Deciding whether to outsource your CAD Services overseas or to a UK based company?
We will not indulge in any moral obligation as to why a UK business should endeavour to engage with other UK businesses for their services. That is everyone’s own choice and down to company policies and ideals.
However, the decision whether to outsource your CAD requirements to a company overseas should not just be made on cost, especially not just on comparing the hourly rates of CAD draughtsmen. There are several other aspects that need to be considered prior to emailing your and your client's designs to a person you are highly unlikely to ever meet.
1. Hourly Rate Comparison
Many companies will advertise their hourly rate on the internet. You will notice that established UK based CAD services do not advertise their hourly rate on the internet. Hourly rates should not be a metric for comparison, as an hourly rate gives you no indication what a complete job will cost. If the hourly rate is half of another company's but they take double the time, you have paid the same for longer lead time.
Furthermore, outsourcing your work to a country that does not speak your native tongue and has a considerable time difference, substantially increases your management time. The time you spend on managing a job in a different country will be far higher than one in the UK. Therefore, your increased management time needs to be considered within any comparison. You will also be communicating with them out of hours and at weekends.
2. Why are their hourly rates so much less
The employee cost in the majority of the favoured countries is far less for several reasons, but there is no need to elaborate any further in this article. We should note that after employee costs, the second highest overhead for a CAD Engineering business is the hardware and software. A CAD workstation is significantly more expensive than a standard desktop PC and the CAD Software licenses such as AutoCAD and Revit have a one-off purchase cost as well as yearly subscriptions. These costs apply to every country and the price is much the same whether you are in London, Munich or New Delhi. A workstation plus appropriate software can easily cost in excess of £5,000 plus a yearly subscription per desk. If the company has not attained these licenses from an approved re-seller, they are more likely to be illegal copies. I am sure you would not want to use an electrician whose tools are all stolen.
3. Language barrier
Detailing a clear project profile is the basis for a successful project. However, should the scope of work be written in a different language for the person receiving the job this can easily create problems. The problem does not lie in basic communication it lies in the technical specific terminology. Engineers have a raft of terminologies specific for their discipline to describe their requirements. Engineers with the same native tongue but from a different discipline will struggle to understand some phrases.
4. Copyright
Besides that the ethics of copying are seen different in some countries, the copyright laws are different as well. Within the UK we are all obliged to comply with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act 1988 and an infringement is a civil offence.
One should consider, that by emailing or uploading your technical drawings to a company you do not know, who do not have to comply with UK law or court, you are entrusting a company with your designs or those of your client to whom you have no comeback whatsoever should anything go wrong.
5. Quality of work
Quality comes with a price it’s as simple as that. The quality of technical drawings is based on the whether the standards such as BS 8888:2011 have been complied with, whether they have an internal CAD Standard, and adhering to solid management procedures, and not just simply the mistakes within drawings such as missing dimensions, missing symbols, miss-reading notes etc.
This quality can only be achieved by professionally trained staff and quality checking procedures.
Note: There are obviously far more aspects for good quality drawings than just the above, however these would require a separate article all together.
This article is based on experience we have gained over the years of clients outsourcing their work overseas. Just because a company is not UK based does not mean they will produce inferior work or copy the designs, this is not what this article is about.
In summary, one should evaluate all pros & cons before deciding of outsourcing CAD work prior to just engaging a company purely based on reduced price.
Please contact Curo Modular Services for more information on 0191 516 6036 or info@curomodular.com
