How to use Electrum outputs to brief a contract engineering firm?

[yoelf22]

I'm a product strategist at a small company — we don't have in-house EE or ME. We outsource hardware development to a contract engineering firm. I ran Electrum on our next product (a connected industrial valve controller) and got a full system description and gate checklist.

Can I hand these documents directly to the engineering firm as a brief? What's missing that they'd need? And which Electrum outputs are most useful for getting accurate quotes?

[yoelf22]

This is one of the best use cases for Electrum — and exactly why the system description template exists.

Yes, hand them the outputs directly

The system description and gate checklist are designed to be readable by engineers who have never seen the product before. A contract engineering firm needs three things from a client brief:

1. What the product does (Phases 1–2 cover this)
2. What components and interfaces are specified vs. open for the firm to decide (Phase 4 covers this)
3. What the client considers done (Phase 5 covers this — every PASS is an acceptance criterion)

Send them the system description, the block diagram, the component arrangement, and the gate checklist. In that order.

What's missing that they'll need

Electrum outputs are product definition documents, not engineering specifications. The gap:

Electrum provides	Engineering firm still needs
Block diagram with named subsystems	Schematic capture (circuit-level design)
Component arrangement with spatial layout	Mechanical CAD (3D enclosure, tolerances)
Interface specs (protocols, data formats)	PCB layout (trace routing, layer stack)
Power budget estimates	Thermal analysis, SPICE simulation
Firmware architecture (modules, state machines)	Actual firmware code
Gate checklist (PASS/FAIL)	Test plans with procedures and equipment

The Electrum outputs tell the firm what to build. The firm figures out how to build it. This is exactly the right division of labor between a product owner and a contract engineering team.

Which outputs get you accurate quotes

The system description is the single most important document for quoting. Here's why: engineering firms price based on complexity and uncertainty. Every section of the system description that's filled in with specific components, specific protocols, and specific constraints reduces their uncertainty — and their contingency buffer.

Specifically:

• Named components (e.g., "STM32F4 MCU" not "an MCU") tell the firm you've done homework. They can estimate schematic and layout time accurately.
• Interface specifications (e.g., "Modbus RTU over RS-485 at 9600 baud") tell the firm they don't need to do protocol selection — saving a design phase.
• The gate checklist FAILs tell the firm what's still open. Honest FAILs are better than vague requirements — the firm can quote the FAIL items as separate line items or propose solutions.

The block diagram is second most useful. Engineering firms use it to estimate team composition: how many EE hours, how many ME hours, how many firmware hours.

The component arrangement helps ME quoting specifically — it tells them the spatial constraints are already considered, so they're not starting from scratch on enclosure design.

A practical tip for the industrial valve controller

For industrial products, add one thing Electrum doesn't generate: an operating environment specification. Temperature range, humidity, vibration, IP rating, hazardous area classification (if applicable). Industrial contract firms will ask for this on day one. You can add it as a section in the system description before sending.

Also: include the gate checklist FAILs explicitly in your RFQ. Frame them as: "We know these items are unresolved. Please include your recommended approach and cost estimate for each." This turns FAILs into a scoping tool — you'll see which firms have experience with your specific gaps (OTA updates for industrial devices, safety certifications, etc.) based on how they respond.