Top Six Benefits of Outsourcing Woodwork Shop Drawings for Your Architectural Project

Before embarking on fabrication, a project manager would need woodwork shop drawings to guide the process of manufacturing and assembling. Outsourcing your architectural woodwork shop drawings can be highly beneficial for your millwork projects.

In this blog, we understand the different facets of woodwork shop drawings and the benefits of outsourcing them. Let us begin by understanding what exactly woodwork shop drawings are.

What are Woodwork Shop Drawings?

Woodwork shop drawings are mandatory for the smooth flow of the millwork construction process. They are detailed construction documents for the manufacturing of woodwork and feature exact spacing and locations.

Consider these drawings, the manual with exact dimensions, material types, and the installation process.

When Should Woodwork Shop Drawings be Developed?

Stakeholders and project managers should insist on receiving the woodwork drawings as soon as the initial design development and materials are finalized.

Woodwork shop drawings are the assembled manual keeping everyone – the designer, the contractor, the manufacturer, and the project manager – on the same page.

However, a debate often starts among upper management in millwork companies when it comes to developing the woodwork shop drawings in-house or outsourcing them to a millwork drafting and drawing service provider.

In-house drawings come with their own advantages, but they can be time-consuming and lead to higher costs if not done properly. If you do decide to go for outsourcing millwork shop drawings, we recommend browsing the company’s portfolio to check if their millwork drafting meets international standards.

Generally, large to mid-sized woodworking companies, cabinet companies, and so on should consider outsourcing shop drawings so that in-house staff can focus on high-priority tasks.

Bear in mind that shop drawing service providers will likely have access to the latest versions of relevant software, such as SketchList3D and SolidWorks, in addition to specialists.

Outsourcing woodwork shop drawings can bring multiple benefits to your millwork project. Here’s how.

Top 6 Benefits of Outsourcing Woodwork Shop Drawings

1. Reduced Waste

To set some wood and woodworking facts right, getting a woodworking project wrong the first time can result in a lot of waste.

Since everything is connected, if the original plans have any error, you could end up, for instance, buying the wrong amount of materials, or even the wrong materials entirely.

Subsequently, the labor hours (and waste) will start piling up.

However, with millwork shop drawings, you can spot potential errors more easily and optimize required materials, leading to greater efficiency and reduced costs.

2. Project-Based, Highly Skilled Team

Outsourcing shop drawings affords you the freedom to choose a team that is specifically trained and experienced in woodworking shop plans. These drafters and designers understand the expectations of architects and coordinate a complete manufacturing manual of the shop drawings.

Furthermore, your shop drawings can be re-worked, as outsourcing companies give you access to a pool of talent at a relatively low cost. There is no need to compromise on perfection. Joinery shop drawings help your clients and stakeholders to visualize the product before it is built.

3. Improved Sales

Successful projects lead to happy customers, which further leads to good public reviews and word of mouth. As such, by using accurate custom woodwork shop drawings, you will be indirectly improving marketing for your company.

All companies will, of course, post glowing reviews on their own websites. However, when people see glowing reviews on other websites and hear directly from their colleagues that your company delivers high-quality products on time, they’ll know you mean business.

4. Cost-Effective

This is a salient advantage of outsourcing your millwork drafting. When companies lead a project in-house, they must hire a permanent, experienced team, which can become a large add-on cost to the budget.

Outsourcing solves this issue. You can hire the right team without compromising the quality and you don’t have to pay a cent when there isn’t any work.

Furthermore, this encourages stakeholders to utilize their work hours for operational strategies and concept defining rather than worrying about shop drawing intricacies.

5. Focused Team

Outsourcing gives you a specialized team working on your project within the deadline. The vendor feels responsible for the quality and time-bound situation of the work.

A stakeholder would share the specifications and standards of the project with the outsourcing team and the outsourcing service provider would take on the complete project.

6. Flexibility

When you outsource millwork drafting, you gain access to a team of drafters and designers who have worked with a wide range of millwork projects. They would have covered everything, from custom kitchen cabinets to laboratory casework to hotel millwork.

Whether your industry or area is restaurants, hotels, commercial complexes, resorts, casinos, educational institutes, or airports, an outsourcing team should be able to successfully complete your project on time. Furthermore, you can easily ask for a format of your choice, such as PDF, JPEG, DWG, or TIFF.

Outsourcing teams also have adequate exposure to the architectural woodworking standards (AWS), which provide guidelines for safe and effective design, concept, fabrication, finish and installation.

Conclusion

Millwork professionals should have a thorough knowledge of wood-cutting machines, such as computer numerical control (CNC) machines, fundamental knowledge of wood materials, and millworker safety. All minute details are an important part of the drawings for guiding the handlers in the fabrication shop.

If you find it difficult and expensive to create in-house woodwork shop drawings, outsourcing is your answer. BluEntCAD is a millwork drafting company with a team of highly skilled millwork professionals.

We serve casework companies, woodworking companies, custom furniture manufacturers, millwork manufacturing companies, millwork shops, signage manufacturers, interior designers, cabinet makers, prefabricated home designers, and decks & fencing manufacturers.

Ready to make your millwork projects more profitable and successful with millwork shop drawing services? Contact us now!