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Why Our Senior Engineers Are Not Expensive CAD Operators
Senior engineers doing CAD production are expensive CAD operators, so MES keeps production and engineering judgment on separate paths to protect review time.
Quick answer
A senior engineer who spends the week fixing annotation and cleaning up drawings is an expensive CAD operator. Every hour on production is an hour not spent on design decisions, technical review, permit strategy and clients.
At MES, I solved that with structure, not discipline. Production has its own path, judgment has its own path, and a licensed engineer's review is about technical accuracy, not formatting. This is how I think about it and why.
Where do senior engineers' hours actually go?
Into production work nobody sees. Ask a senior engineer at a traditional firm how much of the week goes to CAD production and drawing fixes. The guess is usually modest. In my experience, the timesheets show a bigger share than the guess.
The gap is not dishonesty. The production work happens in the margins. A PE opens a plan set to review it and spends the first hour fixing annotation before the technical review can start. A project manager gets profiles that are missing details and drafts them before marking up the set.
A principal gets off a client call, sees a drawing issue and fixes it personally instead of handing it off. None of those hours show up in anyone's picture of how senior time is used. They pile up in the background and eat the time meant for the work that sets a firm apart.
Why did I build MES differently?
Because engineers should spend their time on engineering. I left my job in 2017 and opened MES in 2018 around that idea. To me it means design decisions, hydraulic calculations, permit strategy, technical review and client communication. It does not mean plan and profile production, annotation fixes, drawing cleanup and markup response.
So we draw a clear line between engineering judgment and engineering production. Production support turns markups and sketches into clean, standards-compliant sheets. We use software to cut admin, so there is less admin and more engineering. Every deliverable still gets a licensed PE's review before it leaves the firm.
The story of how the firm came together is in how I built a civil engineering firm that doesn't follow industry norms.
Is separating production a cost cut?
No. It is a quality measure. A PE doing a true technical review on clean drawings catches more real issues than a PE who is fixing annotation layers and checking hydraulic calculations at the same time.
Attention is the scarce input in a review. Split it between formatting and engineering, and the engineering gets less of it. The work that needs a licensed engineer should get that engineer's full attention, not whatever is left after the cleanup.
What is the real cost of senior time on production?
It is not cost against cost. It is the output you have against the output you could have. The usual math compares a senior engineer's rate to a drafter's rate and stops there. That misses the bigger loss.
A principal whose week goes to design decisions, technical review, client communication and permit strategy produces different results than the same principal stuck finishing drawings. Client relationships get attention. Permit applications go in complete and reviewer-ready the first time. Projects close on schedule instead of stalling because someone senior was drafting.
For a developer, that difference lands on the pro forma. Carrying costs keep running while a permit waits. An engineer focused on permit strategy is worth more to that number than one splitting the day between strategy and sheets.
What happens when the bottleneck is at the top?
Every deadline depends on one person's calendar. At firms where senior engineers are the real production staff, production stops when the principal travels, handles an escalation or takes a hard client call. There is no redundancy and no buffer.
It shows up in ways I have watched for years. Proposals go out late because the principal finished deadline drawings first. Client calls get moved because the project manager was stuck on plan sheets. New business stalls because nobody has time to follow up.
The firm hits a ceiling, not because it lacks work, but because the people who can win work are tied up producing it. That feels like a capacity problem. It is an allocation problem.
We do not structure senior engineers as production staff. Production has a dedicated path, judgment has a dedicated path, and neither competes with the other for the same hours.
What does this mean for clients?
The engineer on your project is working on your project's engineering problems. When you ask about permit strategy, the person answering spent the morning on permit strategy, not on cleanup from the last deadline.
A complete, reviewer-ready TCEQ submittal takes an engineer with the time and focus to prepare it correctly. So does a quick, clear answer on an active project. Both come from how the firm is built, not from how hard any one engineer works.
Frequently asked questions
How does MES keep quality control when production and engineering review are separate?
The review is a true technical review, not a combined cleanup and review. Production delivers clean, standards-compliant drawings, and a licensed PE reviews them for technical accuracy before they reach the client.
How does production support stay current with project requirements?
The handoff includes the project files, markups or sketches, the standard details that apply and a short scope description. Working on the same engagement over time builds familiarity without repeated briefings.
Does this model work for complex water and wastewater projects, or only routine drafting?
Both. Plan and profile sheets for water and sewer mains, lift station drawings, treatment plant site plans and permit submittal packages are production. The design, process calculations and permit strategy behind them stay with the licensed engineers.
I run a small civil firm in Texas, and my two senior engineers spend their evenings fixing plan sets before deadlines. Where do I start separating production from engineering?
Start by tracking where the hours go for a few weeks, by task, not by project. Then hand off the most repetitive production work first, such as markup response and sheet cleanup, and keep your engineers on review and design.
I'm a project manager at an engineering firm in Colorado and our principal is the bottleneck on every submittal. How do we fix that without hiring another PE?
Move production off the principal's desk. Clean, standards-compliant sheets let the principal's review focus on technical accuracy, which is the only part that needs a license. Outside production support is one way to do it.
Related resources
- The Cheapest Engineering Decision on Your Texas Pro Forma Isn't the Low Bid
- Why Speed Is a Design Constraint: How Modern Engineering Firms Deliver Infrastructure Faster
- The Four Layers Under MES, Top Down
- Support for engineering firms
Are your senior engineers stuck doing CAD production?
We give water and wastewater engineering firms Civil 3D production support, with PE-reviewed plan sets, so your senior people can get back to engineering.
We specialize in:
- Civil 3D production support for engineering firms
- Plan and profile sheet production for water and sewer mains
- Lift station and treatment plant drawings
- Permit submittal packages
- Markup response and drawing cleanup
Modern Engineering Solutions, McKinney, Texas. Contact: (214) 833-6748 or mod-eng.com
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