1. What the phrase covers before you compare anything
Reading the supplier's list as six separate questions makes it comparable. In practice those six are: the electrical supply and how it is isolated; the water inlet and the fitting it terminates in; the run-off route and where the used water is collected; the floor space, clearances and access the machine needs; the consumables, spares and service items it depends on; and the training and handover that make it usable on your shift pattern.
Write those six down as headings before you open a single specification. A criterion that has no column beside it gets forgotten the moment a price arrives, and the cheapest quotation is usually the one that quietly excluded three of the six.
2. Criterion one: the item is stated as a duty, not a number
For each installation item, ask what it has to do at your position rather than what it is rated at. A water inlet is not "present"; it has to feed the machine while the machine runs, with a hose that reaches without crossing a walkway, and with a tap you can shut off when the job stops. A drain is not "nearby"; it has to accept the run-off from the surface you are actually cleaning, which for grease or oil laden water is a different question from a floor gully.
Put a duty sentence against each of the six. That sentence is the acceptance criterion later: when the machine arrives, you test the duty, not the number on the drawing.
3. Criterion two: the specification is tied to the machine being quoted
Published product pages list installation-relevant rows, and the rows differ between models on the same site. The Fixed Steam Cleaning Machine PowerDe HW02 page carries 220 V working voltage, a 6 kW heating figure, an 80 L SUS304 tank, tap-water inlet noted as a four-point internal-tooth joint, 1/2 inch, and overall dimensions of 1,200 x 800 x 1,200 mm including handles. A hand-pushed unit in the same category lists different figures and a battery working supply instead, so its site check moves to where the battery is charged and how the wet area is separated from the charge point.
Treat every row as that model's row. Never carry a voltage, a tank volume or a footprint from one machine to another, and confirm each row in writing against the exact configuration you are buying. Where a page prints a value in an unusual form, ask for the value restated in your own units before it goes into a drawing.
4. Criterion three: access, clearance and the floor you actually have
The dimension row is the machine, not the route to it. Walk the path: the door it arrives through, the aisle it is pushed down, the corners it turns, the thresholds or ramps in between. Then measure the position itself, allowing clearance for the operator, for the hose to swing, and for panels and fittings a technician has to open during service.
A fixed unit placed where it blocks a bay or a picking route gets moved, and a moved machine means the supply, water and drainage answers are reopened. Decide the position on paper, mark it on the floor, and check it against one real job before you order.
5. Criterion four: run-off is a criterion, not an afterthought
The water leaving the surface is what usually stalls an installation. Establish where it goes, whether that route is legal for the soil it carries, whether anything has to intercept or collect it first, and who inspects that arrangement afterwards. On a wash area the answer may be a silt trap and an oil-water separator; in a kitchen back-of-house it is grease-laden water; on a production floor it may be that there is no drain at all and the run-off has to be collected.
Do not let this item be answered by the equipment supplier alone. It is your facility's answer, and it should be written into the file with the name of whoever owns it.
6. Criterion five: consumables, spares and the service that keeps them available
Ask which items wear, at what interval the manufacturer states they should be replaced, what they cost, and how quickly they reach your site. A machine whose service depends on a technician travelling from abroad has a different availability profile from one your own maintenance team can service with a spare kept on site.
Get the consumable and spare list split three ways: items the operator replaces, items your maintenance team replaces, and items only the manufacturer's technician may touch. Attach the service interval to the warranty terms it protects, so nobody skips a visit and loses cover.
7. Criterion six: training, handover and who operates it on your shift
Installation is not finished when the machine is connected. Fix who is trained, what the training covers, how it is recorded, and how the next intake of operators learns it. Ask what the handover leaves behind: a written method for your surfaces, the protected list of things not to spray, and the reset procedure if a protection trips mid-job.
If the machine is meant to run inside a cleaning routine between shifts, test the routine during handover rather than after it. One operator, one real job, one written note of what did not fit.
Scoring the answers across several suppliers
Put the same six headings in front of every quotation and score each answer as stated, qualified or missing. A supplier who names the circuit, the fitting, the run-off arrangement, the clearance and the training deliverable is quoting a known installation; a supplier who answers "standard" has left those costs to appear later. Where your own answers are not fixed yet, the engineering route for customized steam cleaning equipment is the place to send the layout, the surface list and the acceptance criterion instead of choosing between catalog configurations. The wider PowerDe cleaning equipment category shows how differently individual models are specified, which is why the six criteria belong to your site rather than to any one page.
The test of a good criterion list is simple: after the machine is in service, every item has been closed by a signature, a measurement or a demonstrated job, and nothing is still described as "to be confirmed on site".
