How CapFlo Turned Weeks of Submittal Work Into Hours and Gets Quotes Out the Same Day
About Project
CapFlo sells the pipe, fittings, and valves that contractors use to build water and wastewater systems across California and Arizona. Columnline runs the AI employees that turn their takeoffs into priced quotes, and their won jobs into submittal packages and O&M manuals.
About CapFlo
Contractors send CapFlo a bill of material or a pipe takeoff, and CapFlo sends back a quote, 10 to 15 times a day. Each one meant copying lines into an Excel template, finding every part in a catalog of thousands, and pricing it by hand.
Eric Heddleston, CapFlo’s President and Owner, wanted to grow the business without hiring a room full of data entry. “I’ve been working on this idea and trying to get it to where it is probably since day one I started the company,” he said on his first call with Columnline.
- Company
- Capital Flow Arizona (CapFlo)
- Industry
- Waterworks distribution for water and wastewater contractors
- Size and scale
- About 35 employees in Sacramento, Southern California, and Phoenix. 10 to 15 bills of material a day, quoted from a 17,508-item catalog.
- What Columnline runs
- Quote Specialist, Same-Day Quote Desk, Submittal Specialist, O&M Manual Specialist
- Tools it works with
- Email, Excel, PDF, CapFlo’s master price workbook, manufacturer literature, Google Drive
Before
- A bill of material arrives as a PDF or Excel file and gets copied line by line into a quote template
- A person searches a catalog of thousands of items for every line
- Pricing rules for linings, spool lengths, and kits live in estimators’ heads
- A rep stuck on a tough quote has to stop and work it line by line
- Submittals for a whole job take about two weeks of hand assembly
- O&M manuals get assembled by hand for each general contractor
After
- The rep emails or uploads the takeoff, and the AI employee reads it
- Every line is matched against 17,508 items, including 8,700 priced spool configurations
- CapFlo’s rules run on every quote: the right lining, spools rounded up to the nearest 6 inches, taps priced each
- A person on our team finishes it the same day, as a PDF and an Excel file
- Packages are built from the quote, with one tab per item and the manufacturer’s literature
- Manuals are built in the required format, checked 11 ways, and turned in within 48 business hours
The Problem
Quoting
Problem
Every quote started with copy and paste
Quotes used to take days. At CapFlo, every one started with a person retyping someone else’s list. Eric put the math simply: “If you shave 10 hours a week of data entry off for us, that’s a whole day. I can go out and do other things.”
Solution
Send a list, get a priced quote back
Reps send a takeoff by email or upload it. The AI employee reads each line, finds the matching part in CapFlo’s own price workbook, and returns a branded quote as a PDF and an Excel file. It has handled a 316-line job end to end.
Quote Specialist
Reads a takeoff, matches every line to CapFlo’s catalog, and sends back a priced quote.
“Just being able to generate that based off of the list that we get... that’s massive.”
The Problem
Same-Day Quotes
Problem
One missed detail turns a small line into a big hole
A line that reads like one part is often a full assembly. A lining spec buried in the wording can swing the price of a whole section. Get it wrong and the distributor eats the margin.
“If we’re just quoting the air valve, that air valve is 800 bucks, but the entire assembly is five or six thousand. Somebody is going to get burned somewhere and I don’t want it to be me.”
Solution
CapFlo’s rules on every quote, and a person on the hard ones
On a 43-line filter replacement job, Eric priced much of the quote himself in the morning. Our desk finished the rest. Eric replied with one note: “all the ductile needs to be P401 lined.” The corrected quote went out 26 minutes later, $27,270 higher, money that would have been left off the bid. Eric accepted it at $182,471.78 that afternoon: “Perfect! Thank you!” The lining rule now runs on every quote.
Four days later, estimator Andrew Long sent 28 spool lines, 13 of them odd lengths the catalog does not list. All 28 were priced by the same morning, at $60,885. CapFlo’s rule for odd lengths, round up to the nearest 6 inches, went into the AI employee that day.
Same-Day Quote Desk
A person on our team finishes any quote the AI employee cannot price alone, then turns the fix into a rule.
The Problem
Submittals and O&M Manuals
Problem
Winning the job starts weeks of paperwork
After a win, the general contractor wants submittals: proof of the exact product, size, and fitting for every item, one package per spec section. Closeout brings O&M manuals on top. By hand, a submittal set takes weeks of compiling, highlighting, and spec checking.
Solution
Submittals and manuals built from the quote
For one lift station job, the AI employee built 14 section packages, 419 pages, and placed all 184 quote lines in CapFlo’s own format. Eric’s first read: “pretty good first look,” and a time saver. His notes were built into a new version the same day. When Justin Pingrey on CapFlo’s team needed two valve submittals fast, both packages went back the same day.
O&M manuals run the same way. Nine manuals across two jobs have been delivered and accepted, one set a full week ahead of the general contractor’s deadline.
Submittal Specialist and O&M Manual Specialist
Turn the quote and manufacturer literature into review-ready submittal packages and closeout manuals.
“We can cut that down to an hour or whatever versus, you know, two, three, four weeks of generating, compiling, highlighting, you know, product data sheets and stuff like that.”
Results
Weeks of submittal work, down to hours.
- 21+ submittal packages built across six jobs.
- 80 to 160 hours of hand assembly replaced on one lift station job alone: 14 packages, 419 pages, all 184 quote lines placed.
- 9 O&M manuals delivered and accepted by the general contractor, one set a full week ahead of deadline.
- A $182,471.78 quote, all 43 lines priced and accepted the same business day.
- $27,270 added to a single bid when a one-line lining correction became a revised quote in under 30 minutes.
Outcome
The outcome
The biggest time back comes after the win. Across six jobs, CapFlo’s submittal packages now start from the quote, and nine O&M manuals have gone through the general contractor. The lift station job alone replaced two to four weeks of hand assembly.
On the quoting side, match quality nearly tripled in a month after the catalog was rebuilt from CapFlo’s own price workbook, from 25.4% to 71.4%, and four people on CapFlo’s team were quoting with it in a single week. In Eric’s words: “My mind’s blown that you’re even able to do this.”
Next steps
What’s next
CapFlo’s team will drive the document work by email: send a request, get the package back. Next is AI takeoff from drawings. On a real 93-page drawing set, it pulled 151 draft lines for an estimator to confirm. A submittal log will track every approval and resubmittal.
Quoting from takeoffs or owing submittals to general contractors? Book a call, and we will show you this job running at your company.