Alternative to FindObject() in workflow

If you are creating a workflow at the Project level, you do not need FindObject, the parent project ID is an available field to choose from.

I have a field 'Plant' that is also the name of the folder i want to move the project to once it is active, so i need to find the ID of the Project Named 'Plant', not the current Parent

I would also like to know if there is an alternative to FindObject for locating a record to link to. My use case is as follows:

• Some 'new order' projects require a software update. We have a WFR that identifies the need, based on specific field values.
• We sometimes receive multiple 'new order' projects for the same customer from Salesforce.
• We only need one update request for any given customer at any given time.
• We have implemented an Updates custom objects to track update requests and deployments.
• There is an Update Project Link table so that we can associated multiple projects for the same customer to a single Update record.

So when those projects come in, we would like to identify if an active update request exists and either link to the existing record or create a new one and link to that.

Is there a way to identify the existence of a record in a separate object/table using a WFR?