When you outsource Dynamo work, the first question is usually about control, because if you hand work over, you want to know that nobody is blindly building on an error once it has crept in. That is why every piece of work we do goes through at least three review layers: a drafter builds the script or drawing, a second team member checks that result, Sam, our team leader, then reviews it from his technical background, and Barry, our project manager, checks it last before anything goes to you.
We do not use this set-up for show, but because Dynamo scripts and the drawings they produce have to be exactly right, otherwise an error automatically carries through into every following component that relies on the same logic.
We combine Dynamo with Revit and our wider set of software, and we work with the latest versions. During a peak in your drawing office, or with a family set clogged up with outdated definitions, outsourcing Dynamo work is a way to add capacity quickly without quality suffering under time pressure.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
When it makes sense to outsource Dynamo work
Not every situation calls for external drafting, not even with a package like Dynamo. If your own team has enough room in the schedule and it concerns a single, straightforward change to a Dynamo script, a firm can often handle that faster itself. Outsourcing Dynamo work becomes more valuable as soon as the demand exceeds what your own staff can handle, for example when a set of families and templates has become clogged with old, conflicting definitions that nobody fully understands any more. In cases like that, cleaning up or rebuilding the set takes more time than a drawing office can free up on the side without delaying ongoing projects.
If the existing family set is very messy, rebuilding is sometimes faster than repairing, and we advise on exactly that trade-off based on what you send us. With a deadline that cannot move, outsourcing is also often wiser than overloading your own team, because our team has worked together for a long time and has its peer review set up, so we scale up faster than an internal team that suddenly has to find extra hours.
Conversely, a firm with a small, stable volume of Dynamo work and enough capacity of its own gains little from outsourcing, because coordination then costs more time than it saves. We make that assessment most sharply in a concrete conversation about the scope, the pace and the state of the existing set, not in general terms and not with a rule of thumb that would be the same for every firm.
The cost side of outsourcing Dynamo work
With us, the cost of outsourcing Dynamo work depends on how we invoice, not on a fixed rate that is the same for every project. We work on an hourly basis or for a fixed project price, and you decide together with us which option suits the scope and predictability of the work. For a clearly defined job, such as cleaning up a specific set of families, a fixed price is often the obvious choice, while an ongoing project with changing questions is better suited to hourly billing.
What mainly keeps costs down in practice is how much repetition the work contains and what state the existing set is in. A tidy, consistent family set takes us less time to extend than a set full of conflicting definitions that we first have to untangle. We only bill productive working hours, so time that does not relate directly to the project, such as a short break, is never charged.
That sets our approach apart from a prepaid block of hours or a monthly hours subscription, where you often pay for availability rather than for work delivered. You also carry no ongoing payroll costs, because if a team member is ill or on holiday we cover it internally, without the schedule or the invoice being affected. A concrete indication of how the costs are built up follows from the first conversation, in which we go through the scope of the Dynamo work and the state of the existing set.
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.
Which clients outsource Dynamo work
Outsourcing Dynamo work mainly comes up at engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers that work in Revit and use Dynamo to automate recurring tasks. The people we talk to are usually managers, team leaders or owners, people who can see that their own team is stuck on a specific problem rather than being structurally understaffed. Often it concerns a set of families and templates that has grown over several projects, so that nobody knows exactly which version is leading and which definition has been changed somewhere by accident. That problem becomes obvious as soon as a new project needs the same components and the existing scripts turn out to no longer work consistently. Another recurring picture we see is a peak that the in-house team cannot handle, for example when several projects with similar Dynamo needs run at the same time and the drawing office falls behind schedule as a result.
At firms with little Dynamo experience of their own, something else is often going on: there are individual scripts, but nobody can maintain them properly any more after their author has left. In all these situations, there is no lack of knowledge about Revit in general, but there is a specific bottleneck around automation that keeps coming back. Our first conversation brings that bottleneck sharply into focus, so we can tailor our approach precisely to it rather than to a general estimate, which makes a real difference especially in a mixed team with varying levels of experience in the drawing office.
How the process of outsourcing Dynamo work runs
The process of outsourcing Dynamo work starts with a conversation in which you explain the situation and usually send us the existing scripts, families or drawings that need attention. Based on that, we see whether it is a clean-up, a rebuild or an extension of what is already there, and which CAD standard is leading. We respond to a request within 1 to 2 working days, so there is no long silence before the project really gets going.
As soon as we have enough information, we start on a first part of the work, often a clearly defined piece that quickly shows whether our approach meets your expectations.
We deliver that part, after which you give feedback on what does and does not match day-to-day practice. We process that feedback before we pick up the next part, instead of delivering the whole package in one go without interim checks. The rhythm of our contact varies per client, from every two days to a weekly moment, depending on how fast the project needs to move.
With a short, clearly defined assignment the whole process stays compact, while a larger clean-up of a clogged family set extends over several partial deliveries. In both cases we follow the same structure: first understand what is there, then work in steps and keep checking that the result fits what you need, until the complete package is ready for use in current and future projects.
Frequently asked questions about outsourcing Dynamo work
Hand your Dynamo 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.