Indovance CAD and BIM Outsourcing Audit: Dedicated FTE Monthly Pricing, Revision SLAs and Data Security

01What a dedicated FTE quote typically contains

Offshore CAD and BIM bureaus usually sell in two ways: per-project quotes for defined deliverables, and dedicated full-time equivalents (FTEs) who work only on your files for a monthly fee. A dedicated FTE quote commonly states a monthly rate per resource, the number of working hours included (often about 160 per month), the shift overlap with your time zone, the software the resource will use and who licenses it, the notice period to add or release resources, and a minimum term. Some quotes add a team lead or project coordinator as a separate line, or fold that role into the rate.

The monthly price looks simple, but it carries three assumptions you should test. First, that you can keep the resource busy for all included hours. Second, that output meets your standards on the first or second pass, so your own engineers are not doing hidden rework. Third, that the work and data can legally and contractually leave the country. The table below gives typical 2025-2026 benchmarks for the most common roles. Treat them as a range to check against your written quote, not as any bureau's price list.

02Utilization and landed cost: the two numbers the quote leaves out

A dedicated FTE is paid whether or not you send work. If you buy a 2D FTE at $2,240 a month and feed it 120 hours of real work, your effective rate is $2,240 / 120 = $18.67 per hour, one third higher than the $14 headline. Before signing, look at your last six months of drafting demand and size the team to the low months, then use per-project quotes or a flexible add-on clause for peaks.

The second hidden number is your own review time. Offshore output on code-driven work, such as MEP coordination or structural details, commonly needs a US senior engineer or PE to redline it. Buyers report 15% to 25% of the offshore billing in internal review time when checklists and redline SLAs are missing. This site uses an 18% buffer as the benchmark. Your landed cost formula is:

Landed cost = Monthly FTE fees x 12 x (1 + QA buffer) + licenses + coordination time

Who pays for software matters as well. If the bureau needs a Revit, AutoCAD or SolidWorks seat in your name, add that seat cost; the Autodesk named-user vs Flex audit shows how to price low-use seats. If the bureau supplies its own licenses, ask for confirmation that they are commercial licenses valid for client work.

03Worked example: three dedicated FTEs for an MEP and product team

A mid-size firm buys two BIM FTEs at $2,240 per month and one 3D CAD FTE at $2,880 per month.

• Monthly fees: 2 x $2,240 + $2,880 = $7,360.
• Annual fees: $7,360 x 12 = $88,320.
• QA buffer at 18%: $88,320 x 0.18 = $15,898.
• Landed cost before licenses: $104,218.

For comparison, three US contract drafters through an agency at the low-end benchmark of $72 per hour cost 3 x $72 x 2,080 = $449,280. The gap is large, but it only holds if utilization stays high and review stays near 18%. If the BIM pair runs at 75% utilization and review climbs to 25%, landed cost per useful hour rises and the gap narrows.

The Section 174 adjustment

If the 3D work is research and experimentation, for example designing a new product rather than redrawing an existing one, foreign R&E costs must be amortized over 15 years, with about 3.33% deductible in year one. On $34,560 a year of 3D FTE fees, the year-one deduction drops from $34,560 to about $1,151. At a 21% federal rate, the tax saved falls from $7,258 to $242, a cash drag of $7,016, about 20.3% of the spend. This is a timing difference recovered over later years, and routine drafting is often not R&E at all, so confirm treatment with your tax advisor. The TCO calculator includes this line.

04Revision SLAs: put rework in writing

The revision clause decides who pays when a drawing comes back wrong. Many dedicated FTE contracts say nothing about rework because the client is paying for time, not output. That means errors are corrected on your hours. A stronger contract defines an internal QA step at the bureau, a first-pass acceptance target and a turnaround time for corrections that does not consume the FTE's billable capacity when the error is the bureau's.

Ask for these terms and agree on how to measure them. A simple redline log, recording each returned sheet, the reason and the hours to fix, is enough to run the SLA monthly.

05Data security and export control questions

Sending drawings offshore moves your intellectual property and sometimes regulated data across a border. Ask what security certifications the bureau holds, such as ISO 27001 or ISO 9001, and ask for the current certificate and its scope rather than a logo on a website. Ask how files are transferred and stored, whether staff work on locked-down machines, and whether USB storage and personal email are blocked.

Export control is a hard stop, not a negotiation. Technical data controlled under ITAR (22 CFR 120-130) generally cannot be shared with foreign persons without authorization, and some EAR-controlled data has similar limits. If any part of your product is controlled, keep it out of the offshore scope entirely and say so in the contract. The aerospace and defense ITAR playbook explains how to split controlled and uncontrolled work.

Questions to ask

• Can you provide your current ISO 27001 certificate and its scope?
• Do our files stay on our servers through remote desktop, or are they copied to yours?
• Who owns work product and native files, and is assignment automatic on payment?
• What happens to our data at contract end, and will you certify deletion?

06Minimum term, notice and exit costs

Dedicated FTE contracts commonly carry a minimum term, often three to twelve months, and a notice period to release a resource, often 30 to 60 days. Both shape your real cost. If demand drops in month four of a twelve-month minimum, you pay for eight months of capacity you may not use. At $2,240 per month, releasing one BIM FTE with 60 days' notice still costs $4,480 after the decision.

Ask whether you can swap a role rather than release it, for example trading a BIM drafter for a 3D modeler at the new rate without restarting the minimum term. Ask whether ramp-up time for a replacement resource is billed, and how long the handover overlap lasts when the bureau rotates staff. Attrition in offshore engineering hubs is a known risk, so a no-charge replacement clause with a defined handover is worth more than a small rate discount.

At exit, the contract should require delivery of all native files, standards and templates the bureau built for you, in a usable format, within a set number of days.

07Step-by-step audit checklist

1. List every dedicated resource, its role, monthly rate and included hours.
2. Pull six months of timesheets or task logs and compute utilization per resource.
3. Compute effective hourly rate: monthly fee divided by hours of real work.
4. Measure internal review hours for a month and express them as a percentage of offshore fees.
5. Compute landed cost with the formula above and compare it with your US alternative.
6. Check software licensing: whose seats, which versions, valid for commercial client work.
7. Read the revision clause and add the stronger terms from the table.
8. Confirm IP assignment, data handling and deletion at exit.
9. Screen scope for ITAR or EAR data and remove it.
10. Ask your tax advisor whether any work is R&E subject to Section 174 amortization.
11. Benchmark rates against the India GCC and CAD BPO rate card and the bureau comparison.

08Run the numbers: engineering staffing agency vs. CAD/FEA outsourcing TCO calculator

The same benchmarks as this sheet, with your inputs. Share link and printable brief open the full calculator page.