One heat network, two pipe ranges, and every bid costed by hand
How does a pipe maker cost a whole heating network fast, when its product ranges come from different plants and catalogues?
Figures and rules on this page apply to
Europe
Working somewhere else? The shape of the problem usually travels. The deadlines do not.
What this looks like
A city tender arrives: a network plan as a PDF, a bill of quantities in a spreadsheet, and a page of site notes. An engineer sizes each run and picks rigid or flexible pipe. Then two teams cost their parts in two tools. The bid goes out late, or with gaps.
The numbers
Every figure here is someone else’s. Check them.
- About halfof all the energy used in the EU goes on heating and cooling buildings
- About two-thirdsof the energy used for heating and cooling in the EU still came from fossil fuels in 2025
Why it happens
It is not a people problem.
The network plan belongs to the client and its engineers. Every consultant draws, labels and lists quantities in its own way. Inside the maker, each product range has its own codes, prices and sizing rules. So every bid starts with a person reading and re-typing.
Why your current software has not fixed it
Because it was never built to.
Costing tools start once the bill of materials exists. None of them reads a consultant's network plan. Buying a second range makes the offer stronger, but it also adds a second catalogue. One shared ERP would take years, and the bids are due now.
Intelligence, plumbed in
A scanned network plan and a spreadsheet of quantities can be turned into a checked, costed parts list.
We build a layer that reads the client's plans and your own catalogues. Each bid starts as a draft costing, not a blank sheet. Underneath it: a connector, one agreed meaning per field, and a test set scored on your own records.
How we make AI survive real data-
Connectors -
A semantic layer -
Evals you can check
However hard, whatever it is
Heat-network pipe systems are one example. Bring the bid that takes longest.
We wrote this about pipe makers because every tender arrives in someone else's format. The same gap exists wherever a firm sells engineered systems from more than one catalogue.
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01 We sit with you
Days where the work happens, not a workshop in a meeting room. We watch the job get done and write down the shortcuts nobody wrote down.
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02 We read everything
Your data, your rules, your vendors and their documentation, and the published research on your sector. We report what is actually in there.
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03 We break it to first principles
Not which tool fixes this. What is actually causing it, taken apart until we reach the piece that cannot be divided further.
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04 Then we build
Weeks, not quarters. By this point we are not guessing what to build, and guessing is the thing that makes projects long.
What we build
Specific enough to argue with.
Four mechanisms, not four features. Each one is a thing that happens on its own, every day, whether or not anyone remembers to run it.
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Network plans, quantity lists and tender notes read on arrival, in whatever format the client used.
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Each section of the network matched to the right pipe system, rigid or flexible, using your own sizing rules.
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One draft costing that draws on every product range, for an engineer to check and send.
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One view of open bids, margins and win rates across every country.
How you would know it worked
Numbers in your own reporting, not ours.
- Days from a tender arriving to a costed bid being sent.
- Share of bids that cost both product ranges together instead of separately.
- Engineer hours spent re-typing quantities, per bid.
Straight answers
Where a model is involved, it is scored against your own records first. Accuracy per source, not one flattering average.
The questions this raises
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Our engineers make judgement calls on every network.
They still do. The layer does the reading and re-typing. The engineer checks the sizing and signs off every bid.
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Our plants run different systems.
That is the point. The layer reads each catalogue as it is. No plant has to change its ERP.
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How soon would we see a difference?
Usually within weeks, starting with the market that sends the most tenders. Each new range or country can be added the same way.
Where the figures come from
We did not make these up, and you should not take our word for them.
Also in manufacturing
Productivity fell in fourteen of the twenty manufacturing groups measured
Federal figures show labour productivity declining across most manufacturing industry groups. Machine data is abundant. The work between machines is not recorded at all.
ProblemEvery plant you add keeps its own production record
Contract device makers grow by buying plants. Each one arrives with its own travellers, lot numbering and record format, and the auditor still expects one traceable story.
ProblemEvery hotel project arrives as a different drawing set
Contract furniture makers win hotel and retail projects on bespoke work. Each brief arrives as someone else's drawings, schedules and specs, and quoting waits for a person to read them all.
ProblemEvery line you built is one of a kind, and its history is in service notes
Makers of packing and sorting lines build each one to order, then service it for years. The real record of each line sits in service reports and engineers' notes.
ProblemEach shop in the group quotes alone, from its own past jobs
Groups of contract manufacturers grow by buying local shops. Each shop still quotes from its own records, so the group never sees what it already knows.
ProblemThe shop you just bought can make parts your estimators never quote
Precision machining groups grow by buying shops. Each shop arrives with its own machines, job history and quoting habits, and requests still land wherever the customer first sent them.
Every partner sends a different shape
The format belongs to them. The cost lands on you.
Documents arrive from outside in whatever shape the sender chose, and the sender changes it whenever their own system does. No vendor can ship this. The set of formats is specific to who you trade with, which is why it ends up as a script nobody owns.
- Agriculture & foodThe traceability deadline moved to 2028, and nothing else changed
- Banking & lendingFifty-five cents of every revenue dollar goes to running the bank
- HospitalityThe roster was set last Tuesday. The covers were not
- InsuranceA combined ratio above one hundred means underwriting lost money
- RetailShrink went from 1.4 to 1.6 percent, and the till already knew where
Bordereaux, carrier files, supplier invoices, delivery notes. Whatever arrives in your inbox in nine shapes is the same job.Send us the messiest one you have.
The plan already says what the network needs. Nobody should have to type it twice.
We build a layer that reads the client's plans and your own catalogues. Each bid starts as a draft costing, not a blank sheet.
See everything we build-
Software -
Hardware -
Ways of working -
Whole ventures
Is this happening to you? Tell us the size of it.
Twenty minutes. We will tell you honestly whether the numbers justify doing anything about it.