If you are considering outsourcing drafting for facade construction, you will almost always look at the cost first. We charge per hour or at a fixed price per project, and we decide in advance together which fits best. In both cases we only charge pure working hours.
If a drafter goes to get a coffee for five minutes, we stop the clock. That may sound petty, but it is the only way to deliver a timesheet a project lead can actually use. We do not work with a prepaid hours card or a monthly hours subscription, because then you pay for availability rather than for drafting.
In facade construction there is a second cost item that often stays out of sight: the ongoing salary costs of in-house drafters sitting idle between two projects. That cost disappears as soon as part of the work is with us. We draft and model, nothing more, and we do so from our own office. Our drafters all have more than ten years of CAD experience.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Who outsources drafting in facade construction
The companies that approach us are engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers, and in facade construction usually parties that manufacture or install themselves. At the table sits a manager, a team leader or the owner. The conversation is rarely about the quality of their own team, because that is usually fine. It is about numbers. A facade project going into execution needs drawings for every frame bay, every junction and every variant, and those numbers add up quickly. As long as sales keep coming in, that work piles up in the drawing office.
A second recurring situation is the revision round. A facade that changes during execution leaves a trail of adjustments through the whole set: junction details, sub-frames, variant sheets and the associated dimensions. That work is not difficult, but there is a lot of it, and it has to be right. A third group is companies with a file that lags behind reality. The execution deviated, the drawings did not, and with the next project the detective work starts all over again. These are the three situations we take on most often.
Our role is explicitly executional: we draft and model; we do not provide structural advice or permit documents. You keep control of the content, and we make sure the sheets are ready on time and to your standard. Our market is the Netherlands, and that is where our clients are too. What these clients share is a peak their own team can no longer handle and a schedule that does not move. In a period like that, outsourcing is not a matter of principle but a calculation of lead time.
Scaling up the drafting team in facade construction
We have a dedicated team and deploy from it whatever a project needs. A project often starts small, and with our large, variable team it grows where necessary to as many drafters as the project requires. Scaling up does not cost us a recruitment round, because the people are already there. When something is urgent, we add someone straight away, without you having to arrange an appointment for it. For a facade builder that means a different planning logic. Instead of the lead time being dictated by the number of available drafters, you set the lead time and we scale with it.
Scaling down is just as easy. When the peak tails off, we take people off the project and the hours stop. A permanent in-house drafter does not give you that room. We cover absence within our own team. In case of illness or holiday we bring in a replacement and the work continues, without a facade project having to wait. Because everyone with us has more than ten years of CAD experience, such a switch costs no onboarding time on the craft itself.
Only the project knowledge has to be handed over, and Sam, our team leader, safeguards that. He leads the CAD team and holds the technical line. Combined, the core of our team has around twenty-five years of experience. We also regularly start with a small first assignment, so you can see how fast and how accurately our team works before handing over an entire series. If the collaboration works, we expand the number of drafters at the pace your order book demands.
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 side of outsourcing drafting in facade construction
The structure of our costs is simple: hours times rate, or a fixed price for a defined package of drawings. Which form fits depends on how precisely the work can be defined in advance. A series of facade bays with a known list of variants lends itself well to a fixed price. A round of revisions on a set that has partly been updated by hand does not, and then hourly billing is fairer for both sides. We do not name an amount in advance without having seen the documents, because an estimate without material is worthless. What keeps costs down almost always lies on the input side. A complete set with the right drawing conventions, an example sheet and up-to-date dimensions saves us detective work, and detective work means hours. The same applies to repetition. Once we have built a facade component parametrically, the second variant costs a fraction of the first.
The material schedule updates with it, so a dimensional change costs no extra counting. The meeting rhythm also counts. A short meeting twice a week prevents us from drafting in the wrong direction for days. We only charge pure working hours and give you insight per period into what time was spent on. You pay no ongoing salary costs, no idle time and no subscription. What remains is the time that actually went into drawings. With a fixed project price, we record in advance which drawings are included and what an extra round means, so any expansion stays visible. We would rather agree that beforehand than have to discuss extra work afterwards. That keeps the cost side predictable, even if a facade project changes along the way.
Working with our drafting team in facade construction
You have a fixed point of contact with us. Barry, our project manager, picks up a new request and stays involved afterwards, while Sam takes over the technical side. Sam has more than fifteen years of background in architecture, worked in Iran for seven years and ran his own design practice in the Netherlands. He still works as an engineer and leads our CAD team.
For a project lead that means a short line, with familiar faces rather than changing contacts per sheet. We match the meeting rhythm to the pace of the project. If it needs to move fast, we speak every two days. If things are calmer, a weekly moment in which we go through the latest partial delivery is enough.
For standalone drafting, files go back and forth by email. On larger projects we work with software you log into to follow progress, as we do on greenhouse construction projects. We work in our own environment with our own licences, so nobody has to give us access to an internal server. There is daily contact by email, phone and meetings. We come to you, and if you want to see our office, you are welcome.
The work itself stays remote, even if the project in the Netherlands is just around the corner. We respond to a new request within 1 to 2 working days and then discuss the project in a conversation. We process feedback per partial delivery, so corrections stay small and do not pile up at the end of the project. This way of working keeps the facade builder in control without having to direct us every day.
Frequently asked questions about outsourcing drafting for facade construction
Hand your facade 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.