If you are considering whether to outsource structural drafting, you usually weigh it up against two other routes: hiring a freelancer or taking on a drafter. All three solve the same problem, but not in the same way. A new employee costs recruitment time, onboarding time and then salary costs that keep running in the quiet months too.
A freelancer is available sooner, but they are one person, and if they fall ill or go on holiday the work stops. With us, there is a team behind the assignment.
With our large, variable team we scale up or down per project, and if someone drops out we replace them so the work continues. You pay no ongoing salary costs, and we do not work with prepaid hour bundles or a monthly hours subscription. What we do and do not do is sharply defined, because we draft and model and do not do engineering. That boundary matters more in structural work than elsewhere, because responsibility for the structure remains with your structural engineer.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
What you get when you outsource structural drafting
When you outsource structural drafting to us, it is about the drafting and modelling, not the structural content. We deliver 2D drawings and, where needed, 3D modelling. In practice, that means floor plans, elevations and sections, part and assembly drawings, detail sheets, dimension sheets and the material schedules that update from the model. As-built drawings and revisions to existing sets make up a large part of the work, because a structural file is rarely finished in one go. The output goes to you in DXF, DWG, Revit formats or STEP, and in practice in any common CAD format you ask for.
What we do not do is engineering. We make no calculations, give no structural advice and do not handle permits. The design principles come from your structural engineer or engineer, and we work them out into sheets that match what has been supplied. If we see a contradiction between two documents, we flag it and do not fill it in ourselves. That happens regularly in structural work, for example when a detail still assumes a section that was changed in a later version.
Where a component keeps recurring, we build it parametrically wherever possible. The component is then built once and adapts to a different size afterwards, while the material schedule updates automatically. The intellectual property of everything we draw belongs to you, so the set can be used freely afterwards. We always work with the latest software versions and, on request, deliver back in the version your drawing office uses.
Clients who outsource structural drafting
Outsourcing structural drafting is relevant for engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers. The people at the table are managers, team leaders and owners, and the reason is almost always capacity. There is too little time, there are too few drafters, or there is a peak their own team cannot handle. With structural work, a second pattern comes into play. The people who can do the drafting are often the same people who have to steer the project on substance. As soon as the volume rises, their time disappears into working up sheets rather than coordinating with construction.
That is exactly the work that can be taken off their hands, because it is repetitive and follows a set standard. We also see files where the problem is not the new build but the existing situation. An as-built file that has been half updated by hand needs cleaning up before anything new can be added on top. For Firefly we processed as-built material in which the existing drawings had been printed incorrectly and partly drawn by hand. The whole thing was hard to read and messy. We worked it out ourselves rather than calling the client about it constantly, and still delivered it cleanly.
We have now completed more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings for that client. Our clients are in the Netherlands and our focus is on the Netherlands. We started this service last year because a client asked for it, and since then it has been a permanent part of what we offer. What we take away from those files is that cleaning up the existing set is often the first step.
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.
From first conversation to partial delivery
The process starts with a conversation. Barry, our project manager, is usually the first point of contact for a new request and goes through it with you: which project it is, how big it is and which date is fixed. After that, Sam, our team leader, takes over the technical side. He has more than fifteen years of background in architecture, worked in Iran for seven years, ran his own design practice in the Netherlands and still works as an engineer. He directs the CAD team and is responsible for project supervision, so you keep one fixed point of contact. You then supply the details, usually together with existing drawings that need revising. We do not work through them in silence until everything is finished. We deliver in parts, gather feedback, make adjustments and carry on.
On a structural file, that is the only way to find out early that an assumption is wrong. The meeting rhythm differs per client, from every two days to weekly, depending on how quickly things need to move. Files go back and forth by email. For larger projects we use software you can log into to follow the project's progress. We work in our own environment with our own licences, so nothing needs to be opened up in your systems. The work is done fully remotely from our own office, and you are welcome to visit. We respond to a new request within 1 to 2 working days. We can start as soon as we have enough information to work on without guesswork.
Three review layers on outsourced structural drafting
Outsourced structural drafting passes through at least three review layers with us before it goes back to you. A drafter draws, a second team member checks that work, then Sam checks it as team leader, and finally Barry reviews it. As a result, errors stay minimal in practice. The review looks at two things. First, whether the drawing matches the principles supplied, meaning whether dimensions, sections and connections correspond to what you have provided.
Second, whether the drawing conventions have been applied consistently, because a deviating layer structure or naming only becomes a nuisance when a set of a hundred sheets is merged.
What this set-up mainly prevents is an interpretation error repeating itself throughout the entire set. If the first drafter misreads a detail, that misreading carries into every sheet that follows. By delivering in parts early and having that partial delivery reviewed, such a deviation stays limited to a handful of sheets. We also report what we cannot resolve. If information is missing or two documents contradict each other, it comes back to you in one batch rather than us making a choice ourselves.
That separation follows from the fact that we draft and do not do engineering. Everyone involved in this review has more than ten years of CAD experience, and the core of the team has around twenty-five years of combined experience. A small first assignment is a good way to test this way of working, because you then see for yourself how many comments still come out of your own review.
Frequently asked questions about outsourcing structural drafting
Hand your structural 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.