Resources · Tool
Integration Scope Estimator
Six questions, a complexity band, and a range of engineering weeks. It returns no price, because six answers cannot support one — what it returns instead is the ranked list of what is driving your cost, and which of those you can still change before a vendor sees the brief.
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Factor 1
UNIT 01Factor 2
UNIT 02Factor 3
UNIT 03Factor 4
UNIT 04Factor 5
UNIT 05Factor 6
UNIT 060 of 6 answered — the result appears when the last one is in
Result
UNIT 07
How it is calculated
UNIT 08Each answer contributes complexity points and a number of engineering weeks. Points are added rather than compounded, which understates the worst combinations — a multi-site regulated build with no drawings is genuinely worse than the sum of three bad answers. The band boundaries are set low to take that back, rather than the estimator pretending the arithmetic is neutral.
The duration range widens with the band: ±20% at the contained end, and −25% to +80% at the programme end. That is not hedging. A contained build lands close to its estimate and a programme does not, and a tool quoting the same spread at both would be lying about the top one.
Engineering weeks exclude your procurement, your access windows and your own approvals, which on a live plant are frequently longer than the engineering. They also exclude the time an owner spends making decisions, which is the most commonly underestimated line in any integration schedule.
Technical references
UNIT 09What the reasoning on this page is drawn from. Where a standard costs money to read it is marked, and where a free document covers the same ground better it is listed first.
- ISA-95Paid standardISAThe enterprise-control integration standard the Purdue level model comes from. Levels 0 to 4 as they are actually defined.
- NIST SP 800-82 Rev. 3NISTGuide to Operational Technology Security. Free, several hundred pages, and the most useful single document in this field. The segmentation logic in our planner follows its zone and conduit reasoning.
- Modbus specificationsModbus OrganizationThe protocol specifications, published free. Worth reading the application protocol document once if anybody is quoting you for Modbus work.
- OPC UAOPC FoundationThe specification and the security model. If a vendor offers OPC UA, this is where you check what they are actually offering.
Links open in a new tab so anything you have entered above survives. Every one was checked at build time; if one has rotted since, tell us and it comes out rather than getting patched from memory.
Every one of these tools is a compressed version of a conversation. If yours turned up something you would rather talk through than read about, that is what the scoping call is for — bring your result with you.
Get this scope reviewed properlyAlso on the shelf
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Readiness assessment
Score a proposed integration across the five dimensions that decide whether it survives contact with a plant floor, and find out which one is your binding constraint.
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Payback calculator
Work out the recoverable hours, the build cost band and the payback period on a process you are thinking of automating — including the case where the answer is don't.
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Connectivity checker
Can you get data off that machine, and what does it take? Pick the vintage, the controller and the ports you actually have, and get the viable route — including the retrofit case where there is no digital interface at all.