Engineers to Draftsman ratio in your office

[SRBalliet]

I would like to know what is your office or firms ratio of engineers to draftsman is. We are a Civil firm that is quite busy with:

2 Principals
12 Engineers
1 Head Surveyor
2 Man Field Crew
4 Draftsman

And in the next few weeks we are bringing on:

3 More Engineers
1 Intern Engineer

The reason for my question is that with the 4 draftsman we sometimes have a hard time making a full day billable. Are we working to fast or are the engineers to slow?

[clarkrj]

We have a ratio of about 1.5:1 engineers to designers and we are burried all the time. We design and build refrigeration and compression packages and each designer is responcible for several projects at a time.

Keeps us busy and off the streets.

[julie_tirone]

We're a Federal government institution with 2 draftspersons, 25 local engineers and about the same for technicians in regional facilities across the country.
Many of the engineering staff use ACAD LT for producing sketches and preliminary drawings which the CAD department finalizes into official drawings once the dust has settled.

[Ken.Leary]

I do Civil work here in Central Florida. It seems like most companies around here average about 2-5 engineers per 1 CAD person.

This is usually due to the fact that a lot of Civil Engineers are learning CAD while in college. I gives them more ability to do the design in CAD and hand it off the the Designer/CAD Drafter to complete.

[Brian Myers]

The reason for my question is that with the 4 draftsman we sometimes have a hard time making a full day billable. Are we working to fast or are the engineers to slow?

Perhaps neither? If you are hiring on more Engineers it sounds as if one of two things are happening:

1) You have too many drafters.
or
2) (Often more likely) Your Engineers simply don't know when to hand off the work to the less expensive employees and move on to the next project.

[dfarris75]

we have 4 engineers and 1 eit.
3 drafters (1 seasoned = me and 2 new ones right out of school who are learning the ropes)

[tedg]

Without actually counting..we have (about)
5 Architects
4 Mechanical Engineers
5 Structural Engineers (+ 1 EIT)
4 Civil Engineers (+3 EIT)

6 people in our Survey Crew w/ (3) Licensed surveyors

2 Architectural Designer/Drafters
2 Architectural Drafters
2 Structural Designers/Drafters
4 Civil Designer/Drafters
2 Miscellaneous Drafters that do allot of Civil and red line work

(I'm one of the Structural Designer/Drafters but do allot of Architectural work too)

Plus we have construction managers, administration, office support blah, blah.
About 60 people in all. The owner of the company is a Civil Engineer too.

We're all really busy and usually very billable. The biggest problem we have is planning ahead. Sometimes we put out fires that could have been avoided by better planning and labor structure.

Ted

[paddymackey]

Are we working to fast or are the engineers to slow?

Engineers always work too slow.

We've about 400 people in the office here (and another 100 odd across the road in rented offices) and I don't know how many designers are here never mind engineers.
From experience in smaller companies in the pharmaceutical industry over the last few years the ratio usually worked out to be around 2 designers / drafters to each engineer.

[mikesal]

Telecom - 4
Mechanical - 6
Civil - 10
Electrical - 13 hiring 3 more
Engineering Assistants - 9
Technicians - 15
Project & Construction Managers - 9 hiring 3 more

Drafters - 9
Surveyors - 2

[.chad]

2 (registered) architects
2 (non-registered) intern architects
1 drafter (not sure if she has a B.Arch equiv degree or not)
1 (non-registered) architect starting monday
1 intern starting monday
engineering is sub-contracted out

as small as the office is, we are all drafters, designers, managers etc.