A peak in the drawing office, a deadline that cannot move or a vacancy that just will not get filled: those are the moments when businesses look for a technical drafting partner. The work is there, the schedule is already slipping, and nobody in-house is free to pick it up.
We absorb that with a team that is already in place and works entirely remotely from our own office. We draft and model, we do not do engineering, and we stick to that boundary consistently. For each project we deploy what is needed, because our large, flexible team scales with every project.
Barry, our project manager, is the first point of contact for a new enquiry, after which our team leader Sam takes over the technical side. That way you keep one line of contact and do not have to tell your story all over again every week. We work nationwide, with clients across the Netherlands, and respond to an enquiry within 1 to 2 working days. That is followed by a conversation in which we go through the project.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Businesses looking for a technical drafting partner
Our clients are engineering firms, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers, as well as businesses that have a lot of technical drafting on their plate for other reasons. We talk to managers, team leaders and owners. They are looking at a schedule that no longer fits their staffing and want a solution that makes a difference this month. In virtually every case, it comes down to capacity. There is too little time, there are too few drafters, or a project comes in with so much repetitive work that the in-house team cannot get through it.
Greenhouse construction is a good example. Companies there work a lot in AutoCAD, and AutoCAD is not smart when it comes to building components such as valves in piping systems. If you need a valve in 90 and in 110, you draw it by hand again every time, drawing after drawing. That kind of work costs an experienced drafter days they would rather spend on design. We take over exactly that part. Working this way, we have delivered more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings for Firefly, the client we have worked with so far.
We launched this service last year because a client asked for it, and it worked well enough on both sides to make it a standard service. For these businesses, a technical drafting partner is not an extra link in the chain, but an extension of their own drawing office. You keep hold of the design and the client relationship; we make sure the drafting keeps moving.
Scaling up with a technical drafting partner
With us, capacity is not a promise on paper. Our large, flexible team is already in place, and we deploy what the project requires, from one drafter for a small job to as many drafters as a large project needs. When something urgent comes up, we add people to the ongoing job straight away instead of starting a recruitment process first. That is what sets it apart from a vacancy that stays open for months while the work piles up. Everyone who works for us has more than ten years of CAD experience, and the core of our team has around twenty-five years of combined experience.
So we never have to train anyone at the project's expense. If someone is out due to illness or holidays, we replace that person and the work carries on. For you, that means no ongoing payroll costs, no idle time between projects and no risk of a half-empty drawing office in summer. As a technical drafting partner, we also take on short jobs, such as a single revision round, so a new client can first judge our speed and accuracy. If the project then scales up, we scale with it.
Sam divides the work and makes sure all drafters follow the same conventions, even when a large team is working on it. When a deadline on a project could not move, our team worked through the evenings and weekends, with days of fourteen to fifteen hours, even during a planned holiday of Sam's. That is not standard, but it shows what we mean by an agreement.
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.
The cost side of outsourced technical drafting
You can pay by the hour or per project at a fixed price. We decide together in the first conversation which form fits best. If the work can be clearly defined, such as a fixed series of drawings to a known standard, a fixed project price is the obvious choice. If the scope is still moving and work is added along the way, an hourly basis gives you more control. On an hourly basis, we only bill pure working hours. If someone steps away for five minutes for coffee, we stop the clock. We do not work with prepaid bundles or a monthly hours subscription, because then you would also be paying for the weeks when there is little to do. What mainly keeps costs down is the quality of the input. Clear CAD standards, complete details and a fixed contact person on your side save us detective work, and detective work costs hours.
Repetition helps as well, because the second and third sheets go faster than the first. The big gains lie in working parametrically. If we build a smart Revit family for a component that recurs in dozens of variants, it saves at least seventy per cent of the time on that kind of work compared with redrawing it each time. The fact that you carry no ongoing payroll costs also counts when comparing us with an in-house drafter. We only draw up an estimate after we have seen the documents, because an estimate without drawings means nothing. Feel free to request a conversation, and we will work out the numbers together.
Communication and contact around the drafting work
Every client gets one fixed point of contact with us. Barry picks up the new enquiry and goes through the project, after which Sam takes over the technical side and keeps hold of the thread until the final delivery. As a result, your project lead does not have to work out who to speak to this week. We match the rhythm of our check-ins to the pace of the project.
If it has to move fast, we speak every two days. On a calmer project, a weekly check-in is enough. Day-to-day contact runs via email and phone, and we visit you or welcome you at our office. We exchange files by email.
On larger projects, such as greenhouse construction projects, we work with software you can log into to follow the progress of the project. For standalone AutoCAD drafting, we stick to delivery by email, because that is quicker than setting up an extra environment. We always deliver in stages. After each stage, we gather feedback, incorporate it and carry on, so adjustments can be made along the way instead of one big correction round at the end.
We do the drafting itself in our own environment on our own licences, so you do not need to free up a workstation or seat. The intellectual property of everything we deliver belongs to you. So far we have not signed an NDA because clients have not asked for one, but if you wish, we will sign one before the first files change hands.
Frequently asked questions about a technical drafting partner
Make us your technical drafting partner
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.