As-built drafting outsourcing usually only comes up once a dossier has been sitting on the shelf for too long. If it stays there, the problem piles up: a handover that is delayed, a client asking for an up-to-date dossier, or a follow-on project that cannot start because the existing situation is not recorded correctly anywhere.
We recognise that picture from our own practice, where as-built material had sometimes been printed incorrectly and partly drawn by hand, making it hard to read and messy.
Rather than ringing the client about it all the time, we worked it out ourselves and still delivered it neatly. We draft; we do no engineering and no calculations, and that clear scope keeps the job manageable. Every drawing goes through at least three review layers before it goes to you, which keeps errors to a minimum in practice. If you outsource as-built work to us, what you mainly want is a dossier that matches the actual situation again, without your own team spending weeks on it.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Who as-built drafting outsourcing is relevant for
As-built drafting outsourcing mainly comes to us from contractors, engineering firms and manufacturers who need to update a dossier after a project has already been carried out. The people we speak to are managers, team leaders or owners who notice that their own drafting team has too little time left alongside ongoing work. The problem usually arises because the build deviated from the original drawing, without anyone recording that deviation properly. You then have a site, an installation or a pipe route that is laid out differently in reality than on paper, and nobody on your team has the time to update that difference systematically.
Sometimes the underlying material is itself a problem: notes on a printed drawing, a sketch made by hand on site, or a dossier assembled from documents from different moments that no longer match up. In our own practice we received as-built material that had been printed incorrectly and partly drawn by hand, hard to read and messy. Rather than ringing the client about it all the time, we worked it out ourselves and still delivered the dossier neatly.
Firefly is the example from our own practice where this kind of work came up more often, spread across several projects. What these clients have in common is that the dossier is needed somewhere in the organisation, for maintenance, for a follow-on project or for handover, and that postponing is no longer an option. We take on that work so your own team can keep working on ongoing projects.
Scaling up for a large as-built dossier
As-built dossiers vary greatly in size: sometimes it is a limited number of drawings, sometimes a complete project with dozens of sheets that all need updating. We have organised ourselves for this: with a large, flexible team of drafters, we scale up or down on each project to whatever the work requires. When things are urgent, we add extra people immediately, without first having to recruit and train someone, as is often the case in an in-house drawing office.
We scale up without changing our review structure, because even with a larger team we keep the same checkpoints on every drawing. If someone drops out through illness or goes on holiday, we replace them so we can simply carry on completing the dossier. When a deadline could not slip, we have previously worked evenings and weekends, with days of fourteen to fifteen hours, to deliver on time, even during a planned holiday of Sam, our team leader.
In concrete terms, that means you have no ongoing salary costs for capacity that is only fully used during dossiers like these. Instead, you buy in capacity from us at the moment you need it, and we scale it back down as soon as the dossier is finished. For a contractor who suddenly has to supply a stack of updated drawings after handover, that is usually exactly the need, without anyone extra having to join the permanent staff for work that then drops off again.
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 costs of as-built drafting outsourcing are made up
With as-built drafting outsourcing, we charge by the hour or at a fixed price per project, and we agree with you which option fits best. For a dossier whose size can be estimated well in advance, a fixed project price is often the obvious choice. For a dossier where we only see during the work exactly how many deviations there are, an hourly rate is a better fit, because nobody knows in advance exactly how much work the existing situation involves. We only bill genuine working time, so if someone steps away for five minutes for a coffee, that time is not included in the hours. We do not work with prepaid hour bundles or a monthly subscription of hours, which keeps things simple for you. What keeps costs down in practice is mainly how clear the supplied material is: we process a dossier with clear photos, measurement data and notes faster than a pile of hand sketches without clear dimensions.
The freedom we get to work out for ourselves exactly what has deviated also saves time compared with a job where we have to check back on every detail. We prepare an estimate after the first conversation, in which you explain the size and condition of the existing material. Based on that, we give an indication of our approach and the expected effort. We only quote a price once the size of the dossier is sufficiently clear. That way you know where the costs come from before we start on the dossier.
Collaboration and communication during the job
Barry, our project manager, is usually the first point of contact as soon as an enquiry for as-built work comes in, after which Sam takes over the technical side and guides the project from there. For you, that means one fixed point of contact throughout the entire job, rather than a different contact for every question. The job starts with a conversation in which you explain the existing situation and supply the material that serves as the basis for the revision.
From that conversation we also establish which CAD standards apply, because we always work to your standard rather than a template of our own. We deliver the work in stages, so you can respond along the way to what is already finished and adjust a priority where necessary.
After each interim delivery we actively ask for feedback, which we process in the next round, so there are no surprises at final delivery. We agree the meeting rhythm per client, from a catch-up every two days to weekly contact, depending on how quickly the dossier needs to be finished. Day-to-day contact runs via email, phone and meetings, and on larger jobs we work in an environment where you can log in and follow progress.
For more ad hoc as-built drafting, we deliver by email, with the same structure of stages and feedback rounds, so you keep sight of progress even without that environment. The intellectual property of the delivered dossier belongs to you, and where a non-disclosure agreement is wanted, we are happy to sign one.
Frequently asked questions about as-built drafting outsourcing
Hand your as-built drafting 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.