A CAD drafter rate can only be judged against the alternative, and that alternative is usually a freelancer or a new employee. With a freelancer, you buy in one pair of hands, with the knowledge and availability of that one person.
With a permanent employee, you also take on recruitment, onboarding, continued salary, holidays and sick leave, even in quieter months. We offer a third route. We deploy what the project needs from our large, variable team, and scale it back down as soon as the peak has passed.
If someone drops out, we replace them and the work carries on. You pay no ongoing salary costs and are not tied to a subscription. Billing is by the hour or per project at a fixed price, and we agree that together. Below we set out the comparison, plus how the collaboration works and how a first assignment begins.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Scaling capacity without hiring a CAD drafter
A peak in the drawing office rarely has a neat shape. A project is added, a revision round overruns, or a client suddenly asks for a complete set that has to be ready in three weeks. Hiring a CAD drafter does not solve that, because by the time someone has been recruited and onboarded, the peak is over. We solve it differently. Our team is already in place, made up of people who all have more than ten years of CAD experience, so we deploy what the project requires. For small assignments, that is one drafter.
For a large volume, we deploy as many drafters as needed from our large, flexible team, with Sam, our team leader, safeguarding the standard so the set does not fall apart. When things are urgent, we add people immediately. We did exactly that for a deadline that could not move, with the team working evenings and weekends on days of fourteen to fifteen hours. The work even carried on during Sam's planned holiday.
We do not call that a standard offer, but it shows what we do when a date is fixed. We absorb absences internally. A drafter's illness or holiday is our problem, not the client's, because we then deploy someone else who already knows the standard. That keeps staffing stable without a permanent employee being added to the payroll. We discuss beforehand what staffing is realistic, so your project lead knows what they can count on when the pressure rises.
A CAD drafter's rate compared with a freelancer and a permanent hire
A CAD drafter's rate says little without the context. A freelancer works alone, so they drop out when ill, and there is no second pair of eyes on their work. We work as a team with at least three layers of review, which keeps the number of errors minimal in practice. That saves rework that would otherwise still cost hours on the client's side. A freelancer can also only handle one project at a time, whereas we adjust the number of drafters to the volume. A permanent employee has different characteristics again.
After six months they know the company, its habits and its people, and that is real value. Against that stand recruitment, onboarding, training, licences and ongoing salary costs, even in weeks without work. We ask for none of that. We work with our own licences in our own environment, so your IT department does not have to set anything up. The intellectual property of what we draw belongs to the client. For structural base-level work, your own drafter often remains the logical choice.
For peaks, a temporary project and work with a lot of repetition, we are the calmer route, because the costs move in line with the work. Many clients combine both and keep their permanent drafters on work that requires knowledge of the company. They pass the repetitive volume and revision rounds on to us. That split keeps your own drawing office sharp and the costs in proportion to the work that is actually there.
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.
Working with our CAD team and one fixed point of contact
Barry, our project manager, is usually the first point of contact for new requests. He goes through the request, looks at the documents and makes sure the conversation covers the right things. Sam then takes over the technical side and keeps charge of project supervision. So you have one fixed point of contact and do not have to explain to a different drafter every week what is intended. Day-to-day contact is by email, phone and meetings. We come to you or welcome your drafting team at our office, although the work itself is done entirely remotely. We choose the meeting rhythm together. On a project running to a tight schedule we speak every two days, on a calmer project weekly. Files usually go back and forth by email. On larger projects, such as in greenhouse construction, we work with software the client can log into to follow the project, so your project lead can see for themselves where things stand.
We deliver in parts and collect feedback after each part. We process it before the next block starts, because a misunderstanding that stays in block one costs ten times as much in block four. We prefer to bundle questions into a short list rather than call your drafting team all day. That keeps meetings short and the pace high. If you find more coordination is needed, we step up the rhythm without making a separate agreement for it. The reverse works too, because for simple repetitive work a short weekly update is often enough.
Getting started with a CAD drafter from our team
Getting started with us begins with a conversation in which we go through the project. We want to know what type of drafting it is, which package it is in, roughly how many drawings there are and which date is fixed. We then ask for the documents. Usually these are existing drawings that need revising, supplemented by the details the client has on hand.
We also want to receive the drawing conventions, because we draft in the layer structure and naming that are already in place. If there is no such document, we derive the rules from the existing work and present them.
Sufficient information is all we need to start. We respond to a new request within 1 to 2 working days. A short assignment is welcome, and we often even recommend it. With a small first block, you can judge our speed and accuracy without risking a large volume. If you are happy, it grows from there. If not, it stops there with no obligations. What we ask for is clarity about the scope, because both the schedule and the estimate depend on it.
A drawing and a short description are enough to make the conversation concrete. We then tell you honestly whether this work suits us. If your project lead is unsure about the scope, we will help think through a sensible first step in that conversation. We also say when a job is better suited to your own drafter, because a poorly matched project helps nobody.
Frequently asked questions about CAD drafter rates
Let our CAD drafters take on your peak
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.