drawing also.   Revision: ____
2.  Makes: your approved list (please attach) / our standard makes, named per line
3.  Free-issue items from your side (PLC, drives, meters): ____
4.  Incoming supply ____ V, fault level ____ kA for ____ s
5.  Busbar: copper / aluminium, rating ____ A
6.  Enclosure: indoor / outdoor, protection rating ____, sheet ____ mm, shade ____
7.  Cable entry: top / bottom.   Width of the room door: ____
8.  Tests at our works witnessed by: nobody / your engineer / third party
9.  Papers with supply: test reports / drawings for approval / as-built / manuals
10. Our scope at site: delivery only / erection / commissioning

One rule decides what you send back. If lines 1, 2 and 4 return blank, do not send a firm price. Send a budgetary quotation, headed as one, with your assumptions listed under the total. A firm price on guessed makes is the one that gets revised.

When nobody at the buyer can answer

Sometimes the sheet comes back with "as per standard" on every line. A contractor collecting three panel prices for a tender not yet won has no consultant to ask.

So ask: "Is this for a tender you are bidding, or a project already awarded?" For a tender, a budgetary price with clear assumptions is enough. For an awarded project with a site date, the enquiry earns the full sheet and a firm offer. Sorting enquiries this way keeps your estimator on the panels that will actually be built.

Imagine a panel shop in Wagle Estate, Thane

Imagine a panel builder in Wagle Estate, Thane. A contractor asks the owner to quote a motor control centre for a sewage treatment plant at a Kalyan housing project, and sends a single-line diagram and a voice note. The details are illustrative. The owner prices it with the usual switchgear and an indoor enclosure.

The consultant's comments run to a page. Two of the approved makes differ from the owner's. The pump house is a shed open on one side, so the enclosure needs an outdoor rating and a canopy. And the consultant wants to witness the tests. Revision two comes out higher, after the contractor has already used the first figure in his offer to the developer.

On the next enquiry, the owner sends the query sheet first. No costing file is opened until it comes back. The contractor forwards the specification section and photographs of the pump room. The quotation goes out once, with makes named against each feeder and witness testing as its own line. The contractor's offer to the developer carries the right number from the start. The cost is a day's delay on every enquiry while the sheet is answered, and one contractor takes the enquiry to a faster shop instead.

When to skip the sheet and just price

Not every enquiry needs ten questions. Price straight away when it repeats a panel you have built before, to the same drawing and makes, or is a standard starter or distribution board from your own range.

Take the last panel you revised twice and fill in the sheet for it, to see which of the ten lines you never asked. Once the offer goes, keeping it alive through the consultant's review is quotation and proposal follow-up, and the wider picture is on the electrical equipment manufacturers page. If your estimators spend more of the week on revisions than on new enquiries, tell us what you need.