If you have had a 'BIM drafter wanted' ad out and are still left with an empty chair after weeks of searching, you will see project lead times start to climb straight away. We fill that gap in a different way. Our team is already in place, so we do not need to recruit, onboard or train anyone before the drafting starts.
That saves your project lead a recruitment process that can take months. We respond to a new enquiry within 1 to 2 working days, and as soon as we have enough information we can start.
If the project calls for more capacity, our large, variable team scales up straight away. If things quieten down afterwards, we take people off again. Everyone working on CAD with us has more than ten years of experience, and the core of the team has around twenty-five years of combined practice. We produce drawings and models, not engineering. That boundary keeps things sharp: you set the design principles and we make sure the drawing set is right.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Parametric work delivered by our BIM drafters
A large part of the time saved comes not from drawing faster, but from building smarter. We build parametric Revit families: smart components that adapt to a different situation or size. We make such a component once and our drafters then place it wherever it is needed, without redrawing it. If the component changes, the linked material schedule changes automatically along with it. The clearest example from our practice comes from greenhouse construction. Companies in that sector often work in AutoCAD, and AutoCAD is not smart at building components such as valves in piping systems.
If you need a valve in 90 and in 110 there, you draw it by hand every time. With a smart family, we place it in a single action, and in that kind of work it saves at least seventy per cent of the time. We can clean up an existing family set or build a new one. Which makes more sense depends on the state of what is there. If the existing set is very messy, rebuilding is sometimes faster than repairing, and we present that trade-off upfront so you can choose for yourself.
Besides families, we also set up templates, so the next project does not start from zero. For a drawing office that has been looking for a BIM drafter to do exactly this work, this approach delivers more than an extra pair of hands. The gain lies in a model that then moves smoothly with changes, revisions and new variants. We deliberately keep the set-up simple, because a family nobody dares to touch any more costs time again later.
Software, versions and formats for the BIM drafter
Our main software is Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino. On top of that come Inventor and Grasshopper, and to a limited extent we work with Dynamo and Vault. We always work with the latest versions, so a supplied model does not get stuck on an outdated installation on our side. We deliver files in DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format you use. Important for a drawing office that has been looking for a BIM drafter: we work in our own environment with our own licences.
So we do not log in to your workstations and we do not ask for extra licence seats. What we do adopt is your standard. Layer arrangement, naming, title blocks, hatching and the drawing conventions that already apply internally are supplied to us and we follow them, even if they differ from what we would choose ourselves. A set that changes style halfway through costs more time later than it saves, so we are strict about that. Files go back and forth by email.
On larger projects, such as greenhouse construction projects, we work with software you can log in to in order to follow the project. For standalone AutoCAD drafting, we keep it simple and deliver by email. If a template or a usable set of conventions is missing, we establish one together with your drawing office manager before the first sheet goes out. That keeps the exchange predictable, even when several of our drafters are working on the same project at once.
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.
What our BIM drafters actually deliver
We deliver 2D drafting and, where needed, 3D modelling, as-built drawings and revisions. In practice, that means floor plans, sections, elevations, details and schematics, plus the models those sheets come from. Much of that work comes in at high volume and is full of repetition, and that is exactly what our drafters are set up for. A revision pass on an existing DWG set is a typical package: you supply the existing drawings and the changes, we process them and return a consistent set. The same goes for an as-built file that has been partly drawn by hand and no longer matches reality. At Firefly, we came across such a file with incorrectly printed sheets and hand-drawn sections that were hard to read. We sorted that out ourselves instead of calling every day, and still delivered it neatly.
For that client, we have now completed more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings. In greenhouse construction, it is more often about piping schematics and repeating components, where the same valve in two sizes keeps coming back. We deliver the output in the format you use, so nobody has to convert anything afterwards. We draft and model, but we do not calculate and we do not give structural advice. So if you have been looking for a BIM drafter for production work, that is exactly what you get from us: sheets and models that are right, in the agreed order and in the agreed format. We agree upfront what needs to be finished in each phase, so partial deliveries do not get in the way.
Three review layers on our drafters' work
Every sheet that leaves our office passes through at least three review layers. A drafter draws, a second team member checks that work, Sam, our team leader, then gives it a technical review and Barry, our project manager, does the final round. That set-up sounds heavy for a single drawing, but with hundreds of sheets it is the only way to keep the number of errors minimal in practice.
Sam has more than fifteen years of background in architecture, worked in Iran for seven years, ran his own design firm in the Netherlands and still works as an engineer. He directs our CAD team and is responsible for the technical side and project supervision.
What those layers mainly prevent is the silent type of error: dimensions on sheet seven that differ from sheet two, a layer that is named differently in one drawing, a detail that remained on the old version after a revision. Such things only become apparent once the set is already with the contractor, and then they cost far more than a review round. We deliver in stages, gather feedback, make adjustments and carry on, so you are not suddenly handed a pile of corrections at the end.
When a deadline once could not slip, our team worked evenings and weekends with days of fourteen to fifteen hours, even while Sam was on a planned holiday. That is not our standard rhythm, but it shows how we deal with a hard date. For anyone who has been looking for a BIM drafter, that is often the difference that counts.
Frequently asked questions: BIM drafter wanted
Hand your BIM 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.