Architectural design, drafting and CAD outsourcing is coming up as a new niche in the outsourcing industry in India, and yet again with her pool of qualified architects and draftsmen, India is prepared to set global benchmarks.

The India advantage

Pressure on margins due to increasing costs, and lack of skilled manpower is forcing global engineering and architectural companies to outsource. India has a distinct advantage with the high quality technical resource pool and competitive cost structure, and a time zone advantage that ensures minimal turnaround time.

Like in automotive or engineering design outsourcing, architectural outsourcing demands domain knowledge in the core discipline as well as expertise in related software. For graduating students from over 100 architectural schools in India, outsourcing offers much better opportunities compared to mainstream architecture, considered as career with a slow start. Architects and draftsmen are ready to work for overseas clients with about six months of training, and are offered as much as 50-75% higher salaries compared to that in a local architectural firm.

Services Outsourced

Architectural outsourcing can include one-off services or end-to-end designing of the complete structure or detailed drafting of the sketches received from the overseas client. However, most often, conceptual designs are provided to vendors who then complete the entire set of documents. Currently there are very few vendors offering complete architectural solutions.

The Vendor Scenario:

Estimates suggest that there are about 100 firms offering services in architecture. Only the larger firms like Neilsoft or Satellier offer structural designing solutions. Bulk of the work with smaller vendors revolves around lower value adding work such as drafting and detailing.

Going Forward...

Architectural outsourcing is still in its infancy and holds a huge opportunity in terms of value and volume. The higher value adding services including end-to-end design solutions, are likely to come in greater proportions only as the industry evolves and matures.

Some estimates suggest that the outsourced architectural services opportunity for Indian vendors may be well worth over $10 billion by 2010 - 2012. The size of the pie is likely to attract a large number of players - from large architectural firms to one-man shops - lured by the global exposure. However, there are early signs that this will spark off a talent war with traditional architecture firms, who may not be able to match the salaries and work environments provided by outsourcing vendors, but will be able to offer exposure on end-to-end design projects in India.

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