Bringing in a drafting firm for kitchen manufacturing means, in practice, adding drafting capacity quickly and without a long induction period. At OutsourceCAD we organise that work from our own office, with a permanent team that drafts entirely remotely. The production work is done by drafters who all have more than ten years of CAD experience, led by Sam, our team leader, who has over fifteen years of background in architecture.
Barry, our project manager, is usually the first point of contact for a new request, after which Sam takes over the technical side.
We draft and model; we do no engineering, and we keep that boundary sharp. For kitchen manufacturers, that means 2D drafting, 3D modelling where needed, as-built drawings and revision rounds on existing sets. Our work passes through at least three review layers before the client sees anything back. That takes us a little more time internally, but it keeps the number of errors to a minimum in practice. That way the client's own drawing office stays free for the work that belongs there.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Scaling up with a drafting firm for kitchen manufacturing
We start with as many drafters as the work requires and scale up with our large, variable team as soon as the volume calls for it. The team is already in place, so we do not have to recruit or train anyone before the work begins. When it is urgent, we add people straight away, for example when a kitchen manufacturer has to detail a series of project kitchens and their own drawing office is full. When the volume drops again, we reduce the staffing just as easily. The client pays us no ongoing payroll costs for capacity that sits idle.
If someone is off due to illness or holiday, we replace that person and the drafting carries on. That is the difference from an in-house drafter who is temporarily unavailable: with us, the schedule holds. The core of our team has about twenty-five years of combined experience, and everyone who drafts for us has more than ten years of CAD behind them. As a result, a new drafter on an ongoing project does not have to start from scratch. We hand over internally, using the client's drawing conventions and standard as the starting point.
When a project runs for longer, we keep the same drafters on it so knowledge of the set stays within the team. A kitchen manufacturer with a lot of repetitive cabinet construction, dimension corrections and recurring detail drawings notices this above all in lead time. We take away the volume; the client keeps control. For us, scaling up is not a promise on paper but a matter of deploying people who already know the work.
A drafting firm for kitchen manufacturing or hiring a freelancer
Hiring a freelancer or taking on a permanent drafter solves the same problem, but in a different way. A permanent employee costs recruitment, induction time and an ongoing salary, even in months when the order book is thinner. A single freelancer is one person with one diary, and that diary is exactly the bottleneck as soon as two kitchen projects need to be drawn up at the same time. We put a team on it, and that team can grow or shrink without the client having to arrange anything. Then there is the review: with us, one person drafts, a second team member checks the work, Sam reviews it as team leader and Barry goes over it last.
A solo drafter by definition checks his own work. On a set with dozens of cabinet details and connection dimensions, that is where the risk lies. We also only bill pure working hours; if someone steps away for five minutes for a coffee, the clock stops. If we charge per project at a fixed price, the client knows in advance where they stand. We work in our own environment with our own licences, so no workstation, licence or hardware needs to be set up.
The intellectual property of everything we draw belongs to the client. A kitchen manufacturer torn between hiring and outsourcing can start small with us on a short assignment and then decide whether it works. We can deliberately keep such a first assignment small, so the client can judge our speed and accuracy before a larger package follows.
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 drafting firm for kitchen manufacturing
With us, a project starts with a conversation in which we go through the project and gather the details. After that, the client keeps one fixed point of contact: Barry picks up the request, and Sam takes over the technical side and leads the CAD team. We are in daily contact by email, phone and meetings. We set the rhythm together with the client: on a tight schedule we speak every two days, for calmer work weekly is enough. We deliver in batches, gather feedback, make adjustments and carry on. That way the project leader sees early on whether the approach is right, rather than only when a complete set arrives. For standalone drafting jobs, files go back and forth by email. On larger projects we work with software the client can log into to follow the project, as we do on greenhouse construction projects.
We come to the client or they come to our office; the work itself stays remote. Our experience with Firefly shows what that delivers: more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings, including a barely legible as-built file we sorted out ourselves instead of calling about it every time. We take the same attitude with kitchen manufacturers. We ask questions when it is really necessary and work out the rest ourselves. We record the agreements on layer structure, naming and output in our meetings, so a next series of drawings follows the same approach without discussion. That saves the client's drawing office time, and that is exactly why people call us.
Getting started with drafting for kitchen manufacturing
For a good start, what we mainly need is input: the project details and usually the existing drawings that need a revision. If the client supplies a set of DWGs with their own layer structure and title block, we continue working in it to that standard. We do not invent our own drawing conventions; we get them from the client. If no conventions have been recorded yet, we gather them in the first conversation and record them together.
After a new request, you receive our response within 1 to 2 working days. That is followed by a conversation in which we go through the work, estimate the scope and decide whether we work by the hour or at a fixed project price.
Once the information is in place, we can begin. We then immediately schedule the drafters best suited to the type of work, and when it is urgent we add extra people. We deliberately keep the first delivery small, such as a partial series of cabinet drawings or a single project sheet, so the client sees how we work before the volume increases.
If that first round shows that the dimensions or detailing need to change, we process that and carry it through the rest of the set. We deliver in DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP, and in practice any common CAD format, always in the latest versions. A short assignment is fine; a large contract up front is not necessary. If you want to know whether it is a fit, call us or fill in the contact form.
Frequently asked questions about a drafting firm for kitchen manufacturing
Hand your kitchen 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.