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Why there is no number

The equipment is usually the smallest part

People asking this question are usually expecting the answer to be driven by hardware, because hardware is the part with a catalogue price. On most of the contracts we deliver, the controllers, instruments and panels are a minority of the total.

The majority goes on labour and access: surveying what is there, getting a design approved, laying cable, doing civil work, getting an outage window, commissioning, and proving every signal from the field device to the screen. None of those appear on a datasheet.

That is also why two quotations for the same enquiry can differ by a factor of two without either being wrong. They are usually pricing different amounts of the work. The list below is what to compare so you can tell.

Cost drivers

Seven things that move the price, in rough order

If you can answer these, most contractors can price with reasonable confidence. If you cannot, expect a wide range and a lot of qualifications.

Point count

How many separate signals are measured or controlled. This is the single best predictor of cost across every discipline we work in, better than floor area, plant size or the size of the building. Two projects with the same description and different point counts are different projects.

Can the plant be switched off

Work on plant that stays in service costs materially more: it needs staged design, parallel running, outage windows, more commissioning trips and more documentation. It is also frequently a contract condition rather than a choice, and it is the most common reason a cheap tender was cheap.

Cable and civil work

Distance is money. Seventeen kilometres of fibre along a pipeline route is trenching, ducts, chambers, permits, traffic management and reinstatement. On distributed networks this regularly exceeds the automation content.

Approvals

Design approval with an asset owner such as TAQA or the Department of Municipalities and Transport takes time and engineering effort, and typically more than one review cycle. A contractor already on the relevant register carries less of this risk.

How much is already known

If drawings are accurate and the existing configuration is documented, pricing is straightforward. If nobody knows what is installed, a survey has to happen first, and a bid that does not include one has moved that risk to you rather than removed it.

New build or retrofit

Greenfield is simpler than integrating with equipment somebody else chose, whose protocol may be closed and whose logic may be undocumented. Retrofit carries discovery risk that greenfield does not.

What handover includes

As built documentation, commented source code, licences, spares and operator training are real work. They are also the first things trimmed to win a price, and their absence is invisible until the day you need them.

Comparing bids

How to compare two quotations that look different

  • Ask each bidder for their assumed point count and compare those before comparing totals
  • Check whether a site survey is included or excluded
  • Check whether commissioning attendance is a fixed number of days, and what happens when those run out
  • Check who is responsible for design approval with the asset owner
  • Check whether the price assumes the plant is available or that it stays in service
  • Check whether cabling and civil work are included, provisional or excluded
  • Check whether as built documentation, source code and licences are handed over
  • Check what the defect liability period covers and who attends during it
  • Treat a bid materially below the others as a question to ask rather than a saving

Track record

The range in practice

These four span most of the range: a single venue, a district of parks, a pipeline with a long communication route, and a multi substation control system.

See all 19 delivered projects →

Common questions

Questions we are asked about this

Why will nobody give me a price over the phone?

Because the same request can describe wildly different jobs. Automating a pump can mean a level switch or a station on a district SCADA with drives, telemetry and civil works. What can be done on a phone call is narrowing which of those you are describing, and that conversation is worth having before any site visit.

What is the cheapest way to start?

Solve one problem properly rather than everything partially. Usually that means protecting the equipment that would be most expensive to lose, or measuring the thing you currently have to guess at. A first phase that works builds the case for the second far better than a large scheme that stalls.

Is a cheaper quotation a red flag?

Not automatically, but it is a question. Compare the assumed point count, whether a survey is included, whether the plant is assumed available, and whether commissioning days are capped. In our experience the gap between two honest bids is usually explained by one of those four and not by margin.

How much of the cost is hardware?

Less than most people expect. On distributed work such as pipelines and irrigation networks the cabling and civil work alone can exceed the automation content. On substation work the commissioning and outage management can. Hardware is the part that is easy to compare, which is why bids get compared on it.

Do costs change if the plant cannot be shut down?

Yes, significantly. Staged design, parallel running, work inside agreed outage windows and repeated commissioning visits all add cost. It is worth stating this requirement in the enquiry rather than discovering at award that a bidder priced a shutdown you were never going to get.

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