Hiring an external technical drafter works best when the boundary is clear from the outset. We draft and model, and that is the entire scope. We produce 2D drafting, 3D models where the project calls for them, as-built drawings and revision rounds on existing sets. We don't do structural calculations, we don't give structural advice and we don't prepare permit applications either.
That boundary keeps responsibility where it belongs: with the firm that carries the project. Our strength lies in production.
We take over volume that is piling up, usually highly repetitive work your own drawing office can't get round to. Everyone who drafts for us has more than ten years of CAD experience, and Sam, our team leader, safeguards the technical approach. We work remotely from our own office, in our own environment and with our own licences. You provide the starting points and the drawing conventions, and we deliver the drawings in the format your next process requires. We respond to a new request within one to two working days.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
The cost side of an external drafter
We invoice by the hour or per project at a fixed price. Which approach fits is decided together and depends mainly on how precisely the job can be defined up front. If there is a clearly bounded set, for example a fixed number of revisions to existing DWGs or a file that needs to be brought up to as-built, a fixed project price is easy to set. If the scope is still shifting, we work on an hourly basis, because a fixed price would then only contain a risk premium that helps nobody. On hourly work we only bill pure working hours.
If someone steps away for five minutes to get a coffee, the clock doesn't keep running. That isn't rhetoric but the way we keep our records, and it makes a timesheet something you can actually check. We don't work with prepaid bundles or a monthly hours subscription, so no costs keep running in a quiet month. What keeps costs down in practice is repetition in the set: the more similar components, the faster our drafters get through them. Complete input helps just as much, because waiting for answers costs time nobody earns back.
A parametrically built component also makes a difference, because we build it once and then place it everywhere. We only prepare an estimate once we have seen the material and the volume. You never carry ongoing payroll costs with us, not even between two projects. If the scope changes along the way, we flag it the moment we see it, not only on the invoice. That keeps the cost picture traceable throughout the entire project.
Scaling up with a large, flexible team
Our team is already in place, so scaling up costs us no recruitment time. Where it makes sense we start small and then deploy as many drafters from our large, flexible team as the volume or deadline demands. We base that choice on three things: the size of the set, the date by which everything must be complete and the degree of repetition in the work. With lots of similar drawings we split the work, because several drafters can then work in parallel without getting in each other's way. With intricate custom work we deliberately keep the team small, so the set stays consistent.
When an urgent request comes in, we add people straight away rather than scheduling the work for next month. Little changes for you when we scale up, because your point of contact stays the same and so do the agreements on standards and delivery. If someone is off sick or on holiday, a colleague steps in and the drafting carries on. You pay no ongoing payroll costs and don't keep capacity on the books that sits idle between two peaks. The core of our team has around twenty-five years of combined experience, and Sam manages the staffing as team leader.
When a deadline once couldn't move, we worked evenings and weekends with days of fourteen to fifteen hours. We don't go that far as standard, but it says something about how we handle a hard date. For your planning, it mainly means that staffing moves with the work, not with a contract.
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.
How a project with an external drafter runs
Everything starts with a conversation in which we go through the project. You tell us what is already there, what output is needed and when the set must be complete. We then receive the documents: usually existing drawings that need revising, supplemented with dimensions, details, photos or mark-ups on prints. We work through that material and bundle our questions, instead of raising each unclear point separately. Whatever we can figure out ourselves, we figure out ourselves. We took that approach with an as-built file that had been partly drawn by hand and printed barely legibly, and still delivered a clean set. Next, we deliver a first batch. We do that deliberately early, so your project leader sees how we draft while course corrections are still cheap. We gather feedback, process it and carry the corrections through the rest of the set.
We keep up that rhythm until the work is done. We match the meeting frequency to the urgency: when it's urgent we speak every two days, otherwise a weekly slot is enough. Every part goes through at least three layers of review before it leaves our office. Day-to-day contact runs through email, phone and meetings, and on larger projects we use software that lets you log in and follow progress. We visit when that helps, although we carry out the work itself remotely. Equally, you are welcome at our office to see how the drafters run the project. What we ask of you during the project is limited to a contact who can make decisions and a fixed moment for feedback.
Which clients hire external drafters
Our clients are engineering firms, architecture practices, contractors and manufacturers, and more broadly companies with technical drafting work. The people we talk to are usually managers, team leaders and owners, in other words the people who keep an eye on planning and staffing. The trigger is almost always the same: too little time, too few drafters, or a peak your own team can't handle.
At an engineering firm it is often a revision round that has to happen alongside ongoing work. At an architecture practice it is more likely the detailing of a phase in which many similar drawings have to be ready at once. Contractors mainly come to us for as-built material and working drawings that no longer match after changes on site.
Manufacturers usually have a product line in which the same components recur in different sizes, and that involves a lot of duplicated drafting. This is most pronounced in greenhouse construction, where a valve in 90 and in 110 is drawn by hand again and again, while a smartly built component puts it in place in a single action. We started this service last year because a client explicitly asked for it, and we have offered it as a standard service ever since.
For Firefly we have now completed more than twenty projects and delivered hundreds of drawings. Our clients are in the Netherlands and that is where our focus lies, so coordinating within the same working day is a given. What these clients have in common is that the need is rarely for expertise and almost always for extra hands. The expertise is already in the firm, only the hours are missing. That is exactly the gap we fill, for as long as the project requires.
Frequently asked questions about hiring an external technical drafter
Hand your drafting work 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.