When you outsource technical drafting to a drafting firm, in practice it often starts with a simple question: which file format do you work in, and which CAD standard already applies within your own team? We deliver in DXF, DWG, Revit formats or as STEP files, and in practice in virtually any other common CAD format, so the result connects directly with what you need further down the line.
We always receive the CAD standard, layer structure and drawing conventions from you, and we stick to them strictly rather than imposing our own approach.
We draft and model, we do not do engineering, and our work goes through at least three review layers before it goes back to you. Our team consists of permanent drafters who each have more than ten years of CAD experience, led by Sam, our team leader, who has a technical background of more than fifteen years in architecture. For companies with too little drafting capacity, that is the foundation on which we build this work.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
When outsourcing makes sense and when it does not
Outsourcing technical drafting to a drafting firm is not the best choice in every situation, and we would rather make that distinction clear before you get started. If it is a temporary peak, a deadline that cannot slip, or a vacancy that is not being filled quickly enough, outsourcing is often the fastest way to get the schedule back on track without immediately having to take someone on permanently. The same applies to work with a lot of repetition, such as a series of similar part drawings or a revision round on an existing file, which we can get through faster with enough capacity than an in-house drawing office that also has to keep up with its regular work.
If the volume of drafting work is structural and limited, it may make more sense to hire a drafter yourself, especially if intensive daily coordination is needed with other disciplines within the same department. If the knowledge of a unique project is so deeply embedded in your own team that handing it over takes more time than doing it yourself, outsourcing is also less obvious.
In most cases where clients bring us in, it concerns precisely defined drafting work: part of a larger project, a revision, or a set of details that has to run alongside ongoing work. We prefer to point out that difference in the first conversation. For those situations, outsourcing technical drafting to a drafting firm with a permanent, experienced team is usually faster and more predictable than solving it within a drawing office that is already at capacity.
Costs of outsourcing technical drafting to a drafting firm
When you outsource technical drafting to a drafting firm, the question of cost quickly comes up, although we do not quote a figure here. We charge by the hour or at a fixed price per project, and we decide together with you which arrangement fits best, based on the nature of the work. For hourly work we only bill pure working time: if a drafter steps away for a coffee, we stop the clock, which makes an estimate more reliable than with work where breaks are counted.
A fixed project price is the obvious choice for work with a clearly defined scope, such as a complete set of construction drawings, while an hourly basis suits work whose scope may still shift, such as an ongoing revision round on an existing file. What really brings costs down in practice is repetition: if we build a series of similar components using a parametric Revit family, it takes considerably less time than drawing that same series by hand each time. In greenhouse construction, such a smart setup quickly saves at least seventy per cent of the time compared with manually repeating a valve in different sizes.
The absence of ongoing salary costs also reduces costs indirectly, because you do not pay for hours in which nobody is working on your project. If a drafter is out due to illness or holiday, we replace them, so the schedule is not delayed and no extra costs arise from downtime. That way you can always see where your budget is going.
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.
Types of clients for technical drafting
Outsourcing technical drafting to a drafting firm mainly comes up at engineering firms, architecture practices, contractors and manufacturers, in short at companies with technical drafting at the core of their daily work. The people at the table are usually managers, team leaders and owners responsible for the planning and staffing of the drawing office. The problem they face is almost always a capacity issue: too little time, too few drafters, or a peak the in-house team cannot handle alongside its regular work. At an engineering firm, that often means enough calculation capacity but too few people to keep up with developing the drawings. At an architecture practice, it is often a permit application for which the detail drawings still need to be completed, while the design itself is already settled.
A contractor is more likely to run into the problem that adjustments or additional details are still needed during construction, while their own drawing office is already full with other work. A manufacturer often deals with part drawings that come back in high volume and with a lot of repetition, where it is simply a matter of hours to get everything drawn on time. In all these cases, the problem is rarely a lack of knowledge within the in-house team; it is a lack of available drafting capacity at the right moment. Because the nature of that problem is essentially always the same, we can apply a similar approach in almost all of these situations, even though the drafting work varies greatly by sector and by assignment.
From first conversation to partial delivery with a drafting firm
Outsourcing technical drafting to a drafting firm like OutsourceCAD always starts with a conversation in which we go through the project. You supply the details and usually existing drawings that need revising, together with the CAD standard and drawing conventions that apply within your organisation. Based on that information, we decide how many drafters are needed and how to divide the work into manageable pieces that we pick up one after another.
Instead of delivering the whole package in one go, we work in stages: a first batch goes to you, your feedback comes back, we process it, and then we pick up the next batch.
That rhythm differs per client, from catch-ups every two days to a weekly moment of contact, depending on how fast the project needs to move. Files usually go back and forth by email, and on larger projects, such as in greenhouse construction, we use software you can log into to follow progress yourself. Barry, our project manager, is usually the first point of contact at the start of a new request, after which Sam takes over the technical side and monitors progress through to delivery.
For you, that means a clear process with defined steps, rather than a project that only becomes visible again at the end. That is how we keep outsourcing technical drafting to a drafting firm manageable, even on a larger or more complex project. A project lead working with us for the first time mainly notices that there are few surprises, because we discuss every step in advance.
Frequently asked questions about outsourcing technical drafting to a drafting firm
Hand your technical 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.