An as-built dossier often sits untouched until it cannot wait any longer, and by then the drawing office is usually already at capacity. The trigger we see is almost always the same. There is a peak the in-house team cannot get through, a handover is scheduled that cannot move, or a vacancy has been open for months without being filled while the work keeps coming in.
That is when we take over the drafting.
We turn the documents supplied, the revisions and the changes from construction into a set that matches what is actually there. We draft and model; we do not do engineering or calculations. The work is done from our own office with our own licences, following the client's drawing conventions. The team scales with the size of the job and scales back down once the project is complete.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Who hands an as-built dossier over to us
Requests for a complete as-built dossier mainly come from engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers. More broadly, these are companies with a lot of technical drafting that at some point notice their documentation is lagging behind construction. The people we talk to are managers, team leads and owners. They rarely have a technical problem, because their people are perfectly capable of doing this work. What they have is a capacity problem. At a contractor, changes from site pile up while the drafters have already moved on to the next project.
At an engineering firm, a project has been completed whose documentation still needs updating, but the staff are now busy with new jobs. At a manufacturer, it is more about installations that have been modified over the years without the drawings keeping pace. In every case, the outcome is the same: you need someone who does this kind of work every day and has the time for it. We started offering this service last year because a client asked for it.
It worked well, and we have offered it as a standard service ever since. Our clients are in the Netherlands and so is our focus, so communication happens without a time difference and in the same language. For a project lead who is already under pressure, that counts for more than you might think. It saves translation steps, waiting time and misunderstandings about what an email actually meant. A quick phone call in between is also easy to make, which pays off in a dossier full of small questions.
Review layers on every as-built dossier
An as-built dossier is prone to errors, because it consists of many small changes that each have to be correct. One missed opening or a pipe left at the wrong height comes back years later, when someone starts working from that drawing. That is why nothing leaves our office in a single pass. The work goes through at least three review layers. A drafter produces the work, a second team member checks it in full, Sam, our team leader, then reviews it and Barry, our project manager, goes over it last.
That sounds heavy for drafting work, but in practice it is actually the cheapest step in the process. An error found at the second reading costs minutes. The same error spotted only by the client costs a correction round, a meeting and sometimes part of the schedule. In practical terms, errors are therefore kept to a minimum. The review covers more than just dimensions.
We check whether the layer structure matches the client's standards, whether the naming is consistent, whether every change in the material supplied has actually been incorporated and whether the set does not contradict itself. Sam has more than fifteen years of background in architecture and still works as an engineer, so he spots deviations that look right on paper but cannot work on site. Everyone on the team has more than ten years of CAD experience, so the review is carried out by people who could produce the work themselves.
No ongoing payroll costs and no idle staff once the peak is over. If one of our people is off sick or on holiday, we replace them and the work simply carries on.
How the cost of an as-built dossier is made up
What an as-built dossier costs depends on the size of the set, the state of the material supplied and the number of changes that need to be incorporated. An hourly rate or a fixed project price: we work with both. Either option is possible, and we decide which one together. For a clearly defined set with complete material, a fixed project price makes sense, because the client then knows exactly where they stand in advance. If it is still unclear how much investigation is involved, an hourly basis is fairer, because a fixed price would otherwise need a surcharge for risk that may not exist. We only bill genuine working hours. If someone steps away for five minutes for a coffee, that time does not count. We work without prepaid hour bundles or a monthly hours subscription, so no hours tick over in weeks when there is nothing to do.
The client also bears no ongoing salary costs, and if someone drops out through illness or holidays, we replace that person so the work does not stall. What keeps costs down lies mainly at the front end. Material supplied complete and legible saves hours that would otherwise go into reconstruction. A clear drawing convention prevents correction rounds. And where components recur, we build them parametrically, so a component is made once and then used everywhere instead of being redrawn each time. In the first conversation, we give you a reasoned estimate based on the documents available at that point.
Outsourcing compared with a freelancer or an in-house drafter
A client who cannot handle this work in-house has roughly three options: hire someone, bring in a freelancer or outsource it. All three can work, but they differ fundamentally. Hiring a permanent drafter involves recruitment, onboarding time and then ongoing salary costs that remain when the volume drops. For a peak that will be over in three months, that is an expensive solution to a temporary problem.
On top of that, it usually takes too long. By the time the vacancy is finally filled, the work has been waiting for months. A freelancer is quicker to arrange, but gives you one person with one diary.
If they fall ill, go on holiday or another project comes up, the work stops and there is nobody to take it over. The checking also rests with the same person who does the work. With us, there is a team behind it. With a large, flexible team of drafters, we scale up or down for each project, and when it is urgent we add people straight away. If someone drops out, we replace them. The work also goes through at least three review layers, so quality assurance does not depend on a single pair of eyes.
The flip side is that we do not take over technical ownership. We draft; we do not do engineering or give structural advice, so the project knowledge stays with the client. If you want to know whether that suits you, you can start with a small first job and judge our speed and accuracy for yourself before committing to more.
Frequently asked questions about the as-built dossier
Hand your as-built dossier over to us
Send us your documents and drawing conventions and we will let you know within one to two working days what we can take on and when.