When you consider whether to outsource drafting for your architecture firm, the comparison is almost always with two other routes: hiring a freelancer or taking someone on. A freelancer is quick to arrange, but that person works alone and nobody checks their work except the firm itself. A new employee means a recruitment round, an onboarding period and then payroll costs that carry on when things are quiet.
We sit in between: a permanent team that scales with the work, without the firm having to employ anyone. All of our people have more than ten years of CAD experience, and with our large, variable team we scale up or down for each project.
Every sheet passes through at least three review layers with us before it comes back to you. We draft and model, and we explicitly leave engineering to others. The work is done remotely from our own office in the Netherlands. Barry, our project manager, picks up an enquiry first, after which Sam, our team leader, takes over the technical side. That gives the firm one fixed point of contact, even when more drafters are working on the project.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Architecture firms that run up against their drafting capacity
The firms that approach us rarely lack design talent. What they are short of is hours. A project moves into detailed design, the specification phase continues, and at the same time a job on site calls for revisions. Then it turns out that the number of drafters is dictating the schedule instead of the other way round. The people at the table with us are usually the owner, a team leader or a project architect. Their question is almost always practical: who is going to draw the sheets that have to be finished in the coming weeks? We also see firms that want to move detailing work out on a structural basis.
They keep design, client meetings and aesthetic decisions in-house, and outsource the production of sheets. That is a deliberate way of organising the firm, not an emergency measure. A third situation is the flow of revisions on existing DWG sets. Changes during construction pile up and nobody in the office gets round to them. A clogged-up set of Revit families can also be the trigger. When nobody knows any more which component is correct, every project loses time searching and correcting.
We handle these situations without the firm having to change the way it works. You supply the standard, and we follow it. What these firms have in common is that the reason is capacity, not dissatisfaction with their own team. That makes working together straightforward, because creative control stays where it belongs. Our role is to execute, and we agree that clearly in advance. We work for firms throughout the Netherlands, and all work is carried out remotely.
Drafting work we carry out for architecture firms
The focus is on 2D drafting: floor plans, elevations, sections, standard details and the associated sheets in your existing sheet layout. We develop what the firm has designed and stick to its line weights, hatching and layer structure. Where a project runs in Revit, we model in 3D and derive the drawings from the model. In doing so, we build parametric families, so that a door, a window frame or a roof edge adapts to a different size without anyone starting over. The material schedule updates within such a family, which saves counting when things change. We clean up existing families and templates, or rebuild them if the set is too messy to repair.
Revisions are a separate, ongoing stream. A changed dimension, a moved wall or a modified stairwell affects several sheets, and we update that whole series. We bring as-built drawings back to a clean digital set, even if the material supplied is partly hand-drawn. We deliver our files as DWG, DXF, Revit files or STEP, in any common CAD format the firm uses. What we do not deliver is just as clear. Structural calculations, building physics advice and permit procedures belong with other parties.
We draft; we do not advise on structural matters. For the firm, that means a predictable supply of sheets that slot straight into the project file. The source files always come with them, because the intellectual property belongs to you. If the firm works with its own folder structure and naming, we adopt it. We would rather agree those arrangements at the start than halfway through.
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 of outsourcing drafting for an architecture firm
We work either by the hour or at a fixed price for a clearly defined package. For a firm, the second option is often convenient for a well-defined set of sheets, such as detailing a house type. For a flow of revisions without a clear end, an hourly basis makes more sense. We only bill pure working hours. If a drafter steps away for a moment, that time is not counted, even if it is only five minutes. That keeps timesheets traceable, and nobody has to argue afterwards about rounded-up blocks. We do not offer a prepaid hours card or a monthly fee, because then the firm would be paying for availability. What brings costs down mostly happens at the front end. A complete set of documents with clear CAD standards saves us investigative work, and investigative work is the most expensive kind of drafting. The same goes for decisions.
A firm that answers questions within a day keeps our drafters working instead of waiting. Repetition also brings the price down. Once we have set up a detail or component parametrically, each subsequent variant costs a fraction. We do not name a figure up front without having seen the documents. We do, however, prepare a substantiated estimate after the first conversation, with a clear definition of what is included. If a project overruns because the design changes, we flag it before the hours mount up. The firm pays no ongoing payroll costs, no idle time between two projects and no recruitment costs. Those items disappear as soon as part of the drafting sits with us. The bottom line is that the firm only pays for the hours that have gone into sheets.
Getting started: what we need for the first drafting work
Getting started begins with a conversation in which we go through the project. We ask about the phase, the scope, the output you need and the schedule. After that, we need material. In practice, that means the existing drawings, usually a set that needs revising, plus the firm's drawing conventions. A drafting protocol, a sample sheet, the templates and the layer structure are enough for us to work independently.
If those are missing, we derive the conventions from existing work and put our choices to you for approval. We only start work once we have enough information. We respond to an enquiry within 1 to 2 working days.
We like to start with a limited first part, such as a single sheet type or a small revision package. That way, the firm sees how fast and how accurately we work before it outsources more. We also use that first delivery ourselves, to test whether our interpretation of the standard is correct. After that, we deliver in stages, gather feedback and move on to the next part. The firm chooses the meeting rhythm: every two days on a tight schedule, weekly when things are calmer.
Contact runs via email, phone and meetings, and on larger projects you can log in to follow the project. We are happy to visit your office, and if you want to see ours, you are welcome. Our drafters work on their own licences in our own environment, so the firm does not have to open anything up. We sign a non-disclosure agreement if the firm values one.
Frequently asked questions about outsourcing drafting for architecture firms
Hand your architectural drafting 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.