Best ways to grow an architectural company.
Archicad freelancers, CAD contractor of staff expansion?
Main stages of developing an architectural company:
- Start up – single person entity, where the owner does everything from conceptual design to drawing development, and maintenance of all work environment, accounting, and even office cleaning.
- Grow up – a small business where the single architect is the owner, developing the project himself. Still, the company starts to buy services from other companies like cleaning, office maintenance, accounting, and lawers.
- Scale-up – medium size architectural companies start to split project development into separate stages, and multiple architects and drafters start work on it. The company’s structure begins to form – marketing, architectural/conceptual design, and drafting are delegated to different staff members. At this stage, the owner must decide what company produces in-house and what services should be bought from other providers like marketing, accounting, rendering, drafting, and BIM modeling.
To scale up successfully, you have to divide processes into those that provide the most significant added value and those that any other employee or subcontractor can easily do.
Archicad freelancers, CAD contractor or hiring
In this article, we would like to focus on drawing development, drafting, and BIM modeling. Usually, it is the most technical part of the project development, but it can make a considerable part of a project development budget. There are three options you can choose from :
- –hire
- – order services from freelancer
- – order services from cad/bim drafting company
Pros and Cons of Hiring
The first option is the most expensive, and your commitment is the biggest. First, you must have office space to arrange additional working space; next, you must buy all the office equipment – computers ( hardware, software ).
Let’s calculate how much establishing a new workplace could cost you: computer – 2K; monitors -1K; furniture – 1k; software – 3 K; additional fees might be office rent, staff management, health insurance, and monthly salary. It is also important to mention that finding the right person with the right motivation, experience, and skills takes time. In total, it can come up to a 10 K investment to have your own CAD/BIM technician.
Pros and Cons of Archicad freelancer
Ordering drafting services from freelancers can be the cheapest solution.
This option has its downside. First is data safety. Freelancers often work with cracked software and use free email and other data hosting services. Also, when you start a business relationship with a freelancer, you can never know who that person is, his experience, skills, and background. And because of the internet’s anonymity, signing NDA or any other agreement can get complicated. The main advantage of this option is that us the cheapest one. Well, it should be the most affordable option, but on freelance service sites like upwork.com price interval for such service is from 12 USD to 40 USD per hour, and on freelancer.com, from 12 USD to 30 USD per hour.
Pros and Cons of CAD/BIM contractor
The third option is to hire CAD / BIM contractor, a company that provides drafting BIM services. The advantage of this option is that you can get more information about the service provider. You can know how long the company has been in business and get the company’s VAT number, registration number, and information about the CEO. There is a possibility to sign an NDA and another kind of contract not with a freelancer nickname but with an actual legal entity. There is a strong possibility if you are thinking of cooperating with a drafting company from the EU that it is using legal software and all data storage systems are professional and reliable. If there is a need for bigger scale or long-term cooperation drafting firm can offer more than one drafter with powerful hardware and up-to-date software. An essential factor is that drafting contractors can offer financial and professional stability. Just a few drafting contractors declare their pricing policy openly. For example, cadcrowd.com has information that prices for drafting and 3D modeling services range from 40 USD to 100 USD, and Team4BIM.com declares that their price is 20 EU ( 21 USD ) per hour and they have starting fee.
Conclusion
When you choose the drafting service option that suits you best, consider the reliability of the service ( is it a single person or a team ), how long has the service provider been in the drafting business, and is it an actual legal entity or just nickname.
CAD / BIM contractor :
No down payment needed. 20 €/hour!
We provide an up-front quotation on the complete project so you’ll know the total cost without any surprises. If the project is open-ended then the standard hourly rate will apply. Either way, you are in control of the cost up-front, so no surprises.