Justifying CAD Mangers Salary

[ryanmcin]

Hello,

I have been acting as the CAD manager for a company which employees around 35 cad users. My principal duty was to create the standards and issue them company wide, which was done about 8 months ago. The problem is that I also do project managment which is more than a full time job itself. As a result I have been unable to enforce the standards as I would like to and the company is not getting the full benifit of the standards. I have little interest in being a full time CAD manager as the project managment work that I do generally more enjoyable and more profitable. What I am looking for is any information that is available on how to get managment to buy off on a full time cad manager. Return on investment information, productivity gains, things like that. I realize that the information will not be specific to our sitiuation, but any information will help.

Thank you in advance.

[robert.1.hall72202]

You are better off justifying the Cad Manager as an additional Cad operator.
Could have one of the Cad Gurus in the office assume a Cad Manager role. Hire that person an assistant to work alongside them and still expect to have some drawings
created between the two of them. The justification to upper management will be the
addition of an extra cad operator. If you use one of your current operators, you could always hire a temp to pick up the drawings that are slacked because the operator is spending his or her time on cad management.

I have actually been able to spend some time with AutoCad customizing during slower times by adding a designer who works directly under my supervision.

[BWG]

You are better off justifying the Cad Manager as an additional Cad operator.
Could have one of the Cad Gurus in the office assume a Cad Manager role. Hire that person an assistant to work alongside them and still expect to have some drawings
created between the two of them. The justification to upper management will be the
addition of an extra cad operator. If you use one of your current operators, you could always hire a temp to pick up the drawings that are slacked because the operator is spending his or her time on cad management.

I have actually been able to spend some time with AutoCad customizing during slower times by adding a designer who works directly under my supervision.


Most Definitely. A CAD operator, hopefully well experienced in CAD, is probably one of the best managers for enforcing your standards and policies. If you try and advertise for a CAD Manager, you will get a bunch of goof balls and since you were once doing both jobs, the upper management will not see much use to pay extra for that service, but a CAD operator usually smells green.