If you are seriously considering outsourcing drafting for ventilation engineering, you first want to know which software we use. Our main packages are Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino, supplemented by Inventor and Grasshopper, and to a limited extent Dynamo and Vault. We always run the latest versions and manage our own licences, because we carry out the work from our own office and not in the client's environment.
We deliver in DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format.
We draft duct routes, floor plans with air handling units, sections and detail sheets largely in AutoCAD, while we model in Revit as soon as a model or a material schedule is required. We adopt your drawing conventions throughout, including layers, stamps and sheet layout. We draft and model, so engineering, airflow calculations and structural decisions stay on your side of the table. Everyone who works for us has more than ten years of CAD experience, and we respond to an enquiry within one to two working days.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Who hands their ventilation engineering drafting to us
Our clients are engineering firms, installers and contractors, manufacturers and architectural practices, as well as companies with a lot of technical drafting. Around the table sit managers, team leaders and owners, in other words people who have to answer for the schedule themselves. The problem they come to us with is almost never about content, but practical. Work has been accepted, execution is scheduled and the drawing office does not have the hours. A drafter who leaves or is off sick for a long time makes that gap bigger from one week to the next. Often it is a peak the in-house team simply cannot handle alongside its regular work.
Hiring someone does not help at that point, because a new employee only becomes fully productive after months and then stays on the payroll during quiet periods too. We fill that gap without any change to your permanent staffing. You pay no ongoing payroll costs, and if someone on our side drops out, we replace that person ourselves. Our clients are based in the Netherlands and our focus is on the Netherlands, so communication takes place in the same language and on the same working days.
We launched this service last year because a client asked for it, it worked well, and we have offered it as a standard service ever since. For Firefly, we have completed more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings. What a team leader on the client side appreciates most is that we keep working independently and do not hand back every ambiguity straight away. After all, supervision costs them precisely the time they want to gain by outsourcing. That is why we keep our questions short and bundle them at a fixed moment.
Drafting capacity in peak weeks
Depending on the project, we deploy a single drafter or as many drafters as needed, because our large, variable team scales with each project. The team is already in place, so we do not need to look for anyone before an assignment can start. For urgent work, we add people straight away and divide the set across more hands, with Sam, our team leader, making sure that drafting in parallel does not create differences between sheets. Sam has more than fifteen years of background in architecture, worked in Iran for seven years, had his own design firm in the Netherlands and is still an engineer.
He leads our CAD team and is responsible for the technical side and project supervision. Combined, the core of our team has around twenty-five years of experience, and clients notice that above all in the pace of the first week. If someone on our side drops out through illness or holiday, we bring in someone else and the work carries on. When a delivery could not slip, our team has previously worked through evenings and weekends, with days of fourteen to fifteen hours, even during Sam's planned holiday.
We do not present weeks like that as standard, but they show what happens as soon as a client is in a tight spot. Conversely, we scale back down just as easily once the rush is over, with no notice period and no termination fee. Nobody without work stays on your bill. For most clients, that flexibility is the main reason to place this kind of drafting outside the company.
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 in ventilation engineering
We charge by the hour or per project at a fixed price. Which model fits depends on how sharply the assignment can be defined in advance, and we decide that in consultation after seeing the documents. If there is a series with fixed variants, a project price makes sense and you know in advance where you stand. If the number of sheets or the level of detail is still shifting, an hourly rate is fairer, because you only pay for what we actually do. We only bill genuine working hours. If someone steps away for five minutes to get a coffee, the clock stops, and that rule applies to everyone on our team. Ongoing payroll costs, idle time between assignments and onboarding time never end up on your invoice. We do not work with prepaid hour bundles or a monthly hours subscription, so no unused credit ever expires.
What keeps costs down in this work comes down mainly to two things. The first is clean source material, because a set with clear drawing conventions costs us fewer hours than a folder of loose scans. The second is eliminating repetition with parametric Revit families, so a change in dimensions does not lead to redrawing and the material schedule updates automatically. We only name a figure after we have seen the work, because an estimate without drawings is worthless. After the first conversation, we tell you how many hours we expect and where the uncertainty still lies. That way you know what to budget for before the first drafter starts.
A fixed point of contact and a fixed meeting rhythm
Barry, our project manager, usually picks up a new enquiry first and holds the introductory meeting. As soon as it gets technical, Sam takes over and remains the face of the project for the rest of the process. That gives you a fixed point of contact, and you do not have to tell your story again every week. We agree on the meeting rhythm at the start, because one client wants contact every two days while another is happy with a weekly check-in.
Day-to-day communication runs by email and phone, and where it helps we meet in person, at your office or at ours. For one-off AutoCAD drafting, files go back and forth by email, which works perfectly well for most assignments.
For larger projects, we use software you can log into to follow the project's progress. A project leader can see there which sheets are finished and which are still in progress, without having to call. We also always deliver in stages, so feedback comes in early and any misunderstanding stays small. Every sheet passes through at least three review layers for this, because a drafter produces the work, a second team member checks it, Sam as team leader assesses the technical side and Barry does the final check.
Clients are welcome to visit us, although we carry out the work entirely remotely. The intellectual property of everything we produce belongs to you, and we are open to discussing a non-disclosure agreement.
Frequently asked questions about outsourcing drafting for ventilation engineering
Hand your ventilation 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.