Questions about drafting firm costs rarely come to us out of the blue, because there is almost always a peak, a deadline or a vacancy that just will not get filled behind them. A drawing office is running at full capacity, another project comes in, and the schedule has already slipped by two weeks.
At that point the question is not just about a rate, but about how quickly someone can get to work. We take on that work from our own office, with an established team and our own licences.
We draft and model, and leave the engineering to the client. We charge by the hour or per project at a fixed price, counting only pure working hours. There are no ongoing salary costs, and we do not use a prepaid block of hours. On this page you can read what information we need to get started, which companies this applies to and how far we can scale up. We respond to new enquiries within 1 to 2 working days. Our focus is on the Netherlands.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Starting quickly and how much that saves
We start as soon as we have enough information, and that is less than many firms expect. We need the existing drawings, the client's drawing conventions and a clear picture of what needs to be delivered. Usually we receive a set that needs revising, plus a short explanation of what it is for. If a template or title block is missing, we agree on it in the first conversation. That conversation is with Barry, our project manager, who picks up new enquiries, after which Sam, our team leader, takes over the technical side.
From that point on, the work can get under way. Starting quickly saves money straight away, because waiting time in a project always comes back somewhere. If you wait three weeks for an external party, you lose those weeks in your own schedule too. We do not need to recruit anyone or set up an environment, because we work with our own licences in our own environment. So your IT department does not need to arrange anything.
A short assignment is fine, and it is often the best way to begin. You then see our speed and accuracy before a larger part follows. We do not tie anyone to a minimum volume, a subscription or a fixed number of hours per month. If the work continues after that, we carry on at the same pace. If it stays at that one set, that is fine too. Either way, the intellectual property of the work belongs to you. If you wish, we sign an NDA before the first files are exchanged.
Who drafting firm costs are relevant for
Drafting firm costs are mainly relevant for organisations that do not have enough drafting capacity of their own. Our clients are engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers. We also work for companies that simply have a lot of technical drafting to do. The people we talk to are managers, team leaders and owners, who are responsible for both planning and staffing. The trigger is almost always capacity. There is too little time, there are too few drafters, or a peak is coming that the in-house team cannot handle. At an engineering firm, for example, there may be a revision round on hundreds of DWGs that nobody can fit in.
At a contractor, as-built work piles up after the project on site has already been completed. At a manufacturer, product documentation falls behind while sales carry on. In all these cases the problem is not complicated, but it is urgent. We started offering this service last year because a client asked for it. That went well, and since then we have offered it as a standard service. For Firefly we have now completed more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings. We do not have public reviews yet, so we prefer to let a first assignment tell the story.
Our clients are based in the Netherlands, and we work nationwide without distance playing a role. The work itself is done remotely, and we schedule meetings as often as the project requires. If you prefer to sit around the table, you are welcome to visit us or host us at your own office. That regularly happens at the start of a larger project. After that, contact naturally shifts to email and phone.
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 a drafting firm delivers with us
We deliver drafting and modelling work, and nothing else. That means 2D drafting, 3D modelling where needed, as-built drawings and revisions to existing sets. In practice it covers floor plans, sections, elevations, detail sheets and part drawings. In Revit we build the model and derive the sheets from it. In AutoCAD we work up individual drawings, usually in high volume with a lot of repetition. We use Rhino for freer forms, and Inventor, Grasshopper, Dynamo and Vault come in when the work calls for them. We deliver in DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format. We always run the latest versions. You set the standard, and we follow it right down to line weights and hatching. That way a sheet from us does not stand out among the sheets from your own drafters.
At Firefly we received as-built material that had been printed incorrectly and was partly drawn by hand. It was hard to read and messy, and we worked it out ourselves instead of calling the client every day. In the end there was a clean, consistent set. We deliver in stages, gather feedback, make adjustments and carry on until the set is complete. Calculations, structural advice and permits are not part of our work. We keep that boundary sharp, because that is where the client's own expertise lies. What we do take on, we do in volume and with fixed agreements on the layout. That makes drafting firm costs easy to estimate in advance.
Scaling up without extra fixed costs
Our team is already in place, so scaling up takes no recruitment time. A small project can start with one drafter, and when the volume calls for it, we deploy as many drafters from our large, variable team as needed. When something is urgent, we add people to the ongoing assignment straight away. We first check whether the work can be divided up.
A set of hundreds of similar sheets divides well across several drafters. A small number of complex models does not, because then time goes into coordination. Everyone who works for us has more than ten years of CAD experience, and the core of the team has around twenty-five years combined.
As a result, someone can join as soon as the drawing conventions are clear. If a team member is off due to illness or holiday, we replace them and the work continues. You pay no ongoing salary costs and are not left with surplus staff after a delivery. That difference weighs heavily when comparing drafting firm costs with hiring someone in-house. We know what a hard deadline demands. For a date that could not slip, our team worked through evenings and weekends, with days of fourteen to fifteen hours.
Even during Sam's planned holiday, the work simply carried on. We make such arrangements in advance, so you know where you stand. Scaling back down works just as easily, because we only charge for the hours we work. A project that comes to a halt costs you nothing more with us after that. That keeps the flexibility on both sides.
Frequently asked questions about drafting firm costs
Hand your drafting peak 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.