Contractors looking for a drafting firm usually have one short question: can an external team take over the drafting without the contractor first spending weeks explaining everything? It can, provided the drawing conventions and the existing documents are put on the table.
We ask for these at the start and then draft within that framework, so a sheet from us fits into the set that already exists. Our team is ready to go and consists of drafters with more than ten years of CAD experience, so no induction period is needed on the basics.
We deploy one drafter for a small job and, when things get busy, as many drafters as needed from our large, variable team. We draft and model; calculations, structural advice and permit documents fall outside our work. We respond to a new request within 1 to 2 working days, after which we agree the scope in a conversation. If someone is ill or on holiday, we replace them, so your construction schedule never has to wait for us.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Getting started with our drafting firm and what we need from you
Getting started with us takes very little preparation on the contractor's side. We need three things: the existing documents, the drawing conventions and a contact person who can make decisions. The existing documents are usually drawings that need a revision or an extension, sometimes supplemented with photos or survey data from the site. The drawing conventions cover the title block, layer structure, naming and scale your company uses. We get these from you, because we work to the client's standard, not to a house style of our own.
Once we have enough information, we start the work. We first go through the set you supply and flag what is missing, because a gap in the starting point multiplies later on. If something small is missing, we would rather find it out ourselves than call your work planner every day. We took the same approach with the as-built material from Firefly, which had been printed incorrectly and was partly drawn by hand. After that first review, we record the assumptions we are working with, so the work planner can confirm or correct them in one go.
A first job can be small. Many contractors let us start with a defined portion, such as a series of sheets or a round of revisions, and judge our speed and accuracy on that. If it works well, more work comes our way and we bring in additional drafters. We respond to a new request within 1 to 2 working days and then schedule a meeting to go through the project.
Contractors short on drafting capacity
For contractors, the trigger is almost always the same: there is not enough drafting time for the work coming in. Sometimes that is down to growth, sometimes to a peak lasting a few months, and sometimes to an experienced drafter leaving while three projects are running at once. The people at the table are then the owner, a team leader or the manager responsible for work preparation. Their problem is rarely the drafting itself, but the planning around it. The site is waiting for sheets, the supplier is waiting for dimensions, and the work planner cannot get round to the work only he can do.
In that situation, we take over the volume work, so your own team keeps room for the matters closest to the building site. We see a second pattern at companies where the drawing archive has fallen behind. Revisions are stored in several places, nobody knows which version is leading, and the folder on the server differs from what is pinned up on site. We bring sets like that back to a series of sheets that is correct. What these companies share is that the drawing office is the bottleneck, not the knowledge.
Besides contractors, our clients include engineering firms, architectural practices and manufacturers, so we know both sides of the chain. Our focus is on the Netherlands and the work is done remotely from our own office. Clients are welcome to visit, and we also come to them. If you want to know whether your situation is similar, a short conversation is the quickest way to hold it up against how we work.
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 we draft for a contractor
We supply the construction drafting, not the calculations. For a contractor, that means working drawings, setting-out drawings, detail sheets and the openings and connections needed on site. We update existing sets after a change on site and process the revision rounds that follow. As-built drawings are a category of their own, especially when the site team has solved something differently from what the drawing specified. That also includes cleaning up material that was partly drawn by hand or printed at the wrong scale. Where 2D is not enough, we model in 3D and extract the sheets from the model, for example at a junction where several disciplines meet. Our output follows your company's title block, layer structure and numbering. We leave the numbering already circulating on site untouched, because a new numbering system costs the site team more time than it saves.
We deliver in DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format a supplier or subcontractor asks for. Our software is Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino, supplemented by Inventor and Grasshopper, always in the latest versions. For standalone drafting jobs we send the work by email in batches, so the work planner does not have to wait for the complete package. On larger projects we use software the client logs into to follow progress. We are just as clear about what we do not do: we do not make calculations, we do not advise on structural matters and we do not handle permits. Ownership of everything we draw lies with the client.
Scaling up when the contractor's drawing office gets stuck
Scaling up is the reason most contractors call us. A project is brought forward in the schedule, a second job starts earlier than expected, and your own drafter cannot split in two. We then start small and scale up within the same project with as many drafters as needed, because our team is large and variable. Our team is already in place, so scaling up involves no recruitment time and no induction on the basics.
When it is urgent, we add people straight away instead of putting the job in a queue. The drawing conventions stay the same throughout, because Sam, our team leader, divides the work and makes sure every sheet reads the same.
When the volume drops again, we scale down without redundancy procedures and without any aftermath for the contractor. There are no ongoing payroll costs with us, and if someone is ill or on holiday we put someone else on the job. That difference weighs heavily in a sector where the workload can turn from one quarter to the next. So a contractor buys drafting work from us, not permanent staffing. The distinction lies mainly in what is left once the work dries up.
We showed how far we will go when a date is truly fixed on a deadline that could not move. Our team worked evenings and weekends, with days of fourteen to fifteen hours, even during Sam's planned holiday. That is not our standard rhythm and we do not present it as such, but it shows how we deal with a hard delivery date. We only estimate exactly what a peak requires once we have seen the documents.
Frequently asked questions about a drafting firm for contractors
Let us handle your contractor drafting
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.