If you are considering non-residential construction drafting outsourcing, you first look at the software the work needs to end up in. For us, that is Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino, supplemented by Inventor and Grasshopper and, to a limited extent, Dynamo and Vault. We always run the latest versions and agree in advance which version we deliver in, so a sheet simply opens on your side.
Exchange takes place via DXF, DWG, STEP and the Revit formats, and in practice we handle any common CAD format.
We draft and model in our own environment with our own licences, so nobody needs to free up a seat or workstation for us. We do not do engineering, because calculations, structural advice and permit applications are outside our scope. Our work is high-volume drafting, often with a lot of repetition, and that is where the gain lies for a drawing office. The team is already in place and scales with whatever the project requires. 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.
Getting started with non-residential drafting
A project with us starts with a conversation in which we go through the job. We then ask for the documents: the existing drawings, your drawing conventions and standard, plus a few recent sheets that show how your drawing office works in practice. Those sample sheets carry more weight for us than a manual, because day-to-day work almost always deviates from it on a few points. We also want to know the scope, which sheets are needed when and who makes the decisions on your side. Once we have enough information, we get started.
We respond to a new enquiry within 1 to 2 working days, and Barry, our project manager, is usually your point of contact at that first stage. After that, Sam, our team leader, takes over the technical side, so your project leader deals with one familiar face. We do not deliver a complete package in one go. The first part goes back early, we gather feedback, make adjustments and carry on. That costs half an hour of discussion at the start and prevents a wrong assumption from spreading across fifty sheets.
If something is missing from the input, we first work out ourselves what can be deduced and bundle the rest into a short list of questions. Calling about every unclear point does not fit with outsourcing, because then the work shifts back to you after all. A small first assignment is a good way to start. It lets the head of your drawing office see how quickly and accurately our team works, without a complete package going out the door straight away.
Clients who outsource their drafting
We work for engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers, and more broadly for companies with technical drafting work. The people we talk to are usually managers, team leaders and owners: people who have to meet a schedule and can see that their own drawing office does not have the hours for it. The reason is almost always capacity. There is too little time, there are too few drafters, or there is a peak your own team cannot handle. In non-residential projects this quickly piles up, because a design change affects dozens of sheets and that work has to be done somewhere while ongoing jobs continue.
What we also often come across is a set that has become clogged up over the years. Families that exist twice, half-working variants, a template nobody dares to touch any more. Your own team knows exactly what is wrong but never gets round to tidying it up, because production comes first. Revision work then gets left behind too. An as-built file that is partly hand-drawn and poorly printed costs an experienced drafter days of investigation, and those days are not available.
We started this service last year because a client asked for it for exactly that reason. We have now delivered more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings for Firefly. Our clients are based in the Netherlands and our focus is on the Netherlands. The work is carried out entirely remotely from our own office, but we visit you or welcome you at our office whenever a project calls for it.
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 in non-residential construction
We deliver 2D drafting and, where the project calls for it, 3D modelling. Specifically, this covers floor plans, elevations, sections, detail sheets, standard details, assemblies and updating an existing set after a change. Revision work makes up a large part of what we do. A change comes in, and we apply it consistently across every sheet it affects, using your revision marking. We also produce as-built drawings, even when the material arrives in a messy state. At Firefly, we received as-built material where the existing drawings had been printed incorrectly and were partly drawn by hand, hard to read and without a clear line. We worked that out ourselves instead of calling the project leader every day, and still delivered it neatly. Alongside sheet work, we build parametric Revit families: smart components that adapt to a different size or situation.
A drafter creates the component once and then places it anywhere, while the material schedule updates automatically. We can also clean up or rebuild an existing family set. Which makes more sense depends on the state of that set, because with a very messy set rebuilding is sometimes faster than repairing. We deliver the output as source files, not just exports, so your own drawing office can carry on with it straight away. We are clear about what we do not do. We do not make calculations, give structural advice or handle permit applications. Whatever the structural engineer or architect decides, we put on paper verifiably. The intellectual property of everything we draw belongs to you.
Scaling up capacity for outsourced drafting
Our team is already in place. With our large, variable team we scale up or down per project, depending on what the schedule requires, and that happens without a recruitment round. When it is urgent, we add people to an ongoing project straight away. Everyone who drafts for us has more than ten years of CAD experience, so an extra drafter does not have to learn the trade first, only your standard.
Sam handles that handover using the agreements and reference sheets that are already in place. If someone is off sick or on holiday, we replace that person and the work carries on. Nothing changes in your schedule and there is no extra invoice for the handover.
That risk deliberately sits with us, because it is part of the value of outsourcing. You pay no ongoing wage costs and keep nobody on the payroll who has no work once the peak is over. We do not use prepaid hour bundles and we do not offer a monthly hours subscription. More drafters must not mean more variation in the set, either. That is why Sam keeps an eye on consistency between the parts and checking remains centralised, even when a lot of people are working on a project.
He 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. The core of our team has around twenty-five years of combined experience. For a deadline that could not move, we have worked evenings and weekends to meet it.
Frequently asked questions about non-residential construction drafting outsourcing
Let us handle your non-residential 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.