When you outsource drafting work, it almost always starts with drawing a line: which part goes out of the door and which part stays in-house. In practice, you keep the design, the engineering and the decision-making, and the production drafting comes to us.
That is the part with the volume and the repetition. Working up a drawing set, updating revisions, turning the data you supply into clean drawings and keeping an as-built file up to date. We draft; we do not do engineering.
We do not carry out calculations, give structural advice or handle permits. We keep that line deliberately sharp, because it stops responsibilities from shifting. Whatever we take on, we do entirely remotely from our own office, in our own environment and on our own licences. Every member of our staff has more than ten years of CAD experience. That means one of our drafters can join your project without you first losing months to onboarding.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Who outsources drafting work, and what drives them
The companies that outsource drafting work to us are engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers, and more broadly any business with technical drafting work. Who sits at the table varies by organisation: a manager, a team leader or the owner. The conversation is rarely about software and almost always about capacity. There is too little time, there are too few drafters, or a peak is coming that your own team simply cannot absorb. At engineering firms we often see it in a project that has slipped while the next one has already been won.
A contractor runs into it when the work on site changes and the drawings have to keep up. For a manufacturer it is usually a product line that needs to be drawn up, with nobody internally who can be freed up for it. What these situations have in common is that the work is not difficult, but there is a lot of it. It is predictable and repetitive, and it eats up the hours of people who are badly needed elsewhere. A second recurring problem is the state of the material supplied.
Existing drawings have been printed incorrectly, partly completed by hand or have drifted apart over several revisions. Then the real work is not the drafting itself but working out what the drawings actually show. We take that on rather than calling you about it every day. Our clients are based in the Netherlands, and that is where our focus lies. So the reason to seriously consider outsourcing drafting work is rarely a technical one, and almost always a question of capacity.
Scaling up when drafting work peaks
The drafting work that comes in varies widely in size, so we scale up project by project. We have a large, variable team of drafters: a small job gets one drafter, while on a large project we put as many people on the same work as it needs. The team is already in place; we simply deploy what the project calls for. So there is no recruitment process first, and nobody has to be trained in the basics of the trade. When something is urgent, we add people straight away. That is the fundamental difference from scaling up in-house.
A vacancy for a drafter stays open for months and is then followed by an onboarding period, by which time the peak is long gone. An equally important point is absence. If someone falls ill or goes on holiday, we replace that person and the work carries on. You carry no ongoing payroll costs and are not left with surplus staff when volumes drop. We also do not work with a prepaid hours card or a monthly hours subscription, so there is never any credit sitting there waiting to be used up. How many people make sense depends on the nature of the set.
Work with a lot of repetition, such as a series of similar details or a piping diagram in which the same components keep coming back, divides up well. Work that is tightly interconnected we keep with a smaller group, because coordination would then cost more time than it saves. We once had a deadline that could not move, and worked evenings and weekends to meet it, with days of fourteen to fifteen hours. The work even carried on while Sam, our team leader, was on a planned holiday.
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 outsourcing drafting work costs, and what keeps costs down
What it costs to outsource drafting work depends on the arrangement we agree. We charge by the hour or per project at a fixed price, and either is possible. For a job with a clear scope, such as a defined round of revisions on an existing DWG set, a fixed project price is the obvious choice. For work that takes shape as it goes, an hourly basis is fairer, because nobody then needs to build in a margin for uncertainty that may not exist. What we bill on an hourly basis is pure working time. If someone steps away for five minutes to get a coffee, the clock stops. That is not a minor detail, because over a longer project the difference between being present and actually producing adds up considerably. Beyond that, costs are mainly driven by the quality of what you supply.
A complete set of starting points, clear CAD standards and a single source for changes will bring the hours down more than any negotiation. Messy input does the opposite, because it adds investigative work before the first line is even drawn. The structure of the set also plays a part. Where we can use parametric Revit families instead of redrawing every component, at least seventy per cent of the time drops out of that type of work. We also charge no ongoing costs, and you are not tied into anything. We only prepare an estimate once we have seen the material, because an estimate without documents is worth very little. Which arrangement suits a specific project is something we decide in the first conversation.
Collaboration and communication when you outsource drafting
With outsourced drafting work, the result stands or falls with the lines of communication around it. You have one fixed point of contact with us. Barry, our project manager, picks up a new enquiry, and as soon as the project is running, Sam takes over the technical side. He leads the CAD team and is responsible for project supervision, so questions about the work go to one person rather than to a changing line-up.
The process starts with a conversation in which we go through the details and the existing drawings. After that we deliver in stages, gather feedback, make adjustments and move on.
You set the pace. On a tight schedule we meet every two days; for calmer work a weekly meeting is enough. Files go back and forth by email. On larger projects, such as work in greenhouse construction, we use software that you can log into to follow the project without having to ask how things stand. For standalone AutoCAD drafting we deliver by email, because that is quicker than setting up an environment for a short job.
Day-to-day contact runs via email, phone and meetings, and we travel to you or welcome you at our office. We draft according to the standards and drawing conventions you give us, so the finished work fits into your existing set. The intellectual property of the delivered work belongs to you. We respond to a new enquiry within 1 to 2 working days, followed by a conversation in which we go through the project.
Frequently asked questions about outsourcing drafting work
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.