Offshore drafting services for Australian builders and engineers

Offshore drafting services let Australian builders and engineering firms hand CAD drafting, Revit modelling, drawing revisions and estimating take-offs to a Philippines-based team member, while keeping design responsibility and compliance sign-off with a local practitioner. You can buy drafting by the drawing from a service, or hire your own drafter who works only on your projects. Either way, the person who certifies the design as compliant still needs to hold the right Australian registration.

This guide is for builders, engineers, architects and building designers. It covers what to hand off, where Australian rules require a local practitioner, how to keep drawings to Australian standards, and what it costs. If estimating is your bigger bottleneck, see the estimator role page.

What are offshore drafting services?

Offshore drafting services are CAD drafting and design documentation work done by drafters in another country for projects in Australia. The drafter turns your sketches, site measures and engineering mark-ups into technical drawings and 3D models, and your local team checks and signs off.

There are two ways to buy it:

• Outsourcing CAD drafting services to a provider. You send drawings out on a project basis and pay per drawing or per hour. The provider manages the drafter.
• Hiring your own offshore drafter. A dedicated person works full time on your projects, in your CAD software and templates, under your direction.

Builders, engineers and architects use both models across residential, commercial and civil building projects, as well as manufacturing and fabrication work. Australian companies outsource CAD work across various industries and construction industries for the same reason: their design work is steady, but their in-house drafting capacity isn’t. If you outsource drafting services, you keep the design services and the client relationship, and hand over the production of the drawings.

Is CAD the same as drafting?

Not quite. Drafting is the job of producing technical drawings. CAD stands for computer aided design (also called computer aided drafting): the software used to produce those drawings. Most professional drafting services in Australia work in CAD software such as AutoCAD for 2D drafting and Revit for building information modelling (BIM) and 3D models. Revit drafting services suit projects where the model drives the drawings, schedules and quantities. 2D CAD drafting still suits many residential jobs, details and shop drawings.

What can offshore CAD drafting services cover?

Drafting is well suited to remote work: the inputs are files, the outputs are files, and quality can be checked on screen. Typical work includes:

CAD drafting (AutoCAD and similar)

• Turning sketches, site measures and red-line mark-ups into clean, detailed technical drawings
• Preparing floor plans, elevations, sections and details to your templates
• Producing architectural drawings, architectural layouts and architectural documentation sets for residential and commercial work
• Updating drawings for revisions and keeping the revision history accurate
• Maintaining title blocks, drawing registers and transmittals

Revit drafting services and BIM modelling

• Building 3D models from concept drawings or point cloud data, so the team works from accurate digital representations of the building
• Producing drawing sets, schedules and quantities from the model
• Coordinating models from other disciplines and flagging clashes for review
• Building and maintaining your family library

Engineering design support

• Structural engineering, civil and services drawings drafted from the engineer’s design and mark-ups
• Shop and fabrication drawings for joinery, steel and precast, for review by your team or the engineer

Estimating support

• Quantity take-offs from PDF plans
• Building estimates from your rates and cost database
• Requesting and comparing supplier and subcontractor quotes
• Preparing draft quotes and tender documents in your templates

The common thread is that your Australian team sets the brief, checks the output and takes responsibility for it. Drafting and design decisions stay with your designers and engineers.

Why outsource CAD drafting?

The main benefits of outsourcing CAD drafting services are capacity, cost and access to skills:

• Lower overhead costs. You add drafting capacity without the cost of an extra local salary, desk and on-costs. See the cost table below.
• Flexible capacity. You can scale drafting up or down as construction projects come and go, by adding a hire or sending overflow work out.
• Focus. Your designers, engineers and project managers spend their time on design, project planning, clients and the construction process, not on redrafting mark-ups.
• Gain access to skilled professionals. Experienced professionals with expertise in AutoCAD, Revit and other advanced software are available offshore. Look for experience on Australian projects when you hire.
• Faster turnaround. With a drafter working your hours, mark-ups sent in the morning can come back the same day.

The trade-offs are real too: you need clear briefs, a review step, and attention to data security and IP. The sections below cover each.

Where does Australian sign-off still need a local practitioner?

Australian building regulation is set state by state, and the rules differ. The question to ask is not “who drew it” but “who has to declare or certify it”. Using NSW as an example:

NSW: registered design practitioners for regulated designs

The NSW Government’s guidance on design practitioner obligations under the Design and Building Practitioners scheme sets out the key points:

• Which buildings. The obligations apply to regulated designs for class 2, 3 and 9c buildings, including mixed-use buildings with those parts. Timing differs by class and by whether the work is new or on an existing building.
• Who has to register. Only the person who will be declaring or lodging documents needs to register. Where a design team is involved, only the person who signs off and declares the design must be registered.
• Unregistered people can develop designs. The guidance says you don’t have to be registered to develop designs. The supervising designer who signs the compliance declaration must be.
• The declaration. A registered design practitioner makes a design compliance declaration when a design is ready for building work. It confirms the building work will comply with the Building Code of Australia if built to the design. A certifier can’t issue a construction certificate or complying development certificate without the declarations.
• Variations. Any variation involving a building element or performance solution needs a new declaration.

That model fits offshore drafting well. Your drafter develops and revises the drawings. Your registered design practitioner directs the work, checks it against the Building Code of Australia and the relevant standards, and makes the declaration.

