If you want to understand as-built drawings costs, the most useful thing is a clear definition of what we do and do not do. We draft and model, we process revisions and we convert existing material into a set that is accurate. We do not survey, we do not come on site to take measurements and we do not do engineering.
The client supplies the source material and we turn it into usable drawings. That boundary is exactly why the cost side stays clear with us, because the bill contains no consulting or surveying hours.
What it does contain are drafting hours, and we bill those strictly net. Below, we describe where the time goes in as-built work, what we deliver, how we reduce manual work with smart components and in which formats we align with the client's existing set. We charge by the hour or per project at a fixed price, and we only decide which option fits once we have reviewed the source material.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
The repetitive part of as-built drawings
Most of the money in as-built drawings is not spent on the difficult sheets but on the many easy ones. A dossier often consists of dozens or hundreds of drawings in which the same components, symbols and annotations recur again and again. That is precisely the volume we take over, because that is where our work lies and where the time savings are. When rebuilding a set like that, we first look at which elements occur most often. We capture those properly once, after which each subsequent placement takes a single action instead of half a page of manual work.
A piping diagram in greenhouse construction shows this clearly. Anyone who needs a valve in 90 and in 110 in AutoCAD redraws it by hand every time, while a smart component is in place in a single action. In work like this, that approach saves at least seventy per cent of the time, which translates directly into fewer hours on the timesheet. There are also time savings in how the material is supplied. For Firefly, we received as-built material whose existing drawings had been printed incorrectly and partly drawn by hand, making them hard to read and messy.
We sorted it out ourselves instead of calling the client every day, and still delivered it properly. That costs us hours, but on the client's side it saves a constant stream of questions and keeps the lead time short. We also bundle unclear sheets into a short list of questions, so the client can answer them in one go instead of spread over the week.
What we deliver in as-built drawings
We deliver a complete, readable set of drawings that matches what was actually built. Specifically, that means floor plans, sections, elevations, detail drawings, part drawings and diagrams, with the associated material schedules. Where the client wants a model instead of separate sheets, we build that model in Revit or Rhino and generate the drawings from it. We handle revision work the same way, so we process the changes in the source file and not just in an export. That keeps the set reusable, and nobody has to do the same work again a year from now.
We fill in missing annotations, restore layer structures that have degraded over the years and turn hand-drawn additions back into proper drawn elements. What we do not deliver are calculations, structural advice, permit documents or survey data, because that falls outside our work. For as-built drawings costs, that means a bill with drafting and modelling hours only. Everything passes through at least three review layers before delivery, from the drafter to a second team member, then past Sam, our team leader, and finally past Barry, our project manager. As a result, the number of errors stays minimal in practice, which counts double in an as-built dossier because it will be used for years.
The source files are included on delivery, because the intellectual property belongs to the client. Your own drawing office can then update the set independently, which saves money in the long run because otherwise every small change would come back to us. We deliver in stages, gather feedback, make adjustments and carry on, so a wrong interpretation surfaces after the first batch of sheets. Corrections therefore stay small and the final bill stays close to the estimate.
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.
Smart families that reduce drawing costs
We build parametric Revit families, in other words smart components that adapt to a new situation or a different size. We create a component once and then place it anywhere without drawing it again. Material schedules update along with it, so when the component changes, the schedule changes automatically. In an as-built dossier, that is valuable, because a set like that lives on after delivery and small changes keep being added. Without smart components, every change means more drafting and another check of the schedule. With smart components, it comes down to a single adjustment in one place. That is where a large part of the long-term savings on drawing costs lies. We can clean up existing families and templates or build them from scratch. The state of the existing set determines the wisest choice. If it is very messy, with duplicate parameters and dozens of loose variants, rebuilding is sometimes faster than repairing.
We only make that call once we have looked inside the set, and we present our choice with a brief explanation. We also use Grasshopper where geometry needs to adapt parametrically, and Dynamo and Vault to a limited extent. Which route we take depends on what the client uses, because their team has to be able to carry on with it afterwards. If you work mainly in AutoCAD, a heavy Revit setup makes little sense and we look for the gains in blocks and a tight layer structure. If you already work in Revit, we build the components that recur most often first, because that is where most of the hours are. We agree that order with you in advance.
Software and formats for as-built drawings
Our main software is Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino, supplemented by Inventor for part work. We always work with the latest versions, in our own environment and with our own licences. So you do not have to give us a licence, a workstation or access to your network, which saves a great deal of arranging and waiting before we can start. We receive and deliver files in DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format.
For standalone drafting work, files go back and forth by email. On larger projects, such as greenhouse construction projects, we work in software that the client can log into to follow along.
Aligning with the existing set matters more for as-built drawings than for new work, because the new sheets continue to exist alongside the old ones. That is why we work to the client's standard and drawing conventions, which we receive from them at the start. That covers layer structure, naming, title blocks, line weights and the way annotations are built up. If there is no such standard, we derive it from the existing files and document our choices, so no differences creep in between old and new sheets later on.
If you supply material in an older format, we convert it and check that nothing is lost. We would rather resolve any doubts about a format up front than halfway through. We also match the folder structure, sheet numbering and file naming to your way of working, because a set that is tidy but impossible to find does not help your organisation.
Frequently asked questions about as-built drawings costs
Let us handle your as-built drawings
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.