freelance charge

[Anonymous]

I have a CAD drafting business for 10+ years.  I have primarily drawn new house plans and some remodels.  I have a production builder that would like me to clean up their existing plans and keep a library of their plans so that if they have a problem in the future with corrupt plans, they can come to me and obtain an fresh copy.  

The plans have been worked on by several technicians.  Some of them were created in Builders CAD and exported to .dwg.  I don't know if Builders CAD has the option to export and keep the layers for the plan along with keeping hatches as one entity, or if the techs just did it wrong.  Either way, the situation seems to be drawings with everything on one layer and or hatches that have been exploded.  I can see this becoming very time consuming to correct.  

Does anyone have an idea of how you would approach pricing something like this.  I wouldn't want to sacrifice making the money I could make drawing a new house plan in the less time than it could take to try to correct one of these plans. They are a large company in our area and I suppose it would be beneficial to be able to say I did work for them.  I was thinking about having them give me a plan to correct at an hourly rate of $35.  Then letting us both find out how much time it would take to complete the correction.  I don't know what or if to charge for keeping a library of their plans.

Would love to hear any ideas.  Thanks!!!

P. S. Not sure if this is in the best category.  Please let me know if I should post it elsewhere.

[JasonArtley]

I would ask for one of the drawings, so you can properly assess the process to provide a reasonable estimate. This part will likely be unpaid.

Once you figure out that it takes 4 hours per drawing (or whatever number you come up with), figure out a reasonable cost. $35/hr sounds great for freelance work, but it is extremely cheap to the client! They aren't paying for your equipment, benefits, 401k, etc. I'd bump that up to $45 personally. Or better yet, charge per project. Once you do a few of these, your efficiency will go way up. By charging per project, your profits will likely increase, and it will work out to much more than $45/hr. The builder will likely think they are getting a bargain at $500/project (random number) and if you can get it done in 2-3 hours, or 10-15 hours, they pay the same price, and your efforts determine your hourly rate. 

If I were a builder, I'd want to know exactly how much this service would cost me. Perhaps an alternate would be an hourly fee with a "not-to-exceed" amount per project. That way they know they aren't paying someone an endless sum of money.

Either way, it sounds like fun, especially since it will be a great resume builder as well. Good luck! 

[jggerth · Accepted solution]

That sounds like a fair approach for the conversion/cleanup, but I would think that hourly rate is far to low.  Maybe add a 'not-to-exceed' figure that would be the higher value to them, and if the effort exceeds that figure, politely decline to do any more unlkess the amount increases to where you can be profitable doing this.

The other item, being their corporate librarian for plans, is potentially messy.  You're offering to hold onto someone else's propery, and deliver it to them on demand.  I'm not sure how to even price that, -- inasmuch as you are assuming a fair bit of liability.  Maybe store encrypted backup copies on three different cloud services, and maintain a local working archive on a dedicated disk.  Guestimating the amount of time you'll put into that is hard from here, but I would look for an annual retainer that covers the cost of mutliple cloud services + a dedicated NAS, and charge an hourly rate for the time you spend storing and retrieving the drawing files.

And definitely get a disclaimer of liability in the deal...  If you've been doing this for the past decade, you probably have a working relationship with an attorney -- consult with him how best to protect yourself.

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone for your wonderful suggestions.  I was able to gather a bit more information when I met with the client today.  This company has an in house CAD Tech, but they are overwhelming him with work.  They are wanting me to keep a file of the plans in case they are left in a lurch without a CAD tech.  They  want to be able to call me and have me ready to go.  In the meantime, they will be sending me about 122 spec house releases for me to prepare to go to permit.... this seems to involve a minor amount of work changing title blocks and switching in and out paper space blocks.  Along with the spec release, they will have plans that need corrections, some of them as I mentioned before are imported from Builder's CAD and have layer and exploded block and  hatch issues.  I have an idea on what to charge for the specs and changes but no real idea on the plan library.  I would not have a liability for it.  Should I charge an annual fee of $100 an/or a per instance of accessing it.  Is there another way that you would handle it?  Thanks again!

[jggerth]

Annual retainer, yes.  The mount needs to be based on your cost of storage -- figure a dedicated NAS + (spread that across three years) + annual cost of cloud storage for disaster proofing.  Use at least two paid services, and encrypt the files before uploading.  Add 11% for a profit.

Retrieval  -- I would mostly try to do that on an hourly basis, but consider how you are delivering the stored plans & add that in as materials..  burning CD and fedexing is probably best -- since you'll have receipts and can back up what happens.  Thumb-drive is posible as well, 4G flash drives are very cheap.  Email/ftp probably the worst choice as there's no backup to support your side of the story when a problem crops up.

And don't kid yourself about liability.  Unless your attorney is involved writing a librarian contract, you've got some.  You're holding other persons copoyrighted material -- their compoany intellectual property.  OF COURSE you'll be considered liable if/when things go south.  Get your attorney to write up a contract that protects YOU.  The contractor has an attorney, ut his job is to protect them, not you.  What happens to the plans & specs if they go bust?  What happens to them if you go bust, or get run over by a bus?  

But it does sound like a nice gig to have.  So don't pass it up, just make sure all the i's are crossed and the t's dotted.

[pendean]

your duplicate post https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-2013-2014-2015-2016-2017/freelance-what-to-charge/m-p/6393528...