Engineering vs CAD Effort 6

[strucguy]

Hello everyone,

We are a small engineering firm (about 30 employees, CAD technicians included) that offer structural engineering services for various types of projects (Residential, commercial, institutional etc). We have a policy where engineers doing their own drafting is a strict "no no". So, engineers pretty much rely on CAD technicians for all their drafting needs.For the last few years business has been steady and everyone was happy. Lately though we found that the profits have taken a hit and not up to the mark. Some engineers have left as the company was not able to meet their salary expectations and this added to the burden on the remaining staff). This forced our firm's principles to take a hard look at the numbers. Some of the engineers who have been with the firm long enough were even involved in the processes (I was one of them). During this review, we found that the effort (in dollars) we were expending on projects when split between engineering and drafting was averaging at 40:60. Is this normal in a typical structural engineering firm. I know drafting takes a lot of effort, and with Revit it has gotten much worse. But, spending 60% of the project's budget towards drafting seemed a little unreasonable. What do you guys thing? Any feedback will be helpful in shaping our strategy for the coming years. Thanks in advance.

 

[SNORGY]

My guess would have been 65:35 or 70:30 with the larger number attributable to CADD. The product of engineering is drawings. CADD people create drawings. So, one part drawing review to two parts drawing creation seems about right to me.

 

[hokie66]

Very difficult to generalize. I have done projects where I kept 4 drafters busy, and other projects where I struggled to keep 1 busy. And then it depends on the skill of the drafter...and the engineer. CAD drafters require more intense supervision than manual drafters did, but that is another subject.

 

[rowingengineer]

Agree with Hokie, but from a work force perceptive we have a half/half ratio of engineers and draftees on staff.

http://www.nceng.com.au/

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."

 

[SNORGY]

True.
In fairness, I am in Oil & Gas EPCM. Probably not the right background to offer informed comparison. I also realize that in other parts of the world, notably the U.S., the engineers have a higher level of involvement at the CADD level in the creation of their own drawings.

Otherwise, if it takes say 40 hours to produce a drawing, the more hours you can do at the lower rate, the more cost effective you become - unless your CADD resources are of the high-paid, mercenary types.

 

[JohnRBaker]

An in some industries, such as automotive, aerospace, heavy machinery, etc, CAD is not so much a 'Drafting' tool as it is used for Design, Analysis and Manufacturing. In those industries it's often the engineers and designers who expend most of the CAD hours utilized on a project. In fact, there is a trend in these industries to do away with the traditional fully dimensioned, orthographic projected views on a Drawing sheet altogether and replace it with what being called Model-Based-Engineering and Manufacturing:

http://www.engineering.com/DesignSo...g-Terminology-of-Drawingless-Initiatives.aspx

And to facility this trend in terms of how are we going to communicate our design and manufacturing intent without traditional 2D drawing, there has been developed an approach called PMI (Product and Manufacturing Information). Sorry for the albeit marketing themed document, but this is the best one that I can think of which describes what this is and how it's being used:

http://www.plm.automation.siemens.c...ion (PMI) - NX Fact Sheet - 9645&docType=.pdf

Again, I apologize for moving this thread off the original track, but I think it's useful for everyone to understand that CAD or even the use of traditional Drawings, is not seen the same in all industry sectors. Besides, having spent nearly 37 years in the CAD industry, it's hard to let any discussion on the topic go by without adding my 2 cents worth ;-)

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[msquared48]

Prior to CADD, I figured 50:50 on the average and budgeted so. Made money. I would expect CADD to be more efficient and the ratio to rise to 60:40 or better.

Perhaps there is over-detailing going on, or a need to generate typical details to cut the time down.

Mike McCann, PE, SE

 

[TheTick]

Even if you don't want the engineers doing CADD, there are likely things they can do to aid the CADD effort. Punting half-baked work over the fence is going to result in more hours for the drafteurs to sort things out.

 

[beej67]

I know drafting takes a lot of effort, and with Revit it has gotten much worse.

I'd like to hear some more details on this. Isn't the point of BIM in general to try and blend the tasks of engineering and drafting, so your engineers are producing the drawings, or at least elements of them, as they engineer them? I know that's how it works in site engineering, but then again we've always had more blended responsibilities in our work than you guys in structural have.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[PEDARRIN2]

In my opinion, the use of BIM has upped the requirements for what the "drafter" knows how to do. They are no longer line jockeys, but have to know a bit more of what they are putting on the drawings.

But structural (like architectural) will never, in my opinion, get out of drafting. there are just too many small detail elements required that Revit cannot produce. Typically the building elements are done in Revit, while the finer details are done in AutoCAD.

From the S firms we deal with, the younger (less experienced) degreed engineers (maybe those gaining experience for registration) will work in BIM. As they gain experience (and salary), they are gradually be phased out of actual drawing production.

 

[JAE]

My buildings group doing structural has ZERO draftsmen (draftspersons?....draftpersbodies???).

Since I started doing engineering in 1979, I've seen the progression from the following:
Start of my career about 1980 ink on mylar - 1 engineer with 3-4 drafters
Middle of my career - cad drawings - 1 engineer with 1-2 drafters
End of my career - 1 engineer with 0 drafters

The progression has developed to this due to a number of reasons (and may be more applicable to structural than other disciplines)

1. The availability of good drafters that understand what they are drawing is bad - in other words I can hire drafters but not necessarily good technicians.
2. The ease of using Autocad has increased dramatically since its early days - thus most engineers can use it without much trouble.
3. The typical design effort was usually this:
a) Engineer does calcs.
b) Engineer sketches results of calcs and notes it up. - hands it to a drafter
c) Drafter draws it up.
d) Engineer checks over the cad printout and redlines it up
e) Drafter takes the redlines and corrects/adds to the original drawing
f) Engineer does final check and final extra redlines
g) Drafter finishes detail.
4. As a result of item 3, the manhours x pay rate is about the same, if not more, than if the engineer were to just draw it up themselves the first time.
5. The cost of labor has risen over the years - such that item 4 is even worse today than years ago.



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[jgailla]

My experience is that 3.d,e, and f are repeated several times. Unless the engineer gets into the CAD file, there may be lines that don't touch, hardcoded dimensions that are wrong, etc.

 

[strucguy]

Thanks all for the valuable input. I am going to print this and share with my bosses. Even though none of you pointed it directly, I infer that drafting effort (in dollars) can be well with in 50% of the overall effort. Even though this is a vague generalization, I do think our drafting group can be more efficient and can be more conscious about the time they are spending on the jobs. The same applies to engineering group as well. From what I know, our engineering personnel are known for going over-board showing more than what's actually needed on the drawings. When an issue can be addressed with a simple note or hand sketch, why bother drafting it.

 

[braddles90]

From my (short) experience at doing my own designing and drafting, it's definitely pretty close to a 50-50 split. The problem is drafting tends to be a lot of 'busy' work - I feel like I spend the same amount of time designing a part as I do drawing each component (no matter how simple), producing the plate profile for the fabricator, filling in the attributes in title blocks, doing the weldment drawings, and then assembly drawings...

There's a lot of work in just that process, and the advantage of having the assistance of a drafter to smash through that large chunk of work whilst you go through the other half of the engineering work that gets left behind (emails, discussions with suppliers on specs, liaising with sourcing departments, etc), and if you've got a good drafty/designer working with you the rework shouldn't be a huge chunk of work.

But, I enjoy the drafting and doing it all myself (project time permitting), because a) I find it therapeutic, and b) drawing each of the parts reminds me of all the little things I forgot to include and stored in my head for later when the major design phase was being done.

 

[truckandbus]

It may depend on the number of concurrent programs you are running. I'v found that with multiple contracts on the go one Product Engineer could usually keep two Project Engineers busy; each Project Engineer could keep 4 or 5 Designer/Drafters busy. If you only have one contract to process, perhaps only one Product engineer and 3 designers.

 

[TheTick]

I can draft faster and better than most drafters I have worked with. I also have the advantage of being more intimate with the details of my designs. But, I cost more, and I'm needed elsewhere.

It's about finding the right point to hand off. How far down the detailing path should an engineer walk his design? Somewhere, there will be a point of lowest cost where the engineer has provided enough detail to expedite drafting but not so much that he has wasted his more valuable time.

 

[MrHershey]

I've always found working out details in CAD to be a helpful part of the design process. I don't do all of my own details, but at least in CAD I try to do some. Unfortunately don't know how to detail in Revit (yet), so have to rely on drafting for those.

I'd say we're usually about in the 60/40 to 75/25 range in the design phase of projects. Then will increase to maybe 75/25 to 85/15 when you include CA. Right now we have a little over a 3:1 engineer to drafter ratio.

 

[strucguy]

MarkHirschi -

Looks like you have very efficient drafting group. I have a few questions though.
1. What kind of projects does your group work take up? (bridges or buildings or other special structures)
2. When engineers do their own drafting, do they bill it towards drafting or does it get treated as engineering time.
3. Also, our engineer to drafter ratio is 1.5:1. I think that is where we are getting hammered. Can you give me a rough estimate of the average experience (in years) of drafters in your group?

Thanks for your input.

 

[MrHershey]

1. Buildings. Everything from highrises to single family homes. Concrete (including posttensioned and precast), steel, masonry, wood, light gage.

2. Can't speak for other engineers, but I'll do both. If I'm drafting because I'm actively designing something and then just do the drafting at the same time, then it's billed to engineering. If I'm drafting because all the drafters are busy and my marks need to get picked up, then it's billed to drafting. Thankfully I usually end up closer to the former. Me doing my own detailing has decreased a bit as we move more into Revit, which I don't know. Also, we've increased our CAD staff so I'm not forced into it as much, though still enjoy doing it as part of the design process.

3. Finding good drafters has been difficult for us. We're based in Hawaii, so pretty much all the good people here are fully entrenched and good people elsewhere are typically unwilling/unable to make the move out here from the Mainland. We've had to do a mix of training our own and then getting lucky with poaching. Fortunately we don't have much turnover. Right now we have five drafters for seventeen engineers.
Department head: 30ish years experience, poached from a Mainland firm our firm President used to work for
Senior Technician: 25ish years experience, poached from a local firm (I think)
Revit specialist: 10ish years experience, works in our Chicago office, from Chicago are but we poached him from Florida; started as an external Revit consultant and then we managed to convince him to join us fulltime
Technician: 3 years experience, found through a shadow program at a local community college, so he's been trained by us; came along very quickly, now very quick and extremely reliable
Technician: 2 months experience, found through a shadow program at a local community college, so he's being trained by us; coming along quickly, can see him getting better with every markup I give him