Revision work outsourcing often reaches us at the moment the drawing office is already full with ongoing projects and yet another pile of changes to existing drawings lands on top. A client asks for an amendment, a site manager reports a deviation on site, or an earlier drawing turns out no longer to match the current situation, and all of it has to be done alongside the regular work.
We take over that revision work: we update existing DWGs, check them and return them according to your CAD standards.
We draft; we do no engineering and no calculations, so you know exactly which part sits with us and which part stays elsewhere. Every revision goes through at least three review layers before it goes back, which keeps errors to a minimum in practice. For a drawing office that has to choose between clearing revisions itself or taking on new projects, we often provide exactly the room it needs.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
What OutsourceCAD delivers in revision work
With revision work outsourcing, we process changes to existing drawings, from a small dimensional adjustment to a completely revised piping layout or an amended floor plan. You supply the existing drawing together with a description of exactly what needs to change, and we carry that change through in the file without touching the rest of the drawing unnecessarily. With a set of interrelated drawings, we check whether a change on one sheet also affects other sheets, so the dossier is internally consistent again after the revision.
If a revision stems from a deviation that arose during construction, we first map out that situation before amending the drawing. We deliver in the format you already use, from DXF and DWG to Revit formats and STEP files, and in practice we handle virtually any common CAD format. When revising a larger set, we often start with an inventory of which sheets need amending, so no drawing gets overlooked. If we are unsure about the intention behind a change, we would rather call you once properly than three times half-heartedly.
A changed component within a parametric Revit family also falls under this work, with our amendment automatically carrying through into every model in which that component appears. That keeps the material schedule correct without anyone checking it by hand. What we deliver is a set of drawings that matches the current situation and the CAD standards you use.
The process of revision work outsourcing
A revision job starts with a conversation in which you explain which drawings need amending and exactly what needs to change in the existing set. We usually receive the existing drawings that need revising, together with the CAD standards and conventions that apply to the project. We always work to your standard, not to a template of our own, which makes it easier to fit the revision into an existing dossier. Once that is clear we get to work, and with a larger set we deliver in stages rather than all at once.
Those interim deliveries give you the chance to respond along the way, adjust a detail or shift a priority without the whole job coming to a standstill. After each interim delivery we actively ask for feedback, which we process in the next round, so there are no surprises at final delivery. We agree the meeting rhythm per client, from a catch-up every two days to weekly contact, depending on how quickly the revisions need to be finished. Contact runs via email, phone and meetings, and on larger jobs we work in an environment where you can log in and follow progress.
For more ad hoc revision work, we send the amended files by email, usually with a short explanation of exactly what we changed. That way it stays clear, even without a separate environment, which step of the revision job we have already completed.
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.
When outsourcing revision work makes sense
Outsourcing revision work makes most sense once your own team spends more time clearing changes than on new work, because the progress of new projects then suffers. During a peak too, for example a client submitting several amendments in a short space of time, we absorb that pressure straight away without your own team becoming overloaded. The same applies when a revision stems from a dossier that is already messy, such as a set of drawings amended by hand where the latest version is no longer clear. In cases like these, working out the correct version often takes more time than the drafting itself, and that is exactly where we fit in well. Your own team is better off keeping revisions in-house when they are small and occasional, and when the project knowledge mainly sits with your own drafters who work with the dossier every day.
With just one small amendment a week, the overhead of an external job is out of proportion to the work itself. That balance shifts as soon as the volume increases or the revisions call for knowledge your own team does not have to hand, for example a parametric family set that needs amending. We will tell you honestly if we think your own team can do it faster than we can. Outsourcing is therefore not a fixed answer, but a judgement per situation. A short conversation with us usually gives a good picture of which situation applies here, without you having to carry out an extensive analysis yourself.
The difference from a freelancer or a new employee
Whereas a freelancer comes in per assignment and then disappears again, we remain available throughout the entire job, with the same review structure on every revision we deliver. A freelancer generally works alone, without the extra review layer that is standard with us: a drafter updates the revision, a second team member checks that work, Sam, our team leader, goes over it once more and Barry, our project manager, does the final check.
With a new permanent employee things are different again, because you first have to recruit them, train them up and familiarise them with your CAD standards, which during a temporary peak in revision work is out of proportion to the length of that peak.
Moreover, with a permanent employee you pay ongoing salary costs, even in quiet periods, whereas with us you buy in capacity at the moment you need it. If someone on our side drops out through illness or holiday, we replace them so the revision work carries on, something that is not a given with a freelancer or a single permanent employee. Our core team is already in place, and our large, variable team scales with each project, which a freelancer or a single new hire cannot offer.
For a client who wants to place revision work on a structural basis without recruiting themselves, that is a different route from the usual choice between a freelancer and a permanent hire. The intellectual property of the delivered revision work belongs to you in any case. We are happy to go through that comparison soberly in the first conversation.
Frequently asked questions about revision work outsourcing
Hand your revision 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.