If you are looking for a CAD drafter for a project, you usually do not have months to spend on recruitment. There is a job on the table with a date attached, and your own drawing office is already at capacity. In that case we deploy people from a team that is already in place.
Our large, flexible team scales with each project, depending on what the brief requires and how tight the schedule is. When it is urgent, we add someone straight away, without a recruitment process and without months of onboarding.
Everyone who drafts for us has more than ten years of CAD experience, and the core of our team has around twenty-five years of combined experience. We draft and model, and we leave the engineering to you. We carry out the work remotely from our own office, following the drawing conventions you give us. We respond to an enquiry within 1 to 2 working days.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Scaling up with a CAD drafter for a project
Capacity is the reason behind almost every enquiry. A project comes in that your own team cannot fit in, or someone drops out at an inconvenient moment. We solve that with people who already work for us, not with a vacancy. For a small brief we deploy one drafter, and for a large project we bring in as many drafters as needed from our large, flexible team. That scaling applies within a project and between projects, so as soon as the peak is over we scale back down. As a result you pay no ongoing payroll costs and do not keep people on the payroll who have nothing to do once the peak has passed.
If someone on our side drops out due to illness or holiday, we replace them from the same team and the work continues. That is the difference with a single contractor, because a freelancer who drops out means the work grinds to a halt. When it is urgent, we add people straight away. That is how we once met a delivery date that could not slip, working evenings and weekends and days of fourteen to fifteen hours.
The project also kept running while Sam, our team leader, was on a planned holiday. Onboarding time is limited, because everyone who drafts for us has more than ten years of CAD experience and is used to working to someone else's standard. What we do need is a clear picture of that standard. Without a reference file and a layer list, our first day is mostly spent investigating rather than drafting.
Hire a CAD drafter or take someone on?
The choice is usually between three routes, namely a freelancer, a new employee or a firm like ours. A freelancer is quick to arrange and often works well, but you are still relying on one person's schedule. In case of illness, holiday or a second job elsewhere the drafting stops, and a freelancer cannot scale up. On top of that, a freelancer checks their own work. With us every sheet passes at least three review layers, because a drafter draws, a second team member checks it, Sam reviews it as team leader and Barry, our project manager, goes over it last. Taking someone on is a long-term decision.
It involves a recruitment process, an onboarding period, ongoing payroll costs and the risk that the peak is over before the new drafter is up to speed. For structural work that can be the right choice, and we will tell you so. For a project with a beginning and an end, it is an expensive detour. We charge pure working hours or a fixed project price, and nothing keeps running between jobs. We do not offer a prepaid hours card or a monthly hours subscription. What we draw is and remains your intellectual property.
If you are unsure, you can start small with a short job and decide afterwards. That first job also immediately gives us insight into how your drafting team works. We see how the layers are structured, how strict the naming is and where the existing set needs the most repair work. We take that knowledge with us into the follow-up.
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.
A fixed point of contact and a clear meeting rhythm
With us you have a fixed point of contact rather than a changing pool of people. Barry usually picks up a new enquiry first, and as soon as it gets into the content, Sam takes over the technical side. 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 leads the CAD team and is responsible for the technical side and project supervision. Your project lead therefore does not have to work out who should answer a question. We set the rhythm per project. On a tight schedule we speak every two days, on a calmer project weekly. Day-to-day contact runs via email, phone and meetings, and we are happy to visit you or host your team at our office.
Files go back and forth by email. On larger projects, such as greenhouse construction projects, we use software that you log into to follow the project's progress. For standalone AutoCAD work we keep it simple and deliver by email. We always deliver in stages, so feedback on the first block carries through into the rest of the set. That saves correction rounds afterwards and keeps your project lead involved without them having to check every day. So whatever we spot on our side, we share before it turns into a problem on their desk. If an agreement turns out to be a problem during the project, we raise it at the next meeting. Quietly carrying on with an assumption only leads to rework.
Getting started with a drafter at our office
We can start as soon as we have enough information. In practice that means the existing drawings or model, your drawing conventions, a reference file with the layer structure and title block, and clarity about the level of detail. If some of that is missing, we record our assumptions and send them for approval along with the first block.
That way your project lead stays in control without the work coming to a standstill. Our people work in our own environment with our own licences, so you do not need to set up a workstation or arrange access to your own network. At the start that often saves a week of coordination with the IT department.
We work with Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino, supplemented by Inventor, Grasshopper and, to a limited extent, Dynamo and Vault, always on the latest versions. We deliver in DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP, and in any other common CAD format. A short job is fine. In fact, we often recommend one ourselves for a first collaboration, because it lets you assess our pace and accuracy before a large package follows.
We respond to an enquiry within 1 to 2 working days, after which we schedule a meeting to go through the project. You can reach us by phone and through the contact form on this site. If you would like to visit, you are welcome at our office. The work itself then simply stays remote, because it lives in the files and not at a desk on your premises.
Frequently asked questions about a CAD drafter for a project
Bring in a CAD drafter for your project
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.