Outsourcing / Off-shoring

Architects Outsource all the time.
​These are some benefits.

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The issue of outsourcing to offshore companies is mostly an emotional issue. Feelings and beliefs aren't debatable. The reason to offshore is economic. There isn't much to debate there either. It simply saves money. But there are other benefits, too.

Architects have been outsourcing for at least a hundred years. By this I mean using consultants for engineering design, for interior design, for landscape design, for renderings, for signage, for 3D digital models.

We were contacted by a firm based in Lithuania back in the early 2000s. They were offering to do digital 3D work and rendered images for about 25% of the 'normal' price. They had a British manager that made communications easy. We found ourselves in the position of being able to offer this type of service on almost every project because of the low cost. 

For a number of years I investigated ways to outsource detailing and drafting tasks as well. Here is what I learned.
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• None of the outsourcing firms know how the process should work; they are just as disorganized as you are.
• The work must be assigned in steps or the Re-Work will be time-consuming and frustrating.
• Glen Wiggins' book, A Manual of Construction Documentation, is a great resource in tackling the organizational aspect. This is true even if you don't outsource/off-shore. (The book is based in the hand drafting era. Beware.) 
• Outsourcing to North American firms only provides the economic advantage of being able to handle the occasional busy periods without staffing for that level of intensity.
• Off-shoring has an economic advantage of about 5:1 for the same labor. The increased management time is about offset by being more effective.
• Outsourcing forces you to be better organized, but pays off in both efficiency and effectiveness.
• Keeping extra in-house staff busy often causes you to have things done that end up leading to re-work because the task was not thought through or it was premature.
• The planning that is necessary in order to outsource effectively is a benefit even if you don't outsource.

    
When I started working for a local college making office modifications and expanding toilet facilities, I was all set to try out what I had learned. The year before, when I was searching for an offshore company to do some 3D work, I found a firm with experience with US architects. I engaged this Indian firm to do drafting for $10/hr (2008-2012 timeframe). 

An example of the detailed instructions is at the bottom of this post.

This proved very effective for creating CAD drawings of the original hand drafted building floor plans. The cost was usually about $100 per floor.

​Once I had a base sheet that matched our needs, ​I usually asked them to create layers containing electric and HVAC existing work that would come into play with the remodeling.

Next came a series of other steps to complete the construction documents.

• Partition layout with doors
• Toilet room layouts at larger scale
• Reflected ceiling plan
• Toilet room wall elevations
• Dimensions
• Room Finish Symbols and Key
• Door Schedule 
• Door Details
• Interior Details
• Notes and Keynote symbols
• Pochè

The point of all these steps is to eliminate as much potential for revisions as possible. The reason for that isn't to minimize the Offshore Drafter's time, but to eliminate your time in finding and conveying the revisions that are needed.

​During this process, which I repeated about six times, it began to dawn on me that this process shouldn't be confined to working with offshore drafters. I should be doing this for all projects including the ones that are done 100% in-house. So I began working on developing all the tasks that would be needed, especially the sequence in which they should be completed to minimize rework. This proved to be the major benefit of learning to outsource basic drafting.

The result of this major process for project management is described in Trello-PM, an ebook. It uses Trello as the tool for managing the process.

Trello is free. Get an account and then copy my system into your account.

​Most of the ebook has been published in this blog, just search for Trello-PM. 

Or, purchase the ebook.

EXAMPLE:

    The first task is to develop an architectural base plan. Our dwg file that we always start from is attached along with two Tiff files.

  "i-037 Third Floor Plan.tif" is the original floor plan from the original construction.

    The area of this project is bounded by column line "11" plus 15' (toward "12") on the north; the exterior wall and stair on the east; column line "7" on the south; and column line "B" plus 15' (toward "A") on the west.

    Show all interior partitions as 5" thick unless dimensioned otherwise, and put all these partitions on a layer called "EXIST WALLS". Exterior and core walls should go on this layer also.

From the i-037 file show:

• all exterior walls
• all interior partitions 
• stair layouts
• drinking fountains (D.F.)
• lockers
• door swings
• column centerlines and bubbles
• etc. ...

From the i-037 file DO NOT show:

• room numbers
• door numbers
• partition type symbols
• interior elevation marks
• dimensions

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