When you hire a BIM modeller temporarily through us, one thing matters on the cost side: you pay only for actual working hours. If someone takes five minutes to get a coffee, the clock stops. Billing can be hourly or per project at a fixed price, to be agreed together.
We do not offer prepaid hour bundles or monthly hour subscriptions, because arrangements like that lead to hours nobody can account for. There are no ongoing payroll costs either, because the work stops as soon as the job does.
Our team drafts and models in Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino, and where needed in Inventor, Grasshopper, Dynamo or Vault. We do not do engineering and do not give structural advice. The work is carried out remotely from our own office, with our own licences and always the latest versions, and our focus is on the Netherlands. More than ten years of CAD experience is the minimum for everyone on our team. We respond to enquiries within 1 to 2 working days.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Get started quickly with a temporary BIM modeller
Getting started takes little time once we know what we are dealing with. We ask for your CAD standards, a recent set and a description of the result you want. Usually the client supplies existing drawings that need revising, together with the associated details. We go through those documents first, then report what is missing and which choices we would make. Only once that is clear do we put a drafter to work. That spares the project leader the situation where, after a week, there are thirty sheets that do not quite match his standard.
We respond to a new enquiry within 1 to 2 working days, followed by a conversation about the project. We can start as soon as we have enough information, and in practice that is often less than firms expect. A complete sample sheet tells us more than a lengthy explanation. We deliberately keep the first delivery small, for example a few sheets or a single component. That lets you assess our speed and accuracy before the volume follows.
If it looks right, we scale up at the agreed pace. If it does not, nothing has been broken yet and we adjust course. For temporary work this set-up is convenient, because a short assignment is perfectly fine with us. We ask for no minimum commitment and oblige no one to continue. For one-off drafting work, files go back and forth by email, and for larger projects we use software your team can log into. We decide together at the start which approach fits.
Firms that hire a modeller temporarily
The request almost always comes from firms where the work is growing faster than their headcount. Engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers call us, and more broadly any company with technical drafting work. Around the table sit managers, team leaders and owners who do not need to see a drawing to recognise the problem. They are facing a peak in workload, a drafter who is leaving or a project that has to be finished sooner than the schedule allows. Hiring staff is rarely the answer then, because recruitment takes months and the work cannot wait.
Hiring temporarily is a better fit, especially when the peak has a clear start and end. At engineering firms, we often see a revision round on a large set of DWGs that nobody gets round to. At architectural practices, it is more often model work while their own people are busy with design and meetings. Contractors have as-built material that needs sorting out and sheets that have to be usable on site. Manufacturers work with components that recur in dozens of sizes, where manual work piles up.
In all these cases the problem is the same: too few hours and too much drafting. We fill that gap with people who have been in the trade for a long time, so no onboarding period is needed. Our clients are in the Netherlands, and that is where we focus. For Firefly we have completed more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings, and that partnership started in exactly this way. A client asked for it, it worked well, and since then we have offered it as a standard service.
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 as a temporary BIM modeller
As a temporary BIM modeller, we take over the hands-on drafting work, from model to sheet. We develop the Revit model, place building elements, set up zones and levels and keep the information in the model consistent. From it, we deliver floor plans, sections, elevations, detail sheets and the associated schedules. In AutoCAD, we produce 2D sets, including piping diagrams, overview sheets and detailing on sheet. We use Rhino for 3D modelling where the form calls for more freedom. As-built drawings make up a large part of our work, as we bring surveyed situations and old sheets back into a single up-to-date set. Revisions are part of that, and we handle them grouped per round rather than sheet by sheet. We build parametric Revit families wherever repetition can be captured in a smart component.
Such a component adapts to a different size and carries the material schedule along automatically. We can clean up existing families and templates, and with a very messy set we would rather rebuild it. Our output is delivered in DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format. We deliver the source files, not just an export, so your drawing office can carry on with them independently. The intellectual property of that work belongs to the client. We are upfront about what we do not do. Calculations, structural advice and permits are outside our field, and we stay out of them. Our part is drafting and modelling, and we deliver it in line with the client's standard.
Scaling capacity and cover for absence
For us, temporary deployment means staffing follows the work, not the other way round. We often start with one drafter and deploy as many drafters from our large, flexible team as the volume requires. The team is already in place, so scaling up takes a scheduling agreement rather than a recruitment round. For urgent work, we add people to an ongoing assignment straight away.
That is possible because all our drafters have more than ten years of CAD experience and the core of the team brings around twenty-five years combined. Before more people work on the same set, we fix layers, naming and sheet layout.
Sam, our team leader, then makes sure everyone makes the same choices, so the set remains one coherent whole. If a drafter is off sick or on holiday, we replace them internally and the work carries on. In that situation, you pay nothing extra and have no gap in your schedule. That is exactly the difference with your own temporary hire, where the risk of absence lies with your firm. If the volume drops, we take people off the project and their time recording stops.
We have no interest in staffing that is larger than the work justifies. For a deadline that could not move, our team worked evenings and weekends, with days of fourteen to fifteen hours. We agree on that kind of commitment in advance, so expectations are right on both sides. How many people a project needs usually becomes clear from the first pass through the documents supplied.
Frequently asked questions about hiring a BIM modeller temporarily
Let us take on your BIM modelling
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.