A generator specification section and its electrical schedule, read into a draft quote sheet for your sales engineer.

A generator package usually arrives as a stack: the engine generator section, often numbered 26 32 13, a transfer switch section, the electrical schedule or one-line, and any addenda. Your sales engineer pulls kW and voltage as scheduled, the fuel and tank fields, the emissions tier named, enclosure and sound requirements, transfer switch requirements and the testing the section calls for, then marks where the section and the schedule part ways.

In the test, AI reads the same copies and drafts the quote sheet: each field with the page or clause it came from, and each conflict set out for a person to resolve. It sizes nothing, picks no unit, prices nothing and sends nothing to a contractor or an engineer. Your sales engineer decides what goes out.

kW and voltage often aren't in the section. Chicago Public Schools' master section, with a control date of July 1, 2025, makes power rating and voltage "as indicated on drawings", wants derating calculations with the submittal, and tells the designer to state whether the rating is standby, prime or continuous. The University of Houston's 2018 section leaves kW, kVA and amperes as blanks beside a bracketed 480Y/277 volts, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore's lists kW/kVA at 0.8 power factor, voltage, phase and wire as empty lines. Columbia University's design requirements set all new generators at 4160 volts under its emergency generator master plan, so a schedule showing anything else is a question for the engineer. The draft carries each value from the document that holds it, names the rating type, and flags every mismatch. It adds up no loads.

Fuel and emissions lines change with the owner. Chicago wants a double-wall UL 142 sub-base tank for at least 24 hours at full rated load, no larger than codes allow and with no bottom fittings, plus a calculation of maximum running time. Maryland's UL 142 base tank carries 72 hours at full rated output in a tank no taller than 30 inches. Columbia counts at least two days of full load on the tank's working volume rather than its labeled capacity. Houston brackets a UL 2085 in-skid tank with a low level switch at two usable hours, and Northwestern University's 2017 section mentions 168 hours of run time in its ratings paragraph and at least 24 hours in its tank paragraph, which is the sort of line that needs a question. The tier line varies as much: Northwestern says latest EPA tier and latest Illinois EPA requirements, Houston says the tier levels in effect for the Houston-Galveston area at the time of installation, Chicago says the rules applicable at commissioning, and Maryland ties the tier to horsepower under 40 CFR 89. Federal rules add one more field: under 40 CFR 60.4210(f), certain engines certified only to the emergency standards carry a permanent label for stationary emergency use only. The draft reports the tier, agency and date as the document states them, and which one applies stays with people. None of this is legal or engineering advice.

Sound figures use different yardsticks. Chicago leaves blanks for decibels at 23 feet at full load and at the property line, and a project note adds that the city's building code doesn't require life safety generators to meet sound requirements. Maryland's muffler paragraph gives 67 dBA at 25 feet from the exhaust discharge. Northwestern's gives 85 dBA at 10 feet from the discharge. A 2024 section in the City of Spring Lake Park, Minnesota's meeting materials gives 75 dBA at 7 meters at rated load. Field proof varies too: Chicago measures at four locations on the property line, Maryland at four the owner identifies. The draft keeps each figure attached to its distance, load and measuring point, so a blank stays a blank.

Transfer switches come with their own section, sometimes late. The City of Tampa added Section 26 36 23 by addendum on August 2, 2017, to a water treatment plant lime slaker contract, asking for a 65,000 AIC rating, a draw-out manual bypass and a controller with at least six timers. Houston's April 2020 section brackets a solid neutral against a four-pole switch with a full-size neutral pole, rules out both sources closed together unless the drawings say otherwise, and sets an in-phase monitor at a 15-degree band. Maryland has its engineer choose between a neutral pole switched with the phases and overlapping neutral contacts, and describes closed-transition switches that tie the sources for no more than 100 milliseconds, within five electrical degrees. The draft lists each switch with its poles, transition, ratings and accessories, marks any bracket left unedited, and checks the count against the schedule.

The tests are the priced sentences, and your reviewer watches for them. Columbia wants a factory load test of at least six hours with operating data recorded in real time. Chicago gives 14 days' notice of production tests, runs a 1.5-hour building load test and then a 2-hour full load test at acceptance, adds a power failure test of at least four hours witnessed by an inspector from the city's Bureau of Electrical Inspection, and puts the load bank and fuel on the contractor. Houston wants four automatic operations of each transfer switch during the field run, readings every 15 minutes, weather conditions on the report, starting and running kVA and kW in writing because charts and graphs won't do, and a notarized letter from the supplier certifying compliance. Northwestern keeps the housing doors closed during a four-hour full load run. Your reviewer, usually the lead sales engineer, checks that no scheduled number changed, no blank or bracket got a value, every test and submittal the section names reached a line, and every conflict reached the list a person resolves.

Once your reviewer says yes, the same reading moves onto new generator sections for about 30 days.

Every quote still goes out through your own process after your sales engineer has sized, priced and approved it, and the scoring table keeps running on live projects. Anything further is a separate decision with its own price, and monthly support follows the live run.