Any experience outsourcing CAD design to India? - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

simmer2 · 01-28-2012, 12:41 PM

Our business is looking to reduce our in-house CAD cost, just cannot justify the overhead. I am curious to know if any folks have :

-outsourced cad work to India
-who you've used
-the quality
-the cost savings

Regular_John · 01-28-2012, 12:49 PM

I can only speak from my experience with outsourced web development. So this may not be of a ton of help.

There are some obvious pros:
- Cost savings
- Send something out at 5:00pm, see draft at 9:00am the next day

Cons
- Communication/schedule (eg: need to speak to some one but it's 2:00am)
- More back & forth/drafts needed

As I said this was my experience with web development, you got about 80% of the work done up to par, but the last 20% needed hands on polishing by the regular team. Now if your saving a ton on the 80% then it might be worth it. But in my experience the fantasy of "get the same job done for 1/10th of the cost" doesn't quite pan out.

llama64 · 01-29-2012, 09:11 AM

Like jaydorn, I've only seen outsourcing done in the context of software development.

In EVERY case it's gone poorly. Initial cost savings are alluring, but you need to be on top of the over seas team every day. Everything you want needs to be documented and detailed to the point where you need a full time manager just for the outsourced team.

And the work received back was never quite on target for quality or meeting the business requirements. Everything needed to be looked over, re-factored and in some cases completely re-written.

Perhaps it's worth it it in the short run - I'd be curious to see what the long term effects are though.

Personally, I cut contact with any and all employers/clients who pursue this strategy. Why don't we outsource management overseas?

Bottom line: you get what you pay for. If you can make cheap outsourced work work for you, that's great. But I've never seen it work like the MBA's think it will.

KOgear · 01-29-2012, 09:45 AM

From my experience with outsourcing drafting, you will require a good interface coordinator/manager that can give clear direction. The initial alignment is important to make sure they know what your requirements are. If not like the posters mentioned above, it will result in more redo's.

From a mark-up standpoint, you will have to be more detailed/clear as well. Also you will have to take more time transferring the information back and forth (ex. scanning).

For large drafting loads it worked ok, however we still had to make finishing touches. Also found that minor work could just be completed in the office.

I think if managed properly it could work, but I don't know too much about the actual cost savings.

freedogger · 01-29-2012, 10:53 AM

Custom line of business software has to be one of the worst things to outsource. Consider the following: "the entree comes with bread and soup or salad" I really have to have a face to face conversation to know what the options are. Conversations are orders of magnitude more effective than written specifications to determine true requirements. It usually takes more than one iteration to really understand the business problem and value that a software feature can add.

It is common in software to see the construction metafor used. I just give the developers the specifications and then they build or contruct the software. This is wrong. The only real specification is the code itself. The compiler or the runtime builds the software. What this means is that the proggramers themselves by default become the architects and designers. The only way they can make the right decisions aligned with business needs is if they truly understand the underlying business domain. This is why outsourcing typically fails. If the spec is written well enough, then the software is pretty much finished as well.

Sorry that I cannot speak directly to CAD work. I have seen graphic design fail in similiar ways when outsourced.

sclitheroe · 01-29-2012, 01:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by freedogger

It is common in software to see the construction metafor used. I just give the developers the specifications and then they build or contruct the software. This is wrong. The only real specification is the code itself. The compiler or the runtime builds the software. What this means is that the proggramers themselves by default become the architects and designers. The only way they can make the right decisions aligned with business needs is if they truly understand the underlying business domain. This is why outsourcing typically fails. If the spec is written well enough, then the software is pretty much finished as well.

Off topic with respect to the original question, but this is incredibly insightful - the last sentence in particular is bang on.

Mass_nerder · 01-29-2012, 05:10 PM

The firm I used to work for outsourced a large amount of initial setup on an extremely large (billion dollar) project to Mumbai...the quality of work that came back was substandard at times, and we ended up re-doing a large amount of the work in house.
I personally dealt with several of the CAD techs in Mumbai, collaborating on a smaller piece of the project, and found that I needed to be extremely specific with what needed to be done, and had to check in with them several times a day, which was tough considering the massive time difference.
I'm not sure how much my firm saved farming out some of our CAD work, but in my experience it certainly wasn't worth it.

burn_this_city · 01-29-2012, 05:15 PM

I was on a project where thousands of piping Isometrics were redone here Calgary after the New Dehli office screwed it up. They even sent managers from Calgary to watch over the work but it was still a disaster.

Mass_nerder · 01-29-2012, 05:19 PM

Yeah, my firm had our (incredibly skilled) CAD manager flying back and forth between Mumbai and Calgary, and it still didn't make much of a difference.

simmer2 · 01-30-2012, 08:21 AM

Yikes, so the stories are not so great from the sounds of it. I appreciate everyone's feedback on this.

flambers · 01-30-2012, 08:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by simmer2

Yikes, so the stories are not so great from the sounds of it. I appreciate everyone's feedback on this.

It can work, however someone in your existing company has to closely manage the outsourced element.

Give them milestones that must be achieved, work structure should be documented and clearly presented etc......

Lots of the big companies are using Design resources in China or India etc.....

Handsome B. Wonderful · 01-30-2012, 02:16 PM

Past experience shows us it takes 3 people in Mumbai to equal the work of 1 person in Calgary. However, it's cheaper to pay 3 people in Mumbai than pay 1 person in Calgary, so they kept sending work that way.

Recently, we have had clients ask us to stop sending work there, they've decided it's better to pay more and get better quality work done here.

Personally, I would never send it there. There's some smart folks there, but there's far more peons shoveling out crap. Too much came back and had to be redone.

Burninator · 01-31-2012, 08:52 AM

The last office I worked at outsourced some Revit work to India. I cannot speak to the cost as I wasn't privy to that but I can speak to the work. We had one person here in Calgary whose full time job it was to organize the work with the outsourced people. It was definitely sub-standard work. A person in India does not understand how a building in Fort Mac is built. So they did the basic modeling of the buildings. But having someone start the project who isn't familiar with the type of construction is a poor way to do a BIM project IMO. Us techs in the office finished the project as that was the only way to get the quality up and get it done on time.