In practice, timber frame drafting outsourcing is about element drawings: wall, floor and roof elements, detailed down to the studs and battens. That comes with a grid plan, an element schedule, the openings for window frames and services, and the sheathing layout per element.
We draft and model that work; we do not calculate anything and do not give structural advice. You supply the design, the typical details and the design principles, and we turn them into a set production can work from.
A 3D model is often involved too, because otherwise a change to a facade has to be made separately in ten elevations. We work with Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino, always in the latest versions and with our own licences. Repetition runs through all of this work: the same wall build-up, the same junction, the same detailing across dozens of elements. That is exactly where we gain speed, because our drafters all have more than ten years of experience and do not have to rethink every detail.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
When timber frame drafting outsourcing makes sense
Outsourcing pays off as soon as the volume no longer matches the staffing of your own drawing office. A manufacturer that details two houses a month and suddenly has to do eight rarely manages it with the same two people in the drawing office. A revision round on an existing set is also typical work we take on, because it takes many hours and requires few design decisions. The same applies to drawing up variants of a house type that is already fixed, or to rebuilding a file that was partly drawn by hand. There are also situations where your own team is better off keeping the work.
When the design is still moving and decisions have to be made daily, the distance between an external drafter and the designer is too great. Work that depends on unspoken knowledge of your own production line is better kept in-house, unless you are willing to record that knowledge with us once. Our experience is that the dividing line becomes clear as soon as someone lists what needs to be finished in the next two months.
The repetitive part comes to us; the design-sensitive part stays in-house. For companies outsourcing timber frame drafting, that split works better than transferring everything at once. We prefer to start with a defined package and expand it once both sides know how it is going. A second consideration is the project's lead time. If there is a hard completion date and your own schedule is already tight, outsourcing is often the only route that still hits the date.
The cost of outsourced timber frame drafting
We charge by the hour or per project at a fixed price, and we decide together which option suits best. For a tightly defined package, for example a fixed house type with known detailing, a fixed project price is the obvious choice. On a project where the design is still shifting or revisions arrive unpredictably, an hourly basis is fairer for both parties. We only bill net working hours. If someone steps away for five minutes for coffee, the clock stops, and meetings that have nothing to do with the drafting do not appear on the timesheet.
What keeps costs down most is the quality of the input. A complete package with typical details, a grid plan and clear design principles saves us hours of searching. Repetition also lowers the cost, because the second and the tenth element of the same type together cost less than two separate drawings. Smart components help a great deal here, because a change then carries through everywhere at once. On the other hand, the hours add up when we have to reconstruct missing dimensions from old material ourselves.
We flag that as soon as it comes up, rather than letting it show up on the invoice afterwards. Beyond that, you pay no ongoing payroll costs, and we do not work with prepaid bundles or monthly hour subscriptions. We base an estimate on the number of elements, the degree of repetition and the state of the documents supplied. We go through those three points in the first conversation, so you know where the hours will go.
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.
Clients who outsource timber frame drafting
The people we sit down with are usually managers, team leaders and owners of companies with a lot of technical drafting. In this field they are manufacturers of timber frame elements, contractors building with prefab, architecture firms with a construction documentation arm and engineering firms that have seen their drafting capacity shrink. The problem they bring to the table is almost always the same: too few drafters for the work that has come in. Sometimes that is because an order turned out bigger than expected, sometimes because a drafter leaves, sometimes because a deadline is being pulled from both sides. What stands out is that the question is rarely about skill and almost always about hours. Our role is therefore to execute, not to advise. We take over drafting work, stick to the company standard and make sure your project leader can keep his own people on the more difficult work.
A second group consists of companies that do have capacity, but would rather hand off a specific part. Think of a manufacturer that wants its detail library drawn up while its own drawing office works on live projects. We pick up that work without anyone having to learn the day-to-day routine. Our clients are in the Netherlands and our focus is on the Netherlands too, which keeps communication in the same time zone and the same language. Where needed we visit, and you are welcome to come and see us at our office. What these groups have in common is that they do not see drafting as their core problem, but as the bottleneck that sets their schedule.
From first conversation to partial delivery
With us, a project starts with a conversation in which we go through it together. We ask about the type of house or building, the number of elements, the required lead time and your drawing conventions. You then supply the documents: existing drawings, typical details, a grid plan and usually a set of files that needs revising. With enough information, we can start straight away.
We do not work towards one big final delivery, but deliver in stages. For a house type, that often means first working up a single wall element in full, so your project leader can see whether our detailing matches what production expects.
We process that feedback, and only then does the rest of the elements go through the same process. We set the meeting rhythm together: every two days when speed matters, weekly when things are calmer. On a deadline that could not slip, our team worked through evenings and weekends, with days of fourteen to fifteen hours, and that hit the date. We do not go looking for situations like that, but we do not run away from them either.
Files go back and forth by email, and on larger projects we use software you can log into to follow progress. Every delivery goes through our own review layers before it leaves the building. After completion the set remains usable for what comes next, because its structure and file names follow your conventions. If a revision still comes in later, we carry it out in the same files.
Frequently asked questions about timber frame drafting outsourcing
Hand your timber frame 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.