Engineers to Draftsman ratio in your office

[jcfeeken]

Our company has 1 struct. engineer, 4 geotechs with two cad techs. I was the only cad tech for six years With a feast or famine work load we had to hire another cad tech. The only problem is some weeks the two of us barely get by while the next week is all paperwork and then onto solitaire. This arrangement still works better than holding up the field crew which costs thousands per day.

[cunzner]

First job at a Survey Co.
1 Civil/Owner
2 Engineers
1 Land Arch.
6 Drafters
3 Prof. Surveyors
3 Outside Grunts
and then I was the fill in for inside or outside. Whatever really need to be done.
I think that they used the techs more like mini-engineers and just had the actual Engineers double check the work before they signed off on it. Doing their work for half the price.

[Pontoon]

First job at a Survey Co.
1 Civil/Owner
2 Engineers
1 Land Arch.
6 Drafters
3 Prof. Surveyors
3 Outside Grunts
and then I was the fill in for inside or outside. Whatever really need to be done.
I think that they used the techs more like mini-engineers and just had the actual Engineers double check the work before they signed off on it. Doing their work for half the price.

Think that is quite common here too. We let the vendors do the work and have the lead engineers here check the important stuff. It has even been known for me to do little mods (As a Doc controller this isn't part of my job, but any expierience is always good) then someone else checks them. Wish we did that for all our ad hoc mods, as then there wouldn't be a backlog of about 200 mods due to the vendor having a high turn over of staff and the usual politics of not having ctr's to book time to.

[CADKitty]

Oh my goodness, let me think here...

6 electrical engineers
5 plumbing engineers
10 mechanical engineers
2 summer interns about to start
1 CADD Coordinator

The reason that this looks rather unbalanced? Because all of the engineers do their own drafting. Now that I'm here they'll pass off what they can to me, but they're used to having no one. That being said, I know of a firm with about 400 employees and they require the engineers to do redlines only and give them to the CADD department. It's all how the company chooses to operate.

[RobertB]

This is a neat topic. Our ratio is 1 drafter per 6 designers/engineers. Most of our designers do their own CAD work, and ~33% of our engineers do their own CAD work.

[pnorman]

We have 26 engineers/designers and 11 Drafters. The engineers do NOT do any drafting! Besides they wouldn't have time!
We are purely a structural engineering consulting office.

[CGM]

Engineers always work too slow.

Give a guy a break. Most of our draughtsmen, don't think at all. It's no wonder the Engineer's work takes longer, 'cos he's got to think for the rest of the team at the same time as doing his job

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.

Here we've got 1 Engineer and 4 CAD drafters.

[paddymackey]

Give a guy a break. Most of our draughtsmen, don't think at all. It's no wonder the Engineer's work takes longer, 'cos he's got to think for the rest of the team at the same time as doing his job
Here we've got 1 Engineer and 4 CAD drafters.

I'm just pulling the p***, it's one of my hobbies slagging off engineers. Just about every piping designer I know over here is the same, and so are the engineers are the same.

[puckineh70]

were a small comapny but we have a 1:1 ratio the boss has his draftsman and the technition has his (ME) we generate a lot of work for a company this size usualy 3-4 condos goin on at once for just the 2 of use but it works pretty well were both fast

[H'Angus]

Architectural Practice:

1 Designer/ Super Cadder
1 Architect/ Town Planner (Whats CAD?)
1 Architect/ CAD Dabbler
1 Designer/ Cadder
1 Trainee Architect/ Cadder
1 I've got college on tuesdays! Coffee maker/ Cadder
1 Part time receptionist (the bosses wife)

Listed in order of importance.