Other states and other work

Other states have their own registration and certification rules for building designers, engineers and building practitioners, and engineering work in particular can carry its own regulatory requirements. Check the rules in each state you work in before you set up the workflow, and keep the registered practitioner involved throughout the job, not only at the final sign-off.

This is general information, not legal or professional advice. Confirm your obligations with your state regulator, your professional body or a qualified adviser.

Which Australian standards apply to drafting?

The main drafting standards in Australia are the AS 1100 series on technical drawing, published by Standards Australia:

Standard	What it covers
AS 1100.101 General principles	Abbreviations, sheet sizes and layout, line types and thicknesses, lettering, symbols, scales, projection, sectioning and dimensioning
AS 1100.301 Architectural drawing	Architectural drawing practice, including sheet layout, line conventions, and cross-referencing of drawings, coordinates and grids. It complements AS 1100.101

Your offshore drafter should know these industry standards, plus the Building Code of Australia requirements and any Australian standards that apply to your discipline. Ask about them in the interview, and include the relevant standards in every brief.

How do you keep drafting quality consistent?

Consistent drawings start with clear inputs and quality checks. Set the job up properly:

Give them your standards. Your design processes, templates, title blocks, layer and naming conventions, line weights, standard details and a marked-up example of a drawing set you’re happy with.

Brief every job in writing. Scope, drawing list, the Australian standards and Building Code requirements that apply, and the deadline. Attach the inputs in one place.

Check before it leaves. Use a simple quality checklist for dimensions, references, revision clouds and title blocks, ensuring precision and accuracy on every set before it reaches clients. Your practitioner reviews the drawings before anything is issued for construction or lodged.

Work in shared systems. Keep files in your own document management or cloud storage with version control, so nothing lives on a personal laptop. Give each person their own login and software licence. That also covers data security: you control access and can remove it on the day someone leaves.

Manage it like a project. Name one person onshore as the drafter’s point of contact for project management, questions and priorities. Effective communication, with a daily check-in and written mark-ups, does more for precision than any tool.

Use your hours. The Philippines is two hours behind AEST, so your drafter can work your business day and turn around mark-ups from a morning site visit the same afternoon.

Protect your drawings

Drawings and models are your IP. The Philippines’ Intellectual Property Code (RA 8293) protects technical drawings and plans as works (section 172.1). Under section 178, work an employee creates in their regularly assigned duties belongs to the employer unless agreed otherwise, but commissioned work stays with the creator unless there’s a written stipulation. So the default depends on how the person is engaged. Put a written IP assignment and confidentiality clause in every contract, and have a lawyer check it.

What do offshore drafting services cost?

For drafters, salary depends heavily on software (AutoCAD versus Revit), discipline (architectural, structural, civil, MEP or shop drawings) and experience, so we don’t publish a single figure. Tarino can benchmark it on a call for your exact role.

For estimating support, Tarino’s typical figures give a clear comparison. The table shows year-one costs for one full-time estimator. Figures are typical, not quotes.

Option	Salary	Fees in year one	Year-one total
Local estimator (Tarino’s typical figure)	$130,000 plus 12% super ($15,600)	Recruiter fees vary	About $145,600 plus on-costs
Managed offshore agency (one published rate)	$21,600	$14,388 (A$1,099 x 12 plus A$1,200 per hire)	About $35,988
Direct hire through Tarino	$21,600 ($1,800 a month, Tarino’s typical figure)	$5,000 excl. GST, once	About $26,600

Super uses the 12% guarantee rate the ATO lists from 1 July 2025. For an offshore hire, also budget for a capable workstation, software licences such as AutoCAD, Revit or your estimating software, and the Philippine side of the arrangement, including 13th month pay. Run your own numbers in the cost calculator.

Outsourcing CAD drafting: a service or your own drafter?

	Per-drawing CAD drafting services	Your own offshore drafter
Best for	Occasional or irregular work	Drafting work every week
Pricing	Per drawing or per hour, with the provider’s margin	Salary paid directly, plus a one-time recruitment fee
Knows your standards	Varies by who picks up the job	Learns your templates and details over time
Control	Provider manages the person	You direct the work day to day

Many companies use both: their own drafter for the steady workload, and a provider of professional CAD drafting services for peaks. Whichever you choose, the decision to outsource CAD work in Australia doesn’t change who is responsible for the design work: that stays with your registered practitioner.

How do you hire an offshore drafter or estimator?

Define the software and discipline. “Revit architectural drafter for residential and class 2 projects” gets a better shortlist than “CAD drafter”.

Test with your own drawings. Give each finalist a short task: redraw a marked-up plan to your template, or do a take-off from a small PDF plan set. Score accuracy, adherence to your standards and how they flag unclear information.

Check Australian project experience. Ask which Australian standards and Building Code requirements they’ve drafted to, and which software versions they use.

Tarino builds a pool of 1,000+ candidates per role, screens them through CV checks, video screening, a practical assessment and a structured interview, and sends you 3 to 4 finalists, typically within about 2 weeks. The builders and trades industry page covers the other roles builders and contractors usually hire, from estimators to project admin.

How does Tarino help?

You hire and pay your drafter or estimator directly. Tarino’s fee is $250 upfront plus $4,750 when you hire, $5,000 excl. GST in total, with the $250 credited back when you hire and no monthly fees. Each placement includes 6-month replacement cover for the same role. If you’d rather not run Philippine payroll, Tarino EOR handles the contract and payroll for $387 per employee per month.

See pricing, or book a 30-minute call to talk through your drafting workload and what the role should look like.