As there are more competitors chasing fewer structural design projects, structural engineers have to lower their quotations to win projects. Lowering their costs becomes a must to make sure their projects as profitable as possible.

Structural engineering generally includes structural design, structural analysis and structural drafting. The most value-added work for structural engineers is structural design - deciding systems, locations and rough sizes of structural elements, such as footings, columns, beams, floors. Since this type of work requires a lot of experience and interaction with clients (owners or architects), structural engineers should focus on it by their own instead of outsourcing. Needless to say, structural engineers are willing to design by themselves or design in-house by their own employees.

Structural analysis (and calculation) is another part of structural design process. Nowadays, as computer science is advanced, most analysis and calculation could run in structural design software. However, it still requires experience to judge the results and make decisions. Thus, structural engineers should work on analysis and calculation by themselves or oversee the process, however, if structural engineers would like to save costs here, they can outsource the modeling work to to structural drafting outsourcing companies. Experienced structural drafting outsourcing companies can build structural models in structural design software, then structural engineers check the models and get back to them for further revision. In this way, structural engineers can save much cost and effort without compromising the quality. Structural engineers may think that it’s time-consuming to outsource. It was true 10 years ago, however, with the high speed internet and powerful FTP, all upload and download happens in minutes or even seconds. If structural engineers work with qualified and responsive outsourcing companies, it’s just like working with in-house teams. Also, the time-difference between could be an advantage to accelerate the modeling process.

Unlike structural design and analysis, structural drafting involves a lot of repeating work and has plenty of margins to save costs for structural engineers. Structural drafting is a general saying. Actually, it could be structural CAD drafting, structural Revit modeling, or any application in other graphic software. If structural engineers work on structural CAD drafting or structural Revit modeling by themselves, it would be a waste of time unless the projects are very small. They should focus on graphic quality control, building code application and construction cost control and let their structural CAD drafting or structural Revit modeling outsourcing partners to deal with the arduous structural drafting work.

How does structural CAD drafting and Revit modeling outsourcing work better for structural engineers?

Firstly, both parties should work together to conquer the geographic difference by checking emails frequently and being responsive to each other.

Secondly, structural drafting outsourcing companies should fully understand their clients’ graphic standards, and make sure their output should be exactly like what is produced by their clients. Go-by sets provided by structural engineers would be very helpful for structural drafting outsourcing companies to learn their clients’ graphic standards quickly.

Last but not least, training is always helpful whether structural engineers train structural drafting outsourcing companies or structural drafting outsourcing companies train themselves. The training could be in any form, but both parties should find a suitable way that work for both of them.