Pump and valve quotes drafted from the customer's data sheet, with the deviations listed.

The inquiry arrives as a customer's data sheet, an engineer's specification section, or both. Your applications engineer reads the service conditions and what the sheet demands: fluid and temperature, rated flow and head or the pressure class, materials of construction, end connections, seals or packing, the tests and the documents. Then comes the slow part, deciding what you meet as built, what you meet with an option, and what has to be taken as a deviation in writing.

In the test, the selection on each closed quote goes in as your engineer made it, because choosing the pump or valve stays with your people. AI reads the sheet and the spec, answers every field against the quoted model, drafts the quote lines, and lists each mismatch with the clause it came from as a draft deviation. A field it can't answer stays open with a question, and nothing is sent.

The test grade is on the page or it isn't. ANSI/HI 14.6, the Hydraulic Institute's acceptance test for rotodynamic pumps, has six grades: 1B, 1E, 1U, 2B, 2U and 3B. Grade 1 is the tightest, the U grades use a one-way tolerance band and the B grades a two-way band, the purchaser and manufacturer are meant to agree on one, and when none is named the standard reverts to a default in its own table. The City of Mercer Island's 2025 sewer pump request names Grade 2B, wants curves of head, efficiency and NPSHr against flow, lets catalog or software curves stand for preliminary approval, and warns that a factory test that varies from those curves may be cause for rejection. So the draft records the grade the sheet asked for, or says the sheet asked for none, and names the curve it relied on.

The standard on the sheet sets the pump. API 610 includes annexes for pump data sheets and for vendor drawing and data requirements, and its type codes describe different machines: BB1 is axially split with single-stage double suction, BB2 is radially split between bearings, OH2 is an overhung horizontal design. A sheet that names a code and a spec that names only a duty need different answers, and inquiries for water service may cite no API standard at all. The draft keeps each requirement in the customer's words and places your quoted model beside it, leaving the decision to your engineer.

Materials are written in more than one language. ASME B16.34 sorts valve materials into Group 1 for carbon and low-alloy steels, Group 2 for stainless and duplex, and Group 3 for nickel and nickel alloys, and pressure-temperature ratings follow the group. A sheet that just says 316 may mean CF8M in a casting to ASTM A351 or F316 in a forging to ASTM A182, and those are different lines on your quote. Tucson Water's published butterfly valve section is specific down to ductile iron ASTM A536 Grade 65-45-12 for the body and disc, type 316 shafts on Class 150B valves and a type 630 shaft on Class 250B, and it rules out sulfur-cured rubber in the seat. The draft carries the material as written, shows your equivalent beside it, and marks any substitution as a deviation for your engineer to decide.

Ends, seals and packing hide in small words. Tucson takes mechanical joint ends to AWWA C110 unless the contract says otherwise, flanges to AWWA C110 for 125/150-pound and ASME/ANSI B16.1 for 250/300-pound at 48 inches and smaller, and AWWA C207 Class E above that with flange thickness designed to ASME Section VIII. It wants chevron V-type packing, rules out stuffing boxes, sizes actuators to 1.5 times the required valve torque and makes the valve maker certify it is responsible for choosing the actuator. In process work the packing line points elsewhere: API 624 became a mandatory part of API 600 after 2014, and a valve certified to it must use packing that meets API 622. A pump sheet may name an API 682 seal category and a piping plan such as Plan 11 or Plan 53A. Each of these is its own field on the draft.

Deviations are the judgment, and your reviewer watches them closely. A specification that says no exceptions leaves your engineer deciding before the quote leaves, since after the order is too late. The draft lists each clause your standard product doesn't meet on the page, quotes the customer's words and proposes wording, and your engineer writes, softens or strikes it. Your reviewer, usually the lead applications engineer, checks that every field was answered, that nothing was dropped without a note, and that each deviation your engineer wrote also appears in the draft.

A yes from your reviewer moves the same drafting onto new data sheets for about 30 days.

Every quote leaves from your own system after your applications engineer has checked and corrected it, and each selection stays with that engineer. The scoring table keeps running on live inquiries, and any next job is a separate decision with its own price. Monthly support comes after that.