When you want to hire a drafter, you are usually choosing between three routes. Bring a freelancer onto the project for a few months, recruit a permanent drafter, or hand the work to an external team. The first route gives you one pair of hands, and those hands get ill, go on holiday or move on to the next job.
The second takes recruitment time and creates an obligation that remains once the peak is over. We are the third route.
Our team is already in place, we deploy what the project needs and scale back down as soon as the volume drops. You pay no ongoing salary costs and keep one fixed point of contact. We draft and model, while engineering stays with the parties appointed for it. The work is carried out remotely from our own office, where we use our own licences. You will hear back from us within 1 to 2 working days of a new request.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
What happens after you hire a drafter from us
If you want to hire a drafter from us, you start with a conversation, not a contract. In it we go through the work on the table, the documents available and the agreements that apply within the project. You supply the details, usually together with existing drawings that need a revision. We read through that set first. Only then do we say anything about staffing and pace, because the state of the source material makes the work heavier or lighter than the number of sheets suggests. The work then goes out in stages.
We deliver a first part, gather feedback, process it and move on to the next part. That sequence keeps any misunderstanding small. If you only look at the end, you discover a wrong assumption across a hundred sheets instead of ten. Before a part goes out, it passes through at least three review layers: a drafter draws it, a second team member checks that work, Sam, our team leader, then reviews it and Barry, our project manager, gives the final assessment.
We match the rhythm of our meetings to the urgency of the project. For work that needs to be done quickly we speak every two days, and for a calmer project a weekly moment is enough. In between, contact runs by email and phone. We visit you or welcome you at our office when a set is better discussed around a table. We process feedback in the live set rather than in a separate final round, so last week's comments are visible in this week's work.
Software and file formats when you hire a drafter
Our main software is Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino. We also work with Inventor and Grasshopper, and to a limited extent with Dynamo and Vault. You decide which package leads, not us, because the work has to fit in with what already exists. If the existing set runs in AutoCAD, it stays in AutoCAD and we will not start modelling unasked. If the project runs in Revit, we continue building the model and generate the sheets from it.
We always work with the latest versions and deliver in DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format. More important than the package is the way we connect with the existing set. We work to your standard and your drawing conventions, which you provide. That means adopting the layer structure, naming, title blocks and templates already in use. A drafter who brings their own habits delivers a set that is technically correct but does not fit into the archive.
On Revit projects we also look at the families and templates. If the existing set is clogged with variants nobody uses any more, we clean it up or rebuild it. Which is wiser depends on the state of the existing set, because rebuilding a very messy family set is sometimes faster than repairing it. We work in our own environment with our own licences, so there is no need to log in to your systems.
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.
Scaling up and cover within our drafting team
Capacity is the reason behind almost every request. There is too little time, too few drafters, or a peak on the way that the in-house team cannot absorb. Our large, variable team scales with each project, from one drafter for a small job to as many drafters as a large project needs. The team is already in place, so we deploy what the project requires without having to recruit first. When something is urgent we add people immediately, which in practice means a large set is worked through in parallel rather than sheet by sheet. When the volume drops, we take people off again. Absence is the biggest risk with a single hired drafter, and with us that risk lies with us, not with you. If someone is ill or on holiday we replace them so the work carries on, and Sam oversees the handover.
Because the work is set up to the client's standard and several people know the set, a replacement does not have to start from scratch. Every drafter on our team has more than ten years of CAD experience, and the core of the team has roughly twenty-five years of experience combined. Sam has more than fifteen years of background in architecture, ran his own design practice in the Netherlands, still works as an engineer and leads the CAD team on a daily basis. When a deadline on one project could not move, the team worked through evenings and weekends with days of fourteen to fifteen hours, including during a planned holiday of Sam's.
Getting started when you hire a drafter
To get started, we mainly need information about the content of the work. That begins with the project details and the existing drawings we will be building on. We also want to know which CAD standards apply, which version of a set is leading and in which formats the delivery should be made. If there is a date that cannot move, we would rather hear it in the first conversation than halfway through.
With enough information we can start straight away. We respond to a new request within 1 to 2 working days, after which Barry picks up the request and Sam takes over the technical side. A short assignment is fine, and for a first collaboration it is often the sensible choice.
We then start with a small package of drawings so you can judge our speed and accuracy without handing over the entire volume at once. If you are happy, more drafters join the project. We do not work with prepaid hour bundles or a monthly hours subscription, so no capacity is bought in advance. The intellectual property of everything we create belongs to you, including the families and templates developed along the way.
So far we have not signed a non-disclosure agreement because clients have not asked for one, but we are open to it and will arrange it before the first files are exchanged. You can reach us by phone or through the contact form on the website, followed by a conversation in which we go through the project. If you are considering whether to hire a drafter, that gives you a concrete picture of what is possible within a few days.
Frequently asked questions about hiring a drafter
Hire a drafter for your next project
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.