Say you sell industrial pumps and a water utility announces plans to expand a treatment plant. Is that something your team should spend time on? You can start answering that question long before anyone sends you an RFP. You need to know which part of the plant is changing, how far the plan has progressed and who might buy the equipment.
That’s the kind of decision I built CapexCue to help with. It helps technical suppliers find and assess industrial and infrastructure projects early in their development. The first public version is live, and I want to show you the sort of work it’s for.
The work that comes before the proposal
I started out as an aerospace engineer, moved into business development and later worked as a proposal manager. If you know me through this site or DeepRFP, you’ve mostly seen what I do once a buyer has put requirements on paper. CapexCue takes me back to a question from the business development side. Which projects should we pay attention to in the first place?
On a capital project, the organisation developing the site and the one buying the equipment may be different. A supplier might eventually sell through an engineering contractor or a company putting together a larger system. The route matters because it changes who you’d need to speak to, and when. Even if the project is a good technical fit, it can take a while before there’s a useful commercial step.
If you work in proposals, you’ve probably seen this as a handover problem. When a request finally comes in, it helps to know what the team had already learned about the project and which assumptions still need checking. I cover who tends to own that work in my guide to bid, proposal and capture roles.
What I’d check on the water project
Take that pump supplier. In this hypothetical example, the utility’s latest public plan says it’s studying an expansion to increase treatment capacity. That’s enough to take a closer look. Here’s what I’d want to know before putting an engineer on it.
- What’s actually changing? “Treatment plant expansion” is a broad label. If the work includes new pumping capacity, I’d want to know which part of the process it serves. If the extra capacity comes from changes elsewhere in the plant, it may have little to do with what we sell.
- How far along is it? A dated planning document tells me what the utility was considering at that point. I’d look for a more recent decision or a design appointment before committing time to sizing equipment or preparing a budget estimate.
- Who might buy the package? The utility is the project owner. I’d check whether it expects to buy the pumps directly or have a contractor supply them as part of a larger package. I’d leave the buyer field open until there’s evidence for it.
My call at that point would be to keep an eye on the project and look again when the utility publishes more detail on the scope or names a design contractor. I’d record what I’d read, when it was published and what I’d need to see before getting engineering involved. That gives the next person a place to pick up the work.
Where CapexCue fits
CapexCue gives you a place to start that investigation. The public project pages bring together what’s documented about the scope, organisations and timeline, with sources you can check. If something important is still unclear, such as how the equipment will be bought, you can see what you still need to find out.
If you sell equipment, engineering or services into these projects, explore the public project pages. Open one in a sector you know and see whether the evidence helps you decide what you’d check next.
