CAD management to be outsourced

[strodeb]

We may be having our CAD network outsourced to Computer Centre rather than run by us internally.

Does anyone have any experience of how well/badly that's going to work?

Any comments would be welcome, any that you feel you cant post on here, feel free to use the following email address...

CADchimp@gmail.com

[Lance127]

Well first off, why? and exactly what constitutes "cad management" for you.

Next I don't tnik it will work as well as in house. For CAD Management to be most effective the person in charge needs a through understanding of tthe work flow and processes in an office, as in the real ones not whatever ends up in some book somewhere, they also need to be able to react to problems with the software or processes very quickly. Do you really want to have to wait 4 hours (or however long the contract response time is) to begin to have someone look into why a file won't save , keeps getting corupted, etc.

Lance W.

[strodeb]

Sorry, I should have made the title CAD network I think my fingers went onto autopilot.

though they seem to be trying to outsource everything, so my role managing the CAD could well go out as well.

[Lance127]

So your server etc is going to be offsite and a 3rd party is going to be responsiable for maintainance?

[strodeb]

Sorry I'm not doing a very good job of explaining...

Currently Computer centre maintain the rest of the network as a turnkey solution, we maintain the CAD network hardware & software.

They may be given our network hardware to run "to give us more time to do other things". I think you can guess what I think of that idea, but i just wanted to gauge the response of others who may have been here already.

[cstruckmann]

Who owns and manages the printers and plotters? Managing them is one of the most important aspects of good CAD/BIM management. The CAD person needs to have a say about it.

When  you say outsource, are the people physically in the office or doing all their work remotely? Remotely managing the plotters is bascially impossible. (My printing expectations are high: I want a print perfectly centered on the paper. no cut off edge etc.;-)