As a drafting firm for MEP engineering, we draft, and we explicitly do not do engineering. We do not make calculations, we do not advise on structures and we do not handle permits. What we do take on is the drafting and modelling work that comes back in high volume on MEP projects, such as piping diagrams, floor plans with installation components, sections, as-built drawings and revision rounds on existing DWGs.
That scope is a deliberate choice. Our clients have the technical knowledge in-house and are only short of drafting capacity.
We fill that gap with a permanent team in which everyone has been working with CAD for more than ten years. Sam, our team leader, manages the work and safeguards the technical side, while Barry, our project manager, is the first point of contact for a new enquiry. We work nationwide from our own office, with our own licences and the latest versions of Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino. You are welcome to visit, but the work is carried out remotely. We respond within 1 to 2 working days of a new enquiry.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
The repetitive work in MEP engineering
Most of the volume in MEP engineering is not in the special solution, but in the repetition around it. A pipe route that follows the same pattern over four floors. A fitting that appears on the floor plan again and again in two or three sizes. A set of sections that is almost identical for each building section and still needs attention one by one. That is exactly the part we take over, because that is where most of the hours go and where the least brainpower from your own drawing office is needed. In practice, we see that a project leader would rather deploy his experienced drafters on the tricky junctions and coordination with the installer, and hand the rest of the detailing to us.
Our approach is then kept simple. At the start we ask which components recur in the project, how often and in which variants. We probe further on the points that would otherwise come back halfway through. We then set up the work so that a variant does not have to be created from scratch each time but follows from an existing component.
For a revision round on an existing set, we first go through the drawings to see what is already usable. Sometimes a set is clean and adjusting it is enough. Sometimes the layer structure is so polluted that we are better off starting again, and then we say so. We only bill genuine working hours, so we make that call together with you before the hours start running. We agree the pace together, and during a peak in the drawing office we add capacity quickly.
Parametric working at a drafting firm for MEP engineering
In MEP engineering, a smart component saves more time than any working agreement. We build parametric Revit families, in other words components that adapt to a new situation or a different size. We create the component once, then place it wherever it is needed without redrawing it. The material schedule updates automatically: if the component changes, the schedule changes with it. The clearest example comes from our work for greenhouse construction. There, drawings are often made in AutoCAD, and AutoCAD is not smart at building components such as valves in piping systems.
If you need a valve at 90 and at 110, you draw it by hand again every time. With a smart family, we place it in a single action. The time saved on this kind of work is at least seventy percent. We can clean up an existing family set or build a new one, and which makes more sense depends on the state of the existing library. If a set is very messy, rebuilding it is sometimes faster than repairing it. We look at that without fuss and present our reasoning.
Besides Revit, we work with AutoCAD and Rhino, as well as Inventor, Grasshopper and, to a limited extent, Dynamo and Vault. We always work with the latest versions and in our own environment, with our own licences. So you do not need to free up a workstation or licence for us. We document every family we build so that your own drafters can extend it themselves later.
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 deliver and how the set moves on
For us, a drawing is only finished when someone else can carry on with it without picking up the phone. We deliver in DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format you use. We draft to the standard and drawing conventions you give us, so the layer structure, naming and title block layout match what is already there. That sounds obvious, but it is the reason a set can go straight into the next stage of the process on delivery. The contractor, the estimating team or your own drawing office does not have to rework it first. We deliberately deliver in stages. After each batch we collect feedback, make the changes and move on, so any deviation in the approach surfaces early and not at the end of a whole set.
Before the work leaves the building, it goes through at least three review layers. A drafter draws, a second team member checks that work, then Sam checks it as team leader, and Barry looks over it last. As a result, the number of errors stays minimal in practice. Everything we produce remains your intellectual property. For standalone drafting, files go back and forth by email. We support larger projects such as greenhouse construction with software you can log into to follow the project. We do not draw a file full of assumptions, so we raise any unclear points at the next meeting. Anyone who opens the set later should be able to see from its structure why a component is where it is.
Scaling up with a drafting firm for MEP engineering
Capacity is almost always the reason a client calls us. Too little time, too few drafters, or a peak your own team cannot take on. Sometimes one drafter is enough, sometimes we deploy as many drafters from our large, variable team as the project requires. The team is already in place, so we deploy what the project needs and do not have to recruit anyone.
In urgent cases we add people straight away, and if someone is ill or on holiday we replace them so the work carries on. You have no ongoing salary costs with us, because we only bill genuine working hours. If someone steps away for five minutes to get a coffee, we stop the clock.
We charge by the hour or per project at a fixed price, whichever suits the assignment, agreed together. We do not work with prepaid hour bundles or a monthly hours subscription. A short assignment is fine, and many clients start with a small first job to judge our speed and accuracy. However busy it gets, you keep a fixed point of contact: Barry for the enquiry and the agreements, Sam for the technical side and guidance. Sam has more than fifteen years of background in architecture, worked in Iran for seven years, ran his own design practice in the Netherlands and still works as an engineer.
Combined, the core of the team has around twenty-five years of experience. We match the meeting rhythm to the pressure, from weekly to every two days. Scaling down works the same way, so as soon as the peak is over we take the extra drafters off the project.
Frequently asked questions about our drafting firm for MEP engineering
Hand your MEP 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.