An engineer's instrument index, read tag by tag into a draft quote for your inside sales engineer.

A project's instruments usually reach you as a list: pressure, flow, level, temperature and analytical points, with control valves among them, each under a tag from the engineer's drawings. Your inside sales engineer reads every tag's service, works out which model and options suit it, and goes back with questions about the ones that can't be priced yet. On a long index, the reading is most of the job.

In the test, AI reads copies of the index, the sheets and the spec section and drafts one line per tag: tag number, service, range and units, process connection, wetted materials, electrical area classification as stated, output signal and the certificates asked for, each with the page it came from. The model code on each closed quote goes in as your engineer built it. A tag that needs sizing, or that the documents leave open, goes on a separate list for a person.

The index and the sheet answer for each other. The City of Winnipeg's 2007 bid package for site utilities at its water treatment program makes the P&IDs the governing document for scope and calls the instrument index the controlling document for supply. That index runs from tag, instrument type and service through power supply, calibrated range, supplied by and installed by to the data sheet number and the P&ID, loop and installation drawings. One level transmitter's sheet points back to the index for its tag, service and range. A magnetic flow meter's sheet gives a 150 mm flanged meter with a PFA liner, stainless electrodes and grounding rings, then says the range is TBC, and that meter's transmitter is FT-L924A on the index and FIT-L924A on its sheet. The draft follows each cross-reference, shows both spellings, marks TBC as undetermined and keeps a tag supplied by someone else off the quote lines.

A sheet can hold one tag or many. ISA's instrument specification forms, which public specs still cite as ISA-20 or ISA-TR20.00.01, came out in 2008 as 73 fill-in spreadsheet templates. They have fields for vendor information, process data, process connections and process conditions, purchasing sections for manufacturer, model number, purchase order number and labeling, and one form can specify a single instrument or several. New York State's master specification for gage-pressure transmitters takes another route: a schedule with entries such as PIT-463 and PIT-464, each giving a location, output signal, diaphragm seal and process fluid, with the seals themselves specified in a separate section, 40 73 63. A multi-tag sheet becomes one line per tag, and a seal named on a schedule has to reach the quote.

Signal, load and connection change with the buyer. Greater Sudbury's template assumes half-inch NPT female process connections, isolated 4-20 mA outputs that can drive up to 750 ohms, and HART on every instrument with a hand-held communicator added to the order. Winnipeg's sheets call for 4 to 20 mA into a 500 ohm load. An addendum to the City of Owosso, Michigan's 2020 wash water project reissued its Section 40 72 43 three days before bids were due, with transmitters on Fieldbus and a user-selectable square root extractor for a linear output proportional to flow. So the draft records signal, load and protocol per tag, names the document each one came from, and shows where an addendum replaced a page.

Wetted materials and the area line get copied exactly. New York's section has wetted parts compatible with the process liquid and anything touching potable water certified to NSF 61 and NSF 372. Eastern Municipal Water District's Section 17005 makes Type 316 stainless the default for wetted parts and silicone oil the default fill unless specified otherwise, and takes a 3-valve or 5-valve manifold from the drawings. Greater Sudbury wants CSA approval on every instrument and writes the area as CEC/OESC Class, Group and Division, or Class and Zone. Eastern Municipal wants instruments in a hazardous area to be intrinsically safe and approved for that location. The draft carries those words as stated and never chooses a material or decides a rating. We name these documents for context, and this page is not legal or engineering advice.

Control valves bring their own vocabulary. Winnipeg's March 2025 valve specification for its NEWPCC clarifier upgrade defines CV as a check valve and FCV as a flow control valve, so a tag another plant would read as a control valve means something else there. Its FCV sheet gives operating and design limits in kPag and degrees Celsius, a Class 125 flanged plug body, Buna-N or EPDM seats and an electrical actuator, and marks disc trim as not mandatory. Every abbreviation stays in the document's own meaning, and a flow coefficient or fail position the package leaves out goes on the open list. Your reviewer, usually the senior applications engineer, checks the tag count, each field against its source page, and whether the open list caught what your desk had to ask.

When your reviewer says yes against the success criteria, new packages get the same draft for about 30 days.

Your applications engineer makes every selection and releases every quote from your own system, and nothing reaches a customer before that. The comparison keeps running on live work.

Monthly support comes after that month, and whether to take on another job is your decision, quoted on its own.