When you search for freelance CAD drafter wanted, the conversation soon turns to cost. We set the price by the hour or per project, and we agree together which form suits. Either way, we only bill net working hours. The moment someone goes for a five-minute coffee, we stop the clock.
That sounds minor, but across a series of hundreds of drawings it is the difference between paying for presence and paying for drafting. There are no ongoing payroll costs, and we do not use prepaid hour bundles or a monthly hours subscription either.
OutsourceCAD takes on outsourced CAD drafting for companies that lack the drafting capacity in-house. We draft and model, often at high volume and with a lot of repetition, and we do not do engineering. The work is done entirely remotely from our own office, following the drawing conventions the client gives us. We respond to a new enquiry within 1 to 2 working days.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Who looks for a freelance CAD drafter
The clients who come to us for a freelance CAD drafter are engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers. We also hear from companies for which technical drafting is a side activity and that have barely freed up anyone internally to do it. The people at the table are managers, team leaders and owners, and they mainly look at lead time and at the hours it takes. The trigger is almost always capacity. Too little time, too few drafters, or a peak the in-house team cannot absorb. Underneath, it is often a question of allocation.
The experienced drafters are busy with work that requires expertise, while the repetitive part is left lying. Think of a revision round across a drawing set that has been on the schedule for months, or a piping diagram in which the same valve in 90 and in 110 is drawn over and over again. That work does not need to be done by the most expensive people, but it does need to be right. We take over exactly that part. Your own team then has time left for the parts that really require coordination.
Our clients are in the Netherlands and our focus is on the Netherlands. So far we work with one client, Firefly, for whom we have completed more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings. A client asked for it, so we started this service last year and have simply offered it as a standard service ever since. We do not have public reviews yet, so if you want to form a view, the best approach is to have us carry out a short assignment and compare the result with your own standard.
Scaling up beyond a single freelance CAD drafter
If you look for a freelance CAD drafter, you are looking for one person, and with that comes the risk that goes with one person. We work differently. Our large, flexible team is already in place and scales with whatever each project requires. When things are urgent, we add people straight away, without having to recruit or onboard anyone first. For a project lead, that mainly means predictability.
If the volume rises because a phase is brought forward, more hands join and the drawing conventions stay the same. If it falls, we scale down without anyone being kept on the payroll. In case of illness or holiday, we replace someone so the work carries on, and that replacement risk sits with us. Everyone who works for us has more than ten years of CAD experience, so scaling up does not mean the quality level shifts with the staffing. Sam, our team leader, oversees the technical side and project supervision, even when more drafters are working on the same project.
Whatever else changes, the review sequence stays the same. Every sheet goes through at least three review layers before it goes out. A drafter draws, a second team member checks that work, Sam reviews it as team leader and Barry, our project manager, does the final round. For a deadline that could not slip, the team has previously worked through evenings and weekends, with days of fourteen to fifteen hours. That is not how we plan as standard, but it shows that capacity with us is more than a list of names on paper.
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.
The cost side of a freelance CAD drafter
With us, the cost side of a freelance CAD drafter is arranged in one of two ways. We work on an hourly basis or at a fixed price per project. Which it will be depends on the kind of assignment in front of us. The right form depends on how precisely the work can be described in advance. A clearly defined series of drawings with a clear standard lends itself well to a fixed price. A revision round whose scope only becomes clear once the files are opened is better accounted for by the hour. We discuss that in advance and put it in writing, so no ambiguity arises during the project. On an hourly basis, we only bill net working hours. Five minutes away for coffee means the clock stops. There are no ongoing payroll costs, no prepaid hour bundles and no monthly hours subscription, so nothing is paid for availability.
What keeps costs down most in practice is the quality of the input. Complete details, clear CAD standards and an internally consistent set save hours at the start that would otherwise go into investigation. Repetitive work also becomes cheaper the more it is built from fixed components. A parametric Revit family, once made, does not need to be drawn again, and in greenhouse construction work that saves at least seventy percent of the time. We do not put amounts on a page, because an estimate without the files is worth little. If you want an indication, put the project to us and you will receive an estimate based on the actual work.
A fixed point of contact and your own meeting rhythm
Barry is usually the first point of contact for a new enquiry. After that, Sam takes over the technical side as team leader, and that combination stays in place throughout the project. You therefore have a fixed point of contact and do not need to deal with individual drafters. 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.
He leads the CAD team and is responsible for the technical side and project supervision. We agree on the meeting rhythm per client. One wants to catch up every two days, another weekly, depending on how fast things need to move.
Day-to-day contact runs through email, phone and meetings, and we come to you or you come to us. The work itself is carried out remotely from our own office, in our own environment and with our own licences. Files go back and forth by email. On larger projects, such as greenhouse construction projects, we work with software where you can log in and follow the project, so you can see for yourself how far along it is.
For standalone drafting, such an environment adds little and we stick to email. We deliver in stages and gather feedback after each stage. If you would rather receive the set in larger steps, just say so, although in practice we find shorter rounds work better. This way of working makes following along concrete, because there is always recent work to comment on.
Frequently asked questions about a freelance CAD drafter wanted
Let us handle your CAD 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.