Ratio of Engineers to Draftsman for Commercial Building Work with Revit

[structuralengr89]

What are the typical ratios for Engineers/Draftsmen for firms that do commercial building work in Revit? Prior to Revit, the firms I worked for kept a ratio of about 1 Engineer to 1.5 Draftman in AutoCAD. It appears small firms these days are not hiring as many draftsmen and and letting their young engineers do both the engineering and Revit work.

I'm a one man structural firm looking to hire my first employee and am trying to decide between hiring a young engineer to do both engineering and Revit, or hiring a draftsman only.

 

[PEDARRIN2]

Unless you want to mark up everything, I would hire the engineer. A draftsman, unless he has some years under his belt, is not going to understand the design concepts involved.

 

[MotorCity]

A seasoned draftsman/designer may understand the design concepts better than a young engineer just out of college

 

[H57]

I see more and more structural firms having the engineers do both the design and the drafting.

If you're looking to someone else to provide drafting for your design then you'll most likely want to go the route of a draftsman. While the money may work for an engineer to do your drafting eventually you're going to be paying a registered engineer to do your drafting. Doesn't seem to make sense.

If you provide your own drafting and intend to keep doing that then you probably want to hire the engineer.

The exception to this would be if you are able to find a good designer. Someone that is not licensed, provides drafting, but is also able to work independently under your supervision to prepare construction documents. The salary for an unlicensed designer should work for them to continue to draft for you and they're knowledgeable enough to work independently.

 

[BUGGAR]

I find Revit to be highly specialized and I would consider hiring anyone who could produce a salient product with it.

 

[MrHershey]

Our engineers will often do CAD detailing themselves or at least help with it. CAD plan work and anything in Revit is almost 100% still done in drafting.

1:1.5 seems wildly high to me. Right now we've got 19 full time engineers and 5 full time drafts(wo)men. Previous firms/internships were in the same range we are, right about the 4:1 range. Can get hectic during deadlines but you plan ahead and everyone pitches in and we come out okay. And then we're not trying to keep the drafters busy constantly because there's plenty of work to do.