Short answer: most firms make the comparison wrong. They put an outsourced hourly rate next to their drafter's salary rate, see a gap they consider unimpressive, and stop. But nobody's cost is their salary, and nobody produces for 2,080 hours a year. Once burden and utilisation are counted, an in-house drafter runs closer to $64 per productive hour than the $31.80 the payroll suggests.
The rest of this is the other half of that argument — the review hours that can cancel the saving completely, and the break-even where outsourcing stops making sense.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for May 2025:
| Role | Median annual wage | ÷ 2,080 h | + 30% burden |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architectural & civil drafters | $66,150 | $31.80/h | $41.34/h |
| Drafters, all types | $68,090 | $32.74/h | $42.56/h |
| Civil engineers | $100,840 | $48.48/h | $63.03/h |
Burden means payroll taxes, benefits, insurance, software seats, hardware, and the desk they sit at. Twenty-five to forty percent on top of salary is the usual range, and it is the easy part to account for.
The hard part is utilisation. The 2,080-hour year is fiction: leave, training, admin, business development, rework and the weeks the work simply does not arrive all come out of it. This is precisely why architecture and engineering firms bill at a multiplier of direct salary at all — industry benchmarking commonly puts net multipliers in the high 2s to low 3s, with published surveys reporting averages around 3.2. That multiplier is not margin. It is overhead plus the hours nobody paid for.
| Utilisation | Productive hours/yr | Effective cost per productive hour | Reality |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90% | 1,872 | $45.94 | Rare, and usually not sustainable |
| 80% | 1,664 | $51.68 | A genuinely busy year |
| 70% | 1,456 | $59.06 | Healthy |
| 65% | 1,352 | $63.61 | Common in small firms |
| 50% | 1,040 | $82.69 | A quiet stretch |
| 40% | 832 | $103.36 | The months you do not talk about |
Drafter at $66,150 salary plus 30% burden = $85,995 fully loaded, divided by productive hours.
That table is the actual argument, and it has nothing to do with anyone's hourly rate. A hire is a fixed cost meeting a variable workload. The cost per useful hour is set by how busy you are, and you do not control that.
The honest version. Your own checking and coordination hours are charged at your engineer's cost, because that is what they actually cost you. If the saving disappears, this will say so.
It is not the rate. It is review load — the hours your own engineer spends briefing, checking, re-explaining and fixing. Those hours are charged at the engineer's cost, which is higher than the drafter's, so they compound quickly.
At the default figures above, the saving survives up to about 3.5 review hours per 10 hours of production. Beyond that, outsourcing costs more than doing it in-house. And review load is not a fixed property of a partner — it is a function of how well the work was specified before it started.
Nothing About the Seal Moves
The engineer of record signs and seals. That responsibility does not transfer to a production partner, ever, regardless of who drew the sheets or ran the model. Anyone selling outsourcing as a way to share liability is selling something that does not exist.
What actually protects the seal is a documented checking protocol agreed before work starts: the code and its edition, the design criteria, the drawing standards, the software and version, the scope boundary, who checks what and against what, how revisions and superseded sheets are handled, and the deliverable list with turnaround. A partner who cannot put that in writing is a risk to your seal no matter how clean the CAD looks.
The firms for whom the numbers work are the ones with a lumpy documentation load: several project types moving at different speeds, a bottleneck that shows up three or four times a year, and no sensible way to hire for a peak that is not there in June.
Then run a real trial on a package with a known answer, and measure your review hours instead of estimating them. Most firms that abandon outsourcing do it after a trial they never measured, on a package they never scoped — which tells them nothing about outsourcing and quite a lot about their own handover process.
Wage figures are US Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook medians for May 2025: architectural and civil drafters $66,150, drafters overall $68,090, civil engineers $100,840. Burden and utilisation assumptions are stated in the calculator and are yours to change — Australian, New Zealand, UK and Canadian markets differ meaningfully. Billing multiplier ranges are drawn from published architecture and engineering firm benchmarking, not from a single authority, and vary strongly with firm size. AEDO quotes offshore production per project, per hour or as reserved monthly capacity depending on the engagement; the rate field above is for whatever figure you are evaluating, not a published price.
What does an in-house structural drafter actually cost per hour?
Far more than the salary rate. US Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for May 2025 put the median annual wage for architectural and civil drafters at 66,150 dollars, which is about 31.80 dollars an hour across 2,080 hours. But payroll taxes, benefits, insurance, software seats, hardware and workspace typically add 25 to 40 percent on top, and no drafter produces billable work for all 2,080 hours. At 30 percent burden and 65 percent utilisation, the same person costs roughly 64 dollars per productive hour. That is the number an outsourced rate should be compared against, not the 31.80.
Why do engineering firms bill at 2.8 to 3.2 times salary?
Because the multiplier has to recover everything that is not direct salary. Industry benchmarking for architecture and engineering firms commonly puts net multipliers in the high twos to low threes, with published surveys reporting averages around 3.2. The multiplier covers office rent, software licences, professional liability insurance, administrative staff, marketing, and all the non-billable hours in the year. A firm that bills at three times salary is not making a 200 percent margin; it is covering overhead and absorbing the weeks when the work does not arrive.
When does outsourcing structural production not pay?
When your own review and coordination time is high enough to cancel the rate difference. Every hour the engineer of record spends re-explaining scope, checking unfamiliar output or reworking a misread detail is charged at their cost, which is higher than the drafter's. Work the break-even out before committing: if in-house production costs 64 dollars per productive hour and an outsourced rate is 30 dollars, the saving disappears once review exceeds roughly three and a half hours for every ten hours of production. Small, fast, highly bespoke packages are where that ratio is worst, because the fixed cost of explaining the job is spread over very few production hours.
Does outsourcing structural work transfer any liability?
No. The engineer of record signs and seals, and that responsibility does not move to a production partner regardless of who drew the sheets or ran the model. This is why the checking protocol matters more than the drawing quality: what protects the seal is a documented process, agreed before work starts, covering the code and edition in use, the design criteria, the drawing standards, the software version, the scope boundary, who checks what, and how revisions and superseded sheets are handled. A production partner who cannot describe that process in writing is a risk to the seal no matter how good the CAD looks.
What is the difference between outsourcing and hiring?
Fixed cost versus variable cost. A hire is a fixed annual commitment, paid in the slow months as well as the busy ones, and its economics depend entirely on utilisation staying high. Outsourced production is bought by the hour or the package, so the cost tracks the workload. Firms with a steady, predictable documentation load are usually better off hiring. Firms with a lumpy load, several project types running at different speeds, or a documentation bottleneck that appears three times a year are the ones for whom the arithmetic favours buying capacity instead of carrying it.
How should a small firm trial an offshore production partner?
On a real but non-critical package, with the scope written down before anything starts, and with the review time measured rather than estimated. Pick a job with a known answer so you can check the output against something. Agree the code edition, design criteria, drawing standards and deliverable list in advance. Then log the hours your own people spend on briefing, checking and rework, because that figure is the one that decides whether the arrangement is actually cheaper. Most firms that abandon outsourcing do so after a trial they never measured, on a package they never scoped.
AEDO works as the production arm for structural firms abroad — analysis, design development, CAD documentation, detailing and structural BOM/BOQ. You keep the client, the judgement and the seal